Jo Rowan is education spokesperson. (National Dance Week).

As evidence of Jo Rowan's contribution to dance education, graduates of the American musical theater dance program that she co-founded at Oklahoma City University are now working everywhere--as dancers, dance captains, Rockettes, and as managers and technicians of stage and television productions. One is a Tony Award winner. More than forty are currently on Broadway, dancing, singing, and acting--the triple threat of talent that OCU turns out. Rowan is education spokesperson for National Dance Week April 26 through May 5, 2002.

Though trained in classical ballet, Rowan realized early in her career that she needed to sing, dance, and act to succeed in the entertainment industry. And because in 1980 there was no program of study with this emphasis, Rowan and her husband, John Bedford, designed one.

"Broadway shows, commercials, and teaching at dance conventions were jobs that were looked down upon by dancers that I trained with," says Rowan, "[but] I always considered musical theater dancers as artists."

Rowan and Bedford proposed their program to Oklahoma City University President Jerald Walker who understood the importance of training performers in an American art style. The program began as a dance department in 1981 with twenty-seven students. Between 1984 and 1996, Bedford, the school's dean, added three arts-management degrees.

Today, the School of American Dance and Arts Management has an enrollment of 250. Rowan serves as dance program chair and artistic director for the 160-member performing group she founded, The American Spirit Dance Company. It's a program that Patricia Goulding, executive director of National Dance Week, says "is surely foremost in leading the nation toward elevated standards for dance education and career preparation."

Under the OCU musical theater program, performance majors can select tap, jazz, or ballet as a major, but are required to take classes in all dance styles. Students rotate every two weeks with four faculty teachers who have diverse technical backgrounds. "The students are not locked into one style and they learn to adjust quickly to different choreographers," says Rowan.

Also emphasized is development of the spiritual fortitude that Rowan believes is necessary to survive entertainment's rejections and challenges. Each student must take a course in religion or philosophy for positive mental health and to be well centered for what lies ahead. Also, Rowan double-casts shows for The American Spirit Dance Company. The first cast is responsible for teaching the second cast. If the second cast is not up to the level of the first, neither cast dances. "This teaches them to be generous instead of competitive," Rowan says.

Rowan's personal dance education did not come easily. She gratefully remembers her first dance teacher, Bobby Ziegler in Covington, Kentucky. As a teenager, Rowan studied ballet in nearby Cincinnati with Anneliese Von Oettingen, who served as a second mother after Rowan's mother died. She took additional ballet classes with Tatiana Grantzeva at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. There was no dance program at the University of Cincinnati, so Rowan majored in fashion design and graduated with honors while continuing to dance privately. (She later returned for a master's degree in dance, which she attained while performing with the Cincinnati Ballet Company.)

In 1964, Rowan received a Ford Foundation scholarship to Balanchine's School of American Ballet in New York, but her year at the school was a financial struggle. There was no extra money available from home and she lived on the difference between her $16 per week scholarship and $11 that she paid for her room. When the soles of her boots wore through, she placed cardboard inside. But Rowan says the sacrifices and discomfort were worth it.

"The first day of class I was thrilled to stand at the barre with Jacques d'Amboise, Maria Tallchief, Edward Villella, Allegra Kent, and Patricia McBride," Rowan recalls. "What a way to learn! I was constantly in class with the most inspiring and technically awesome artists. My daily teachers were Balanchine, Danilova, Doubrovska, Vladimiroff, Eglevsky, Tumkovsky, [Muriel] Stuart, and [Stanley] Williams."

Following the scholarship training, Rowan danced in ballet, symphony, and opera companies. She loved the dramatic and comedic roles where she could express herself, and was often called without an audition. She had jobs in television, commercials, Radio City Music Hall, fifty Equity musicals, and at dance conventions.

One of Rowan's favorite teachers was Valentina Pereyaslavec, who taught the Vaganova method at the American Ballet Theatre School. Rowan credits the high Russian attitude she developed under Pereyaslavec's tutelage as one of the reasons she was invited in 1975 to study with Asaf Messerer at the Bolshoi as an exchange ballerina to Russia. There she learned that the Russian dancers had a great respect for American musical theater artists. "Dancers would often ask, `Teach me dance like Fred Astaire' and I did my best to show them."

In 1989, Rowan and Bedford established the Living Treasure in American Dance Award, and in 1999, the Preservation of Our Heritage Award in American Dance. Rowan finds it no contradiction that a classically trained ballerina would honor tap and jazz artists and those who preserve these historic forms of dance.

America's true artistry originated from the streets up rather than from the palace down." she says. "Our arts come from the common man." In February OCU awarded honorary doctorates to nine tap legends (see "National Tap Dance Treasures Honored," Dance Magazine, February, page 58).

Rowan drives twenty-five miles each day from her home in Norman, Oklahoma, to teach two ballet classes and a partnering and men's class, and also rehearses and choreographs for The American Spirit Dance Company. Yet even with the full schedule of a college dance department chair, she remains active nationally. Though she could fill her Calendar with invitations to teach and lecture at colleges and universities, she makes time to teach at conventions because she believes teachers of American dance forms are the unsung heroes of dance.

"The American dance teacher works from a broad base, welcoming everyone," says Rowan. "This improves the quality of life for all who want to dance and produces the multitalented performers who dance in all styles--and they also sing and act."

Like the performers she trains, Rowan is dance education's triple threat: teaching and inspiring dance teachers and students, pioneering a college program, and advocating for American dance forms. All of which require another kind of triple threat. "It takes the spirit, mind, and body," Rowan says.

A teacher and studio owner in McAllen, Texas, Melba Huber has written about tap artists for fifteen years. She is the recipient of numerous awards including New York's Flo-Bert and, in 1999, the OCU Preservation of Our Heritage Award in American Dance.