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Dance teacher keeps rhythm of recovery |
| Channels » Home » News » Dance teacher keeps rhythm of recovery |
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August 16, 2004 |
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After recent surgery, rehabilitation doesn’t stop fancy footwork.
Naomi “Jean” Shepherd has always made a point of putting her best foot forward. That perpetual upbeat tune is a winning formula that has served the grand dame of dance well.
I caught up with the veteran hoofer and owner of the popular Jean Shepherd School of Dance and Performing Arts Studio in Lakemore at her temporary dwelling on Akron’s Hickory Street.
She joked that she was spending her summer vacation at a hotel. In reality, Shepherd has been healing at the Valley View Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
It’s not only where she’s receiving the care she needs to get back on her feet so she can do what she loves, it’s also the place she’s been able to reconnect with her past.
All joking aside, it was no laughing matter that sent Shepherd to Valley View after visits to St. Thomas and Akron City hospitals. She fell ill right after her annual summer dance recital.
“Looking back on things now, I didn’t have much stamina leading up to the show,” said Shepherd, whose internal compass pointed her to a smaller venue—Akron’s St. Sebastian Catholic Church hall—for a scaled-back production. “Energywise, I just couldn’t do it,” Shepherd said matter-of-factly.
That was June 18th.
“After the show, all of the kids went to Applebee’s to celebrate and wanted me to go with them,” said Shepherd. She politely declined because of discomfort in her abdomen. “By then the pain was so horrible. But I didn’t want them to know I was suffering so.”
Hospitalization, surgery
The next day, Shepherd said, she was so doubled up in pain that she couldn’t stand. After being taken by ambulance to Akron City Hospital, doctors determined the source, of her problem: locked bowels. Doctors were forced to operate.
“Then I had a problem with the anesthesia. They couldn’t wake me up,” Shepherd said. “I couldn’t speak or hear.”
Shepherd was ultimately transferred to St. Thomas, where her condition improved markedly.
A short time later, she was moved to Valley View for physical therapy.
“I felt like I have come full circle,” said Shepherd, turning back the hands of time to when she was 10 months old with a leg paralyzed for reasons she never understood.
Dancing from the start
Back then, her dad, Delbert Eugene Shepherd, who was on the Vaudeville circuit, turned to an old-time ballroom dance school instructor to give his baby girl physical, er, dance therapy.
“I crawled around after the teacher, and one day I pulled myself up his pants leg and started to dance,” Shepherd said. “Dad took me three times a week. I guess it worked,” she continued matter-of-factly.
It’s only been since Shepherd has been at Valley View that she has been able to put more of the pieces of the puzzle together of her early foray into dance. She calls it her “accidental reunion.”
“I used to take dancing lessons as a young girl at a studio in the old Mayflower Hotel,” said the dance prodigy. As luck would have it, Shepherd is sharing a room with the granddaughter of someone from whom she took dance lessons as a child.
“We wore trunks, chiffon drapes, silk socks and ballet shoes,” she reminisced. “They called them ‘nature dances.’”
Clearly, it must have made a favorable impression on Shepherd, as she is now in her 60th year of teaching dance.
Lifetime achievement
Shepherd—who estimates she has taught ballet, tap and jazz to more than 30,000 students over the years—has created more than just a local name for herself.
She danced in Hollywood in the 1940s, taking high school classes at Warner Bros. Studio, where she was under contract. And she went on to dance with some of the best in the business: Debbie Reynolds, Cary Grant, Robert Alda Sr. and Donald O'Connor, just to name a few.
Shepherd’s down-the-hall neighbor at Valley View is Steve Lardas, 63, who moved back recently from Los Angeles, where he performed for 12 years with Debbie Reynolds.
“I was so glad to see Jean,” Lardas said. “We spend a lot of time together watching old movies.”
Shepherd—who describes herself as “up there in age”—also choreographed a number of Broadway productions in her career. Among them were “Wuthering Heights” and the Metropolitan and New York City operas’ production of “Moses, My Love.”
Even so, she is most proud of her work teaching physically- and learning-disabled children to dance. “They're like a flower opening up,” she took delight in saying. “I met one of those students here [at Valley View],” Shepherd said.
She recently put on a dance demonstration for residents. Didn’t matter that she had to lean on her walker for support. Shepherd showed she still had the moves.
Kim Hawkins, a physical therapist at Valley View, says Shepherd is making “significant progress.”
Shepherd sees room for improvement.
“I’m doing a lot better with the physical therapy than I am with the occupational therapy,” Shepherd informed. “I’ve never been much of a cook. And they’ve got me making banana pudding.”
Here’s hoping the way she dances around the kitchen will curry more favor with those deciding when she can go home.
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