Creative energy: Dancer shares history of teaching, performing with Flathead

Leslie Yancey has essentially danced her way through life.

The Whitefish dance instructor and performer didn’t start her formal training until age 14, but since then dance, in a multitude of disciplines, has been both her passion and her livelihood.

“You kind of have to wear a lot of different hats,” Yancey, 55, said of putting together a life in dance. 

Yancey’s local dancing endeavors include leading Afrofusion classes on Saturdays in Whitefish, bringing creative movement and literacy to students at Muldown Elementary in Whitefish and Ruder Elementary in Columbia Falls, and working on choreography for Whitefish Theatre Company productions such as “The Secret Garden” and “Sound of Music.” 

Yancey brought decades of dance experience to the valley when she moved to Whitefish more than four years ago, from touring in Europe to leading her own New York City dance company. She started off in ballet and jazz, but has developed her knowledge and skills in many genres. 

Her newest love is African dance, which she admires for its flexibility, its loose structure and how it’s open to individual interpretation.

“It’s for all ages, all body types, for men, women and teens of all different levels,” she said. “The beauty of it is that I’m showing my interpretation of the dances and how I learned them — and then I say ‘here’s the steps and make them yours.’

“It’s about community — there’s a wedding dance, a full moon dance, a coming-of-age dance — dances for everything. It’s a very primal connection between drumming and the movement.”

The Afrofusion classes, now held at Whitefish Dance Studio on Saturdays at 10:30 a.m., currently have from eight to 12 people usually, though Yancey said she has a roster of about 100 who have joined the classes at some point. When she was teaching similar classes in Santa Fe, she said she’d have 50 to 80 people in a class.

Building more enthusiasm for multicultural dance in the Flathead Valley is a big part of her working with local students. 

“Doing these residencies in the schools, so many times teachers see their students’ in a different light, and it’s a nice way of sharing a different medium,” she said. “It opens the students eyes to music from all over the world. It’s a big world out there.”

Dance has been what’s taken Yancey through the “big world.” While growing up in Brooklyn, she started in dance classes with ballet, later adding jazz. She was planning on majoring in art history when she went on to higher education at Oberlin College in Ohio, but then it was suggested she audition for a college dance company.

“That was the beginning of the beginnings,” she said. 

She was invited to join some of the teachers on a European tour, and she ended up dancing and teaching there and also taking classes at the University of Paris. She taught modern dance classes, and performed and toured in places such as Ireland and France. 

At her family’s insistence, Yancey said she decided to come back to the United State and finish her college education. After completing degrees in both French and fine arts, with a modern dance specialty, she headed back to New York, where she took classes, worked with different companies and did more performing, including a stint in South America.

Then around 1990, she started her own company — Yancey Dance Theatre — because she wanted to perform her own choreography. The company was prominent enough to earn positive reviews by the New York Times and kept her busy for several years in the ’90s.

Though Yancey grew up in the city, a side of her was always appreciative of rural life. Her family was from Washington state and family trips were often to a cabin her grandfather had built on Lake Pend Oreille near Sandpoint. 

After a divorce, Yancey was ready to make a major life change, and ended up in Seattle, moving on to Taos and Santa Fe, N.M. While concentrating on the healing arts, she retired from the performing life for a while. She found she missed being on stage.

“I used to perform every chance I could get, that’s how I communicated to people,” she said. “I was very shy, and it was a way I could express myself.”

In New Mexico, she discovered African dancing, and her love for the creative freedom found within the genre helped her get back to teaching and performing. 

Four years ago, she moved to Whitefish, and found an embracing dance community. Montana Arts Council grants enabled her to develop the school programs and she’s conducted various dance workshops at other valley locations such as The Wave fitness center in Whitefish. She’s also found a partner to help her with the Afrofusion classes in drummer Bob Sherrick, who has been teaching West African music in the Flathead Valley for more than a decade and has studied with Matthew Marsolek of Drum Brothers. 

She recently led a workshop on West African rhythm and dance with Sherrick at Flathead Valley Community College — she would love to see the college develop a dance department.

It is just one of her many hopes for dance in the Flathead Valley. 

 “I would love to have a multicultural dance festival,” she said. “There’s so much out there in terms of different expressions and ways of communicating.”

For more information, visit www.yanceydancetheatre.com