SELMA ROTHSTEIN was honored this week as an honoree of the Cab Calloway Lifetime Achievement Award, for a lifetime of service to the arts in Westchester. She has taught dance at the White Plains Y for 39 years.
When she was 3 years old, the Yonkers native began studying dance, under Helen Lissauer. She was hooked after the first class.
“When I walked out of that place, I never wanted to do anything else,” she says.
“She saw something in me that gave me a lot of confidence,” Rothstein says.
Rothstein turned pro at 15, a career that ended three years later when she married. Soon she had two kids running around the house — and she was looking for an outlet.
A friend watched the kids, freeing Rothstein up, in 1947, to teach dance to tots at the Jewish Community Center in Yonkers.
“I started the classes and I said, ‘This is what I have to do.’ That started it, and I never stopped.”
Not for 60 years.
She gave them lessons. They gave her “joy, fulfillment, inspiration,” she says.
Some of her former students will be there tonight.
“One started when she was 7. Now she’s 63,” says Rothstein.
Her current students — “The Tapettes” — range from age from 58 to 83, including Sharon Field, who’s been with Rothstein for 18 years.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, visit Peter D. Kramer's IN THE WINGS blog for lohud. http://theater.lohudblogs.com/2007/09/24/cab-calloway-four-honorees/
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