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Impact Story: Gotta Dance!

May 15, 2014

Cheryl Delostrinos discovered her vocation when she was eight years old, thanks to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the UW World Series.

Fifteen years ago, she came to Meany Hall with her 3rd grade class from Fairmount Park Elementary School in West Seattle for a UW World Series Free Student Matinee featuring Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. It was the first time Cheryl had ever attended a live professional performance of any kind and she was stunned. “The dancers on stage looked super human,” she says, “flying across the stage like they were weightless, spinning forever. I had never seen anything so beautiful; so unforgettable.”  From that moment, Cheryl knew what she wanted to do with her life. “I was so inspired, I begged my mom to send me to a dance class.”

That might not seem like such an odd request for a little girl to make, but it was a challenging one for her family to fulfill. The daughter of Filipino immigrants and the youngest of five girls, Cheryl grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot left over at the end of the month for extras such as dance classes or trips to the theater. “My parents grew up in the Philippines,” Cheryl explains, “and while there’s certainly art there, my family never had a culture of attending performances.”

Fortunately, Cheryl’s mother had been a chaperone on that trip to Meany Hall; it was also her first time watching a live contemporary dance performance in the U.S., and she had been equally inspired by what she saw.  She became an advocate for her daughter’s ambitions, and started looking for a dance school for Cheryl that the family could afford. It wasn’t easy, but they finally found a small studio near their home where Cheryl took her very first class—a combination of ballet, jazz, and tap rolled into one.

A year later, Cheryl auditioned for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s school, and was accepted. She was now dancing at both PNB and her original dance school in West Seattle.  “I danced five to six hours every day,” she recalls. “I loved it! There wasn’t anything else I wanted to do.” But an intensive dance workshop she took with Alonzo King LINES Ballet the summer before her sophomore year of high school changed her focus, if not her ambition. “I learned I enjoyed contemporary ballet more,” she says. So she left PNB and moved to Cornish College of the Arts’ pre-professional program for her last three years of high school.

Cheryl says she always knew she’d be a Husky. “All my sisters went to the UW, it made the most sense financially for my family, and I knew the Dance Program was very good.” She graduated from the UW Dance Program in 2013, and is now teaching dance at Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences, working with high schools students—a demographic she loves. “I remember what it’s like to be a high school girl. I love watching them progress—and being able to tell them how much they’re improving,” she says.

But a young woman who is used to dancing six hours a day needs something to do in her spare time—so on top of teaching and forming her own dance collective, Cheryl also choreographs.  She already has one commission under her belt—for a new company here in Seattle—and she’ll soon be flying to New York to participate in a choreography workshop with Doug Varone. She’ll apply what she learns there to setting a new work on dancers here in Seattle. Then in September, they’ll all fly back to New York to present the work. “I’m nervous, but excited,” Cheryl says. “I always saw myself as a company dancer, performing someone else’s work. But the way my career is going, I now am interested in creating and performing my own work.”

She is also interested in performing to live music as often as she can. “It’s like another performer on the stage,” she says, and will try to incorporate it into her own work as often as she can. (For more information about the UW World Series’ Live Music for Dance endowment matching campaign and how you can contribute, click here.)

Maybe one day, Cheryl will see her own work performed to live music on the stage at Meany Hall, inspiring a new generation of Seattle public school kids.  In the meantime, however, she is “grateful to the World Series for sparking my love of dance and changing my life, forever.”