Dream Weaver: Gardner steps his way into kids’ hearts

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2002 | 8:42 a.m.

Garold Gardner has a reputation.

He's known by students as colleagues as a tireless choreographer, dance instructor, director and altruist determined to make dreams come true.

When not teaching ballet to young proteges in his North Las Vegas dance studio or directing a play (locally or out of state), the 66-year-old is usually raising funds for his nonprofit Garold Gardner Scholarship Foundation.

It is a grass-roots operation. His Las Vegas apartment dubbed by some, "The Hotel," has offered plenty of up-and-coming dancers in need a place to sleep.

Often, Gardner has dipped into his own pocket to help local students. But ask Gardner about his years in Las Vegas, and he will tell you he never expected to be here.

"If somebody had said, 'You were going to Vegas and will stay for years and years I would have said, 'Nah,'" Gardner said, looking back to 1968, when he came to town with a touring production of the Broadway show "Little Me."

The show was scheduled to run a few months. When its run was over, Gardner would return to New York and continue his dance career there.

"I was one of those devoted New Yorkers," Gardner said in his usual enthusiastic tone. "But when I called New York, they said, 'Gee, it's really quiet here. If you can get work there, you might want to wait around a few months.'"

So Gardner stuck around.

He took a role in Don Arden's "Pzazz" at Desert Inn, then performed a series of musicals at Union Plaza, which at the time, he said, had its own Equity company. Afterward, Gardner began teaching as a part-time instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

His future, however, would unfold on a finely crafted dance floor built in a not-so-finely crafted neighborhood.

Putting it together

It was 27 seven years ago that Gardner and two partners, dancers Bruno Scarrone from Genoa, Italy, and Bruno's wife, Therese, from Berlin, decided to build the Las Vegas Dance Theater Studios in North Las Vegas.

The location wasn't prime real estate, and the area wasn't exactly buzzing with the arts. But the cost to build there was cheap, enabling them to spend the money required to build a studio to the their high standards.

They brought in a floor builder from Denmark, via Salt Lake City, to build a floor made of high-grade maple that underneath would have three feet of air.

"We were really going out on a limb and we knew that," Gardner said, referring to the studio's location. "We knew we weren't going to get rich."

For a while, it probably seemed to the new owners that they weren't going to get any students. In its first few weeks of opening, Gardner said, there were no students to teach.

With little money for advertising, they put fliers on cars and placed an ad in the Yellow Pages.

"People would call and when they found out it was in North Las Vegas, they wouldn't come," Gardner said.

The nearby residents were just as hesitant, but for different reasons. Some families, particularly those in minority communities, were reluctant to embrace dance as a profession, Gardner said.

"It was very much a new concept," Gardner said. "Some of our ethnic groups, including Hispanics, thought it was OK for kids (to dance) but that it wasn't a proper profession."

For this reason, Omar Felix, originally from Michoacan, Mexico, kept his dancing a secret from his family for two years. He had started taking classes from Gardner as a teenager.

"Being a male Mexican, it's not easy to become a dancer," said Felix, who is now 26 and a professional dancer for cruise lines and Disney. "Mexican families don't normally raise a male dancer. We become carpenters or construction workers."

But the owners weren't deterred by the odds against them. After all, Gardner said, "Whenever you open a school, you keep your fingers crossed. You don't know who's going to show up. Most dance schools are a labor of love to some extent."

A worthy effort

Eventually students trickled in. The school gained some recognition in the area. But it was clear that some of the students had little money to support their efforts.

"They came from horrible backgrounds, drugs and homelessness," Gardner said. "They didn't have any money. A lot of people in our area don't even have a checking account. A lot of people pay with tokens and quarters."

Those who couldn't afford to take the class were invited anyway. Then in 1992, with a push from a longtime actor, the late Reid Shelton, Gardner founded the scholarship foundation to help pay for the students' classes, plane fares to auditions in New York City, summer workshops in Walla Walla, Wash., and dance shoes.

When money is tight, Gardner, who also teaches academic dance classes at UNLV, has taken part-time jobs as a tour guide and has sought resources from friends in the community. This includes the help of a friend who is a flight attendant and has provided "buddy passes" to students needing to go out of state for auditions.

"I've had some wonderful allies in this town," Gardner said. "We have a lot of volunteers who have helped in a lot of different ways."

And payment from the students has come in other ways.

"The fact that we're in such a poor neighborhood has really been a boon in getting kids who are focused," Gardner said. "Very often, middle-class kids have too many advantages. When they get bored with something, parents let them quit and try something else.

"For the kids who have nothing, they know this dancing or musical theater is their only shot. It's either this or Burger King. So when they get started, they get focused."

And, Gardner said, "The discipline for dance is so strong that even if they don't go into dance professionally, it gives them focus so whatever field they go into it gives them an advantage. These kids have really turned their lives around."

Dance, dance, dance

When Felix began taking classes from Gardner, he had been living with his mother, who was supporting a family of four and he couldn't afford the classes.

"Garold said 'Oh, don't worry about it,' " Felix said after a recent ballet class.

After studying with Gardner, Felix went to New York City to audition for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where he studied for a couple of months before he decided to work professionally.

Felix now dances in Disney productions and just returned from Japan, where he danced for Tokyo Disneyland. Dancing, he said, has enabled him to see the world.

Mayra Anchondo, Felix's 13-year-old sister, is following in her brother's footsteps and is taking classes nightly.

Twenty-one-year-old Robert Formon is another student preparing for a career in dance. After a recent ballet class at the Las Vegas Dance Theater Studios, Formon said, "If it wasn't for Garold, I'd still be washing dishes."

Formon began taking dance classes at Gardner's studio after attending one of his academic courses at UNLV and attends classes using scholarship money.

"He sees something in these kids and brings it out and produces dancers," said Janet Kravenko, owner of Kravenko School of Dance on South Jones Boulevard. "He'd give them anything. He works all the time.

"And it isn't as if he's got big bucks behind him. There's no corporation. It's all regular people. They all want to help out. They just do it out of the goodness of their hearts."

Local dance teacher Vikki Anthony said Gardner helped send one of her students, Dana Benedict, to New York to audition for the lead role in the national tour of the production "Annie," a part that Benedict got.

"There are not many people who are as benevolent as he is," Anthony said. "There are scholarships and scholarship funds for what we do in entertainment. But his is very personalized as to what each individual needs."

Bringing in only around $75,000 from fund-raising events and individual contributions since its inception, the scholarship foundation, which includes dancer Chita Rivera (who Gardner has performed with over the years) as a board member, extends to students in five states.

Gardner's professional contacts have helped him promote his efforts. The former dancer was born and raised in Oregon and was acting at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival in Ashland.

At age 19 Gardner moved to New York City to further his studies. He studied at the American Ballet Theater, with Robert Joffrey, and studied jazz independently.

In New York, he did television work, appearing on the "Ed Sullivan Show" once or twice a month with a small group of dancers, then worked for a small ballet company and eventually worked on Broadway.

At 21 his first show was "Most Happy Fella." He then spent five years as standby for Robert Morse in "Take Me Along" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," performed in Bob Fosse shows and spent several more years dancing on Broadway.

With seven students warming up at the barre at a recent ballet class, Gardner looked on as he strolled across the floor.

"Watching these kids develop is the most exciting thing in the world to me," Gardner said. "If they want it this bad, this much, we have to help them achieve their dreams."

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