Local News

Sally Blackwood was just meant to dance.

And at age 79, she is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Blackwood Studios in Dade City with a recital of “The Wizard of Oz”.

The journey down the yellow brick road is a tradition begun in 1965 and has been repeated every decade since.

“It is our signature piece,” said Blackwood who teaches up to five hours a day.

The faces of many of her students have a familiar look, because often they are the children or grandchildren of students she taught in the past.

“We really are a studio family,” Blackwood said.

Her own family is where her passion for dance began.

Her father’s orchestra traveled through Florida at the height of the swing band craze in the 1940s. Ben Atwood and his musical troupe played the swanky Vinoy Hotel in St. Petersburg. Her mother, Genevieve Atwood, played violin in the orchestra. It was a love match.

Blackwood would find her own love match, too. But first there would be a childhood of uninhibited movement.

She traveled with her parents to military bases as they entertained troops during World War II. She was 5 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

They were part of the vaudeville circuit, playing one night in Jacksonville and another in Avon Park. Her hometown was Lakeland, Florida.

“They did everything they could to help the war effort. I was like their mascot,” Blackwood said. “I made up dances.”

She did a “little samba” to the song “Down South American Way.” Or, whatever she’d seen in the movies.

A Lakeland teacher spotted her and told her parents their young daughter had to take lessons, and join her dance troupe. Another teacher, Mary Fariday, told a teenage Blackwood to go to New York.

“Ballet was my big love,” she said. “(Fariday) took me under her wings and taught me everything.”

At age 20, she auditioned for the legendary Robert Joffrey, founder of the Joffrey Ballet School, then based in New York. He selected her to tour with a troupe that would perform at colleges and universities.

Blackwood is modest about the accomplishment, pointing out she is barely 5 feet. “He was a short man,” she said. “He liked short dancers.”

But fate and love intervened.

Her high school sweetheart, James “Woody” Blackwood, had returned to Lakeland from Germany after three years of military service. He wanted to see her one more time.

“I was going to go home for a week,” she said. “I never went back. I’ve never regretted it.”
Ballet with a professional company takes drive and ambition.

Besides, she said, “I’m not a competitive person for myself.”

Though the couple was living in Lakeland, Blackwood began driving to Dade City once a week to teach 19 dance students.

Enrollment grew and it made sense in 1966 to relocate the family.

“We had so many coming back,” she said. “I’d have to come back four times a week.”

They bought a house on Meridian Avenue in downtown Dade City where they raised their daughters, Mary Ann and Glenda. A kindergarten teacher whose daughter was in Blackwood’s dance class offered to build a facility next to the house which she would use during the day. It was Blackwood’s dance studio in the afternoon and evening.

Woody Blackwood, who died in 2001, operated an antiques shop in another house, adjacent to the studio.

“He did everything for us,” said his wife. “He’d make dinner for me. He built scenery. He was good with the kids.”

The antique shop is now a two-story maze of costumes collected through the years. Square-dancer skirts in a rainbow of colors hang along the walls. Racks and racks of gowns, tutus, leotards, fancy dress shirts, vests, bangles and beads, laces, a box of yellow polka dot bikinis, and the odd piece of stage scenery are showbiz cornucopia.

Cheryl Hauff is part of the studio family and in charge of making costumes for more than a decade. Her daughter is a former student.

“Everyone just becomes family,” she said. “It gives girls (and boys) something to do. They advance and progress.”

Ballet is the foundation.

“Nobody has ever gotten a system better to train bodies,” Blackwood said. “That’s why we really stress ballet.”

It teaches control, stamina, body placement, and how to move smoothly and gracefully.

“If they never dance (again), the posture they get from ballet is so healthy and beautiful,” she said. “It also teaches them respect for music and for themselves.”

Her studio offers 66 classes a week in ballet, tap, jazz, modern dance and acrobatics. Blackwood has seven teachers including her daughter, Mary Ann Blackwood, who also is the studio’s choreographer.

She seems somehow to know instinctively how to orchestrate the movements of dozens of children, Haupff said. “She is amazing,” she added.

“The Wizard of Oz” will have two performances on June 12 and 13. An old “reel-to-reel” tape recording of the narrative and music from 1975 will be used.

The play isn’t a re-creation of the familiar movie with Judy Garland, though bits of familiar songs are used as performers move scenery around between scenes.

L. Frank Baum wrote more than a dozen Oz books and Blackwood dips into many of them for the story line.

There are no flying monkeys. That would be too scary, she said.

Instead the witches have crows.

“We chose music to fit the characters,” Blackwood said. “So, it can be classical.”

On June 14, there will be a reunion of Blackwood and her extended dance family through the years. At least one former student is coming from California.

But a 50-year reunion doesn’t mean Blackwood is planning to retire any time soon.

“I hope I’ll have enough sense to know when I’m not doing a good job,” she said. “I still have patience.”

Plans are under way for a trip to Europe where some of her students will perform in Germany and Austria. And she has three girls who are going to a Joffrey-sponsored summer camp in Miami.

Teaching is where her heart is.

“This way you’re sharing everything. That’s the way I like it,” Blackwood said.

Blackwood Dance Studio presents The Wizard of Oz 50th Anniversary Recital and Reunion Party
When: Recital at 7 p.m., June 12 and 13; reunion party, 2 p.m. on June 14
Where: The recital is at Wesley Chapel Center for Performing Arts. The reunion party is at Dan Cannon Auditorium at the Pasco County Fairgrounds in Dade City.
Cost: Recital tickets are $15 per person
For information, call (352) 567-5919

Published June 10, 2015