“She was born dancing!”
Beverly Barr, a petite dynamo whose active dance card includes teaching international folk and line dancing at the Culver City Senior Center, smiled as she quoted her mother’s emphatic response to a long ago query about when she started dancing.
“When I was seven I took tap, the only formal training I ever had,” Barr said. “My sister was eight years older and when she and her teenage friends rolled up the living room rug, I was right there dancing along with them.”
Then came putting on shows with other neighborhood children in a girlfriend’s garage.
“We charged a penny for admission. If someone couldn’t pay, that was okay. We just wanted to perform, and tried to imitate what we saw in movies as we put on musicals and choreographed our own dances.”
She danced and sang in amateur shows in high school and as an adult appeared in professionally directed benefit productions. In the 1960s she took an Israeli folk dancing class that, with the advent of a different instructor, transitioned into international folk dancing.
Barr, who is gifted with an excellent sense of rhythm and dance memory, had found her passion.
She started teaching folk dancing in 1970. While working in an office she taught three nights a week, using her lunch hour to squeeze in a day class at a nearby location.
Her background includes performing on television and in a documentary about folk dancing, as well as conducting workshops and teaching extensively. Barr and her husband, Irwin, her lifetime dance partner whom she met in high school and promptly married following graduation, continue to perform for retirement homes, parties and benefits.
Her Wednesday afternoon class at the Culver City Senior Center started in March, 2011. “We are so fortunate to have the elegant and talented Beverly Barr offering folk dancing classes to our members,” said Debbie Cahill, Senior Program Specialist. “She has a devoted following and always encourages new people to join the fun.”
Barr also teaches day and evening classes at various other venues, with her husband assisting.
“All of my students are adults,” she said, “and there’s also a multi-generational aspect as I’ve had the grown children and grandchildren of students come to learn folk dancing. If I had to prepare a program six times a week I probably wouldn’t be doing this any more. I know my classes, my people, what they like. When I get to my classes, then I decide what to do, based on who’s there. And all classes are open to requests. I know thousands of dances, and if we have the music, we’ll do it.”
The senior center class is conducted on a beginner’s level. “We get new people dropping in all the time,” Barr said. “I need to adapt to my audience, keep it flexible but with enough variety. The class is really melding. One member is from Ireland so we started doing Irish dances such as Pot of Gold because of him!”
Her first airplane ride was to Hawaii in 1975. “I was a late bloomer,” she laughed, “but I’ve made up for it.” She has since taken groups of folk dancers on many trips throughout the world, on land and on cruises, and danced internationally.
The 28th Annual Camp Hess Kramer Workshop Weekend, a pet project, will be held in Malibu in October. She is a past president (1989-1992) of the Folk Dance Federation of California, South which, in the ‘70s, used to sponsor a workshop weekend that was suspended in the early ‘80s but revived in her kitchen in 1985.
“It was Irwin’s idea to have a new format, getting excellent, experienced teachers that could teach the dances they learned at the various folk dance camps, keeping the cost of the weekend as low as possible so that almost anyone that wanted to attend would be able to,” Barr said.
Both Barrs credit dance for creating lasting friendships plus health benefits for mind and body.
“You have to learn something new and remember it, using different parts of the brain,” she explained. “I’ve had people into their 90s in my classes, who’ve danced 20 to 50 years and more, and someone turned 100, still dancing.”
Marriage therapists, take note. “For a married couple, it’s the most wonderful activity to share,” Barr said. “We spend 90% of our time together. When our kids got older and left, we already had a life together through dance.”
After 42 years of teaching, with no plans to put up her feet and rest those well-traveled dancing boots, she joyfully looks forward to kicking up her heels – and teaching others to do so – for a very long time to come.