Dancing for joy

K.J. Hascall/Hungry Horse News

By K.J. HASCALL

Hungry Horse News

Carol Brannan and Natalie Molter created Project: Dance, the newest business on Nucleus Avenue, because in some way they both needed it.

Brannan owned the Northwest Ballet Company in Kalispell for nearly three decades. But the size of the company got to be too stressful for Brannan and she sold it to a former student.

Brannan had left college to start a family and she wanted to get her degree. She worked toward that goal at Flathead Valley Community College and the satellite education program offered by the University of Great Falls. She earned a degree in elementary education.

Diploma in hand, Brannan applied to numerous teaching positions in the Valley. No luck.

“The job scene wasn’t working out for me,” she said. “Literally the night I started cursing the sky, Natalie called.”

Natalie Molter was a former ballet teacher at the Northwest Ballet Company. She had two children and said she needed a “real job,” to support her family. Molter enrolled in a nursing program, but eventually left it.

“I need to be teaching dance because that’s where my heart and soul are,” she said.

Molter had an idea to start a new dance studio. So she called her former boss and friend.

“I told her, ‘I want to start a ballet school,’” Molter said. “And I wanted (Carol) to say, ‘You’re an idiot,’ but she said ‘I do too!’”

Not only did the pair want to start a ballet school, Brannan and Molter wanted a school that invited anyone and everyone to learn to dance. No prior skills or specific body type necessary. This inclusive aspect of the school stems from Brannan and Molter’s own experiences in the competitive dance world.

Brannan grew up dancing at the Marin Ballet in San Rafael, Calif. After high school, though, she couldn’t wait to get away from home. She attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. before getting married and having three children.

For Molter, dancing wasn’t just an after-school activity. It was her life.

“I left home early to study at the North Carolina School of Arts,” said the West Virginia native. “I moved when I was 15.”

At the boarding school, Molter’s entire focus was on dancing.

“If you wanted to be a professional dancer, you had to do it all the time, have millions of teachers,” she said. “I never got a break.

“It was a wonderful experience. I worked with up and coming choreographers. It was like being in a real dance company. I danced dawn to dusk.”

After finishing her schooling, Molter danced for a time in a professional company. But she got injured and grew increasingly upset with the ballet world. Soon, she just wanted an escape.

“I moved to Montana and met Carol through a mutual friend,” Molter said. “I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get back into ballet. But the school she created was full of positives. It was so full of love, something I’d been searching for my entire life.”

That is Molter and Brannan’s philosophy: To create a welcoming school filled with loving instruction. Molter is looking forward to teaching older students, while Brannan is glad to use her degree while teaching younger students.

“It’s a perfect fit,” Molter said. “Carol can teach younger kids and I can teach older. After a really long path, I know I’m here and this is where I’m supposed to be.”

After Molter called Brannan with her idea in May of this year, the pair got to work immediately to find a space to host the school. After searching seemingly high and low, the pair came to Columbia Falls, where Molter lives. By chance, the pair parked next to the building on the block between Sixth and Fifth streets. They looked in the windows, past the ‘For Rent’ sign and saw a wall of mirrors.

“There’s mirrors in there!” Molter remembers exclaiming. “It’s perfect.”

After a whirlwind few weeks of construction, Project: Dance opened for classes Aug. 30.

The pair focuses on ballet, a very technical and ancient form of dance.

“It’s a very traditional, classic ballet, which is difficult for a lot of people,” Molter said. “The technique weeds out certain body types. But I don’t believe in that. I want to incorporate everybody. I want it to be fun.”

Brannan suspects that a reason many people struggle with ballet is because it takes a long time for the study to pay off. There is no instant reward.

“The road to mastering the technique is more important, not being a prima ballerina” she said. “It is such a great gateway to having a wonderful life, having self confidence.”

“It’s all sweat,” Molter added. “A girl told me she hated turns. Her pirouettes were all over the place. For three weeks now she’s been working on them. She started to get it last night. She started to glow, even though she was all sweaty and red.

“It’s making mistakes and learning to recover from them. These things apply through life.”

While Molter will teach advanced students, Brannan is using her degree to incorporate stories and history into her lessons.

“I’ve always wanted to do this storybook ballet thing,” Brannan said. “It’s more than dancing. It’s learned about the history of ballet, about famous dancers and famous ballet companies. Each week we start (the lesson) with a tea party and we talk about the book we read the week before. We learn about why ballet dancers wear crowns and were tutus came from.”

For those wondering, ballet began in the 15th century, but really took off in the 17th century in the French court. Originally, all dancers were male. When women were finally allowed to join the dance, they wore long skirts down to their ankles called Romantic-style tutus. Over hundreds of years, the dancers refined their techniques and wanted to show off their skilled footwork. And so the tutu got shorter and shorter until it became the classical tutu seen today.

Brannan and Molter plan to bring in other teachers — Amy Arriaga, Jesse DeVine and Stephanie Henjum — to offer different kinds of dance, like hip hop, jazz and modern. Another teacher will offer a theater class. They’re planning a Christmas performance.

Ultimately, the pair want Project: Dance to be a safe place where fond memories and friendships are made.

“I was never taught this way,” Molter said. “Nobody ever said it was OK just to dance. I lived half my life thinking I was an awful dancer. I wasn’t 5-foot-3. I told myself I couldn’t do it half my life.”

Project: Dance is a place where all are encouraged that they can.

“I want this to be an exciting place for kids,” she said.

For more information about Project: Dance or to learn about enrolling in classes, call 212-0293 or e-mail projectdanceinfo@gmail.com.