<Begin Segment 34>

SY: So you were the one who basically first were able to create, or had the idea of teaching children with images?

MN: Yes, that's a lot easier than (...) standing at the bar and doing battement and plies 'cause little children like to have fun. And so I like to instill the idea of dance in them, so that they'll never -- they won't hate, but they'll love it and keep studying. So a lot of people teach creative dance. I don't know how they teach it, but I teach it based on other art forms, too, like color and shape.

SY: You know...

MN: (...) I took a course in comparative arts. And so it was a real good course. It was three quarters, and they had musicians come in and they had sculptors and (painters). And when they did the dance part, they asked me to dance. So I danced and explained what modern dance was. (...) So children can learn concepts when they're very young.

SY: And how young do you think a child could begin to learn these concepts?

MN: Well, I always started with four, but then all my competitors start with three-and-a-half. So I thought, well, I guess I better start with three-and-a-half. But I would rather start with four, but I do start with three-and-a-half.

SY: So do you have a lot of competitors now?

MN: Oh, yeah. They're many many schools in the city here that teach creative dance.

SY: But when you first started doing this, were there other people doing it then?

MN: No. I was the only one.

SY: So, how many students at the peak of your popularity? How many students did you ever have at the time?

MN: Well, children and adults together, I had about 250. And that was hard because I was doing everything. And I'd have to teach two classes after school, and one after dinner, and on Saturdays. So it was (...) just after I started working at the university and got exposed to the big audiences (...) when my children's classes started growing.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.