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Shifting the paradigm

Katrina Toews wants to help turn ballet from "elitist" to "everyone's"

by Melanie Zuercher

Katrina Toews ’98 may have grown up in a tiny Kansas town, but she wasn’t lacking in exposure to the arts. This was largely thanks to her parents, Jerry and Leann Toews, both 1966 Bethel graduates. Jerry spent his career teaching instrumental music in small schools, mostly Goessel High School (1973 until he retired in 1996), where Leann taught English and forensics. Former Bethel president Doug Penner ’69 notes of Jerry’s tenure: “He developed [Goessel’s] program into what was acknowledged to be the best in the state – a high school of [about 100] students.”

So when Katrina went to Bethel herself, she ultimately decided on a fine arts major, combining instrumental music, drama and dance. On the more practical side, and perhaps still under the influence of her educator parents, she also majored in elementary education.

Following graduation from Bethel, Katrina went to American University in Washington, D.C., where she earned a master’s degree in dance education while also teaching at The Washington Ballet. From 2002-04, she taught at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., before returning to The Washington Ballet as director of education. She assumed the post of interim director for The Washington Ballet @ THEARC (pronounced “The Arc,” the acronym stands for Town Hall Education, Arts & Recreation Campus, located in the Anacostia section of southeast D.C.) in 2005 and permanent director in 2006.

Context: How did you decide to develop your fine arts major at Bethel?

Katrina Toews: I first began to study dance with Annette Thornton at the Newton Dance Center. I quit dance when I was still in high school, but when I got to Bethel, I saw that entry-level ballet was on the schedule. When I started dancing again, I loved it so much I couldn’t stand not to keep taking it, so I decided to see if I could keep studying dance at Wichita State University. I talked to [registrar] Rodney Frey but found out I could get only six credits. Then I thought, What about if I developed a fine arts major, which requires credits in three areas of the arts, with dance instead of visual arts? So then I talked with John McCabe-Juhnke, and he decided to allow 10 or 12 of the credits to be in dance.

For my senior thesis or senior seminar, I did a program on women [artists]. For the music part, I played French horn with the Bethel Sinfonia in a horn concerto written by a woman. For theater, I performed excerpts from women writers like [poet] Jean Janzen and Amy Tan. For dance, I performed dances choreographed by my professor at WSU, Denise Celestin.

As I got ready to graduate, I began to think, What if I could actually do something with dance? I had been assuming I would use the elementary ed. degree. I began looking for schools and applied to three of them. I was accepted at American University and received the Ballet Teaching Fellowship. The person who had the fellowship before me had been teaching at The Washington Ballet and was going to be leaving, so recommended I apply. I did, and got the job, so I was able to study and teach with the ballet’s founder, Mary Day.

Context: When did you begin to see that you could use dance to benefit the wider community?

KT: The Washington Ballet already had an outreach program in the public schools since 1999 called DanceDC – a 12-week classical ballet curriculum that rotates to first and second grades. Then the ballet was one of several arts institutions, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which has the ArtReach program, and the Levine School of Music, invited to be part of THEARC. This is a 110,000-square foot building in Anacostia, one of the most disadvantaged parts of the D.C. area. Nine nonprofit groups are part of THEARC – besides us and the Corcoran and Levine, there’s Trinity University, Parklands Community Center, Boys and Girls Clubs, the Children’s National Medical Center, Covenant House and the Washington Middle School for Girls. Building Bridges Across the River is also based there and it oversees everything.

Context: Why did The Washington Ballet decide to get involved with THEARC?

KT: About 10 years ago, people in the Parklands apartments, made up of several federally subsidized housing communities on national park land, were looking around and realizing there were no services in the neighborhoods. At first, the dream was “a community center with a basketball court” but it kept expanding. Building Bridges Across the River eventually raised $27 million to build a high-caliber facility that is home to a 350-seat theatre, art gallery, double gyms and the top arts and health and human service organizations in the city. It’s unique because it could be put anywhere – an upscale neighborhood would want a building like this, too.

