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He Dared
To Dance
By Marsha Proser Cohen
And became the dance teacher's teacher.
At a time when boys who danced were often
called sissies, Ray Hollingsworth followed his heart and his
passion, and dared to dance. In the mid 1940s, Ray was about 13
years old. He was so enamored with the musicals and the dancing
greats of the time that he would spend the entire day in the
theater watching a movie over and over.
“I was just fascinated with the dance,” Ray
said.
Often, after the sixth or seventh
showing, his mother would have to drag him out of the theater.
“Then I’d go home and practice the steps in the driveway until
neighbors called saying, ‘Please get that boy out of the
driveway and keep him from dancing or whatever he’s doing so we
can get some sleep’.”
Born in Ellenwood, New York, NY, Ray and
his family moved to High Point, NