Student/Teacher/Performer/Admirer: A Correspondence with Ramona Kelley of Twyla Tharp Dance

Many years ago, dancer Ramona Kelley was a student of mine in a teen modern class in Berkeley, California. Over the years, it has been exciting to see her head off to college at NYU and then launch into a professional career. Ramona merges technique and joy onstage and is magical to watch. Knowing that she will come full circle and be back in Berkeley October 16-18, 2015 to perform with Twyla Tharp at Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, I thought it would be fun to correspond over a few months prior to the performances. This correspondence, shared on the blog, offers a window into the world of Twyla Tharp as well as following a young and talented dance artist based in New York City.

Ramona Kelley is originally from California, where she began her training at Berkeley Ballet Theater under the direction of Sally Streets. She is a National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA) scholarship award winner, and she holds a BFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Ramona danced the principal role of "Betsy" in the North American/Japanese tour of Tharp’s “Come Fly Away.” A current member of Twyla Tharp Dance, she has also worked with Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance, Oakland Ballet Company and The Phantom of the Opera 25^th Anniversary Tour among others.

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Reflecting on growing up in Berkeley, and now coming back to perform…..

As the date approaches, ironically, I feel more distance about my upcoming engagement with Twyla Tharp Dance at Zellerbach. I am not sure what the root of this sentiment is – nerves? Something about the fleeting nature of a tour? Ultimately, I think an element of disbelief has combined with my anxieties about the show. This is an incredible homecoming for me in the truest sense of the word.

Long before I was a dancer I attended shows at Zellerbach, not only with my artistic parents, but with Oxford Elementary, the public school I attended about two miles away. We elementary school kids enjoyed the field trip many times a year; it was a great walk, followed by an amazing performance. I still vividly recall the audience of kids screaming as the lights went out before performances of Alvin Ailey or Riverdance (the programs we regularly were taken to). Following the brief question and answer portion for the students, I don’t remember discussing the performances I had seen with my classmates, teachers, or parents, but regardless of how I felt about the specific dance program, I always felt the enormous scope of the Zellerbach stage. Despite growing more into the dance world and becoming more emotionally connected with the companies and programs I have since witnessed in that theater, I still only associate that space with a grandeur – it has felt like an individual (or company) must have “made it” to perform there.

It wasn’t always my aspiration to be a dancer (far from it for most of my childhood), but dance was always a part of my life. My mother is a well-known dance teacher in the Bay Area, and because of her experience in the highly competitive world of professional dancing, I was not pushed into the field as a kid when I was clearly not interested. I was painfully shy. I don’t think either of my parents (my father is also a performer – as a classical guitar player) dreamed I would have a career onstage. I was very studious, but when I had the "dance inclination," my parents found a non threatening and fun hip hop class I could take. This quickly led to ballet and modern classes – I felt as if I had discovered a hunger for dance at once – I wanted to master the technical forms I could lay my sights on. I had a lot of catching up to do involving lots of hard work. When I was a teenager, studying ballet primarily, I remember seeing incredible companies come through the Bay Area, wondering if I would fit in with any of them, or any company at all! I feared my height (only 5 feet) compounded with the late start of my technical training would prohibit me from working professionally all together.

I guess I still can’t quite stitch together the way everything has worked out so far – possibly because dancing with Twyla reminds me every day of how far I can/should/still will go to improve my dancing. There is always work to be done in this art form. As we are midway (!) through our tour, I have to pinch myself to believe that I get to perform this incredible and historic work in my hometown. I think about how many truly phenomenal artists I have seen grace this stage, and I feel humbled. The past, present and future are all tangible in this moment – I am so grateful for the opportunity to dance HERE and NOW, but I won’t forget the work it involves or the work to come.

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