Having The Washington Ballet serve the community has always been a dream for our artistic director, Septime Webre. So the ballet’s board had to decide if we’d be in it for the long haul, because it means raising the money to subsidize the programs. Tuition is on a sliding scale and we subsidize uniforms. We give 10 full scholarships to Anacostia students who have never studied dance before, taking referrals from local service agencies. It takes about $1.2 million a year to support The Washington Ballet @ THEARC, which includes direct costs, salaries and production costs.

The mission of The Washington Ballet @ THEARC is to bring the highest quality of training and programming, the same as at the conservatory, the ballet’s school in northwest Washington, while at the same time saying that anyone and everyone can dance and not turning anyone away.

THEARC is located where it is to serve people in the immediate neighborhood. Septime’s hope is also that training students here will give some of them the opportunity one day to audition for the Washington Ballet. Ballet has been such an elitist art form – we are trying to shift the paradigm.

Context: Do you feel the program is succeeding?

KT: We’re now in our third year at THEARC and we’re seeing amazing success. We had guesstimated having 60-80 students the first year and we had more than 200 and now we’re up to almost 300, in 30 classes that duplicate the curriculum at the conservatory, along with modern dance, Pilates, African dance and hip hop classes.

The Washington Ballet is in residence at THEARC each year for Nutcracker, which is a great opportunity for the students. This January, the National Symphony Orchestra did a family concert at THEARC and our students danced a piece from Nutcracker. Performing with the NSO was a really big deal. When the students walked offstage, they said, “Wow, Miss Toews, they’re good. Do they perform at the Warner Theatre [historic art deco theater in downtown D.C.]?” I said, “No, they perform at the Kennedy Center.”

We also have a four-week summer program at THEARC. This past summer was the first time we collaborated with some of the other organizations. When you work together, you’re all stronger, and it also shows we can work together as an organic whole. The kids were able to take drumming and art classes, study for the SAT through Trinity University and eat their meals at the Boys and Girls Club. This turned out to be so successful that we plan to do it again. Our final program at the end of the camp had the students dancing onstage with a backdrop of tie-dyed prints that had been done through a study of [African-American artist and Washington, D.C., resident] Sam Gilliam. Mr. Gilliam even attended the performance.

Context: Are you still dancing?

KT: I didn’t dance for two years, with so much work to get the programs at THEARC off the ground, but I have a friend who has a dance company, Bosmadance. She received a commission for a new work for the Alexandria [Va.] Symphony Orchestra and I’ve been dancing in that. The performance was Feb. 9 and 10. It’s been exciting to have the performer part of my soul active again.

Context: When you graduated from Bethel, is this the kind of thing you imagined doing?

KT: I had imagined being a college or university professor once I got my master’s degree. It’s amazing that what I’m doing now is a mix of community work, dance and education. It goes with the community I grew up in – the core of Mennonite belief is that you’re going to be a stronger person if you’re working through the community.

There’s always something new when you’re working in the arts and community. Here, we’re dealing with issues of race and socioeconomic struggles in the context of the arts. In realizing that we are joining a pre-existing community, we try to ask what they want to see happening rather than imposing another belief system. We want it to be a success from the parents’ and the Ballet’s point of view. In the end, we all want the same things for our kids – high-quality education and training.

Context: What do you see as the benefits of your Bethel education to what you’re doing now?

KT: My experience at Bethel College was life-changing. Although I had grown up in a Mennonite setting, Bethel showed another way of opening me up to additional experiences. Professors pushed the boundaries by making me question what I believed in and modeling the Christ-like lifestyle of living out their faith.

It was not until I left Bethel that I realized how high the standard was for learning and growing at Bethel College, and that the friends I made there were just as much a part of the success model as my professors. This concept was driven home to me when I moved to Washington, D.C., and started graduate school at American University. While the professors in the dance department were better than expected, the professors I encountered in other departments did not have the expectation of excellence that I experienced at Bethel. The “content of character” that Bethel professors modeled for me has been most affirming for me as I work in the world.