OCC DANCE CONCERT MARKS 25TH YEAR OF GROWING PROGRAM

Through the open doors of a dance studio, rows of women in high-heeled tap shoes try to keep up with a tricky rhythm. Just a few feet away, muscular bodies are churning away in the swimming pool, and young men toting athletic bags are strolling out to the parking lot.

Twenty-five years after former women’s tennis coach Dottie Duddridge founded the Orange Coast College dance department, it’s still tucked away in the physical education wing, isolated from the other campus fine arts departments. But no one seems to mind. At the very least, the location has been a boon for recruitment.

“When those (studio) doors are open,” says dance instructor Linda Sohl-Donnell, “(students) walking over to play sports . . . first sort of watch curiously and eyeball the girls. The second semester they come inside the doors, and the third semester they take a class.”

On the eve of the 25th anniversary faculty dance concert (at 8 tonight and Saturday at the Robert B. Moore Theatre on campus), Sohl-Donnell, department chairwoman Karen Shanley and former faculty member Alvin Mayes spoke enthusiastically about the dance boom at the community college in Costa Mesa.

The department, which started with modest offerings in modern and ethnic dance in 1962, offers modern, tap and jazz dance in three graded levels, as well as Middle Eastern, Afro-Haitian and (starting next spring) Flamenco dance.

Its two studios “go almost constantly” from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Shanley says, with two full-time instructors and 13 adjunct faculty members offering classes for about 1,300 students each semester.

The big turnaround came in 1975, with increased funding for the department, which allowed class offerings and staff positions to expand dramatically. Shanley and Mayes--who both have danced with Gloria Newman Dance Theater--were hired in 1976; they were the first actively performing dancers on the faculty.

“Also around the same time, there was an influx of disco dancing and a lot of people deciding they wanted to not just do steps but really get some training,” Mayes says.

“We were finding that there were people who wanted to learn from an artistic base, and there were also people who wanted to learn so they could go to the clubs. . . . We had disco teams competing all over the country--several students made big money.”

Students today tend to have distinctly focused dance interests, the instructors agree. When no teacher was available for a scheduled folk dance class, “those people weren’t going to be happy taking anything else,” says Sohl-Donnell, whose diverse dance background includes tap study with the legendary Honi Coles. Another group--the improvisational dancers, who enjoy their unfettered freedom--can’t be coaxed into taking ballet or modern technique classes.

But the most remarkable aspect of the student body is its longevity.

“If you look at their student ID numbers when you go down your roster, some of (the students) go back to 1975,” Sohl-Donnell says.

“When we first came here,” Mayes adds, “every now and then we’d run into a student who’d say, ‘Where did you come from? I’ve been going here 10 years, and I’ve never seen you before.’ . . . This is really . . . lifetime training. A lot of students who (leave) and come back and (leave) and come back see (the department) as a base.”

Modern dance students in particular tend to stick around--partly because, as Sohl-Donnell points out, good private studio training is hard to find. At Orange Coast, teachers treat modern dance as a broad, “crossover” field, she says.

Her classes combine elements from Cunningham, Limon and other styles, with some of the technical rigors of ballet; other teachers emphasize styles of the California dance companies in which they’ve worked.

Although they agree that the students’ ability level varies enormously from semester to semester, Sohl-Donnell and Shanley are especially pleased with their advanced modern dance and ballet classes these days. Shanley says ballet’s popularity seems to wax and wane depending on “what films are on the market. . . . When ‘The Turning Point’ came out, everybody enrolled.”

Annual concerts on the campus’ main stage give students the opportunity to create work and become involved with the realities of casting, costuming and rehearsing a production. These showcases are as close as most students will come to a performing career.

A few graduates do find work as free-lance dancers in the Los Angeles area. Others have joined Gloria Newman Dance Theater and Dance LA, found homes in other California companies or are teaching exercise classes. But some of the most dedicated students are already well established in other fields.

“They’ve worked all their lives, but in the back of their minds they’ve always wanted to dance,” Shanley says of the older students. “A time comes in their late 30s or early in their 40s when they’re either better off or they’re just fed up, and they take time for themselves. . . . We never cancel night classes. It doesn’t matter if (the instructor) is sick or on their deathbed. We get a substitute, because people come from such distances to dance.”