Val Lober has been the Wilmette Park District’s artistic director of dance for a little more than a year, and is passionate about bringing dance to a recreational setting.
Q: How did you become interested in dance?
A: I remember being very young, 3 or 4, enrolled in ballet on Saturday mornings, and I absolutely hated it … I threw a hissy fit and quit. But I was also in tap class. My mother tapped, and my grandmother tapped – her father owned a bar, and she told me when she was little, he would bring her down and have her tap on the bar for the soldiers. We moved to Traverse City from Ann Arbor. I was about 10, and the same lady who’d had a studio in Ann Arbor had a studio in Traverse City. I enrolled in everything and I loved it.
Q: What’s your dance training?
A: I have a bachelor of fine arts degree in dance performance and choreography from Western Michigan University. I also trained at Dance Arts Academy in Traverse City, and the company I was in was Company Dance Traverse.
Q: What dance styles do you like to do, teach, or experience?
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A: I gravitate to modern dance, Horton-based modern, which is very angular, yet fluid … what I like most to teach is jazz. And I really like to watching anything dance-related. It could be classical ballet, it could be anything.
Q: Talk about what you’re doing at the park district.
A: I really like the idea that everyone can show up, everyone can learn something about dance. That translates into other lessons, not just how to be a good dancer, but how to be a good human being.
Q: Do you have a cause or charity you’d like people to be aware of?
A: I’m a larger supporter of LGBTQ-plus rights, so anyone giving to connected causes would be very good.
Q: How do you let young boys and girls know they can dance?
A: I’m extremely passionate, and being overexcited myself about what I’m teaching tends to affect young personalities … If they tell me they get made fun of (for dancing), I tell them, “Forget what’s going on outside. Here in the studio you have one hour to be who you really are.”
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
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