Dancers, did you know there is a professional dance company located right in Oberlin? Inside the New Union Arts Center on Main Street is one of Oberlin’s best-kept secrets: a small studio dedicated to the acquisition and maintenance of strength and technique in ballet, modern, and jazz.

I first heard about the Ohio Dance Theatre when I was a first-year in 2001. A friend I danced with taught there and took classes for free when she could. I should have gone every day for the rest of my college career, but unfortunately my busy schedule at Oberlin did not allow me to do this. However, I experienced Kyle, the Theatre’s resident hip-hop, jazz and modern instructor, through a ViBE company master class my sophomore year.

After the class with Kyle, I found myself craving more, so, with a few other rebellious dance majors and minors, I went back to the Theatre and took jazz classes. This continued off and on for two years. This year, in my final semester, I found myself without a modern class and a desire to find my old technique that I was sure was hiding somewhere. So I went downtown and bought a class card. Now I have been taking jazz, modern and pilates every week.

I strongly recommend the Ohio Dance Theatre to college students looking for ballet and jazz technique. Kyle’s jazz classes are fun. His modern has a Graham feel to it, so if you don’t like that style you may want to skip modern downtown and take a class at the college with one of the many wonderful professors in the department. The pilates class taught by Denise Gula (the Theatre’s director) will make you cry with the difficulty but will make your core amazingly strong.

New experiences await upcoming Obies at the Theatre, too. Gula intends to start a Trainee program in the fall of 2005 aimed at college students who want to follow a pre-professional ballet training program and perform, even if they do not want to make dance their career. Also, people can take classes at advanced levels, as I did, without committing to the rigorous trainee class, rehearsal and performance schedule. Class cards cost Obies $40 for five classes and $70 for 10. Seven dollars a class is quite a steal! Other discounted tuition rates will apply for the trainee program.

I am not advocating replacing the college’s dance department with the Ohio Dance Theatre. There are many wonderful classes to take and experiences to have at the college — among them Elesa Rosasco’s Improvisation, Holly Handman’s Modern and Anne Cooper-Albright’s Contact and Dance History courses. But let’s be honest: the College does not offer a strong ballet or contemporary jazz component. It is in these areas that the Ohio Dance Theatre can fill in the blanks. With the combination of these two resources, dancers will leave Oberlin with stronger skills in a variety of styles.