I don't remember my first dancing lesson; I only remember begging my mother to send me to tap class with my best friend Kenny. I wanted a pair of shiny tap shoes and I wanted to be as special as he was. My mother, a dean's wife and an admitted theatrical snob, found tap dancing “inappropriate.” After surveying a number of university wives, she sent me to a young woman who was to make history in the teaching of creative dance for children. Her name was Virginia Tanner.

At that time, Tanner's school was in a Victorian building perched high on a hill just north of Temple Square in Salt Lake City. The McCune School of Music and Arts was a very spooky place to a six-year-old who was scared of almost everything, but I braved the dark staircase with its marble busts and dark red carpeting as I climbed to the sunny top floor. In time, I learned to bypass the busts by taking the spiral servants' staircase at the back of the building, which seemed a much safer route. My climb was always rewarded with an hour's bliss.

I wish now that I could remember in detail what we did in those classes. I remember learning rhythm patterns from sized and colored pieces of paper and dancing them out. I remember making “toe toast” and sailing to far off places in a sailboat made of my rocking body and my unfurling arms. I remember being a “cute little grub,” a stalk of wheat swaying in the wind, a donkey hee-hawing. I remember dancing out my name and feeling that the movement version defined me far better than words ever could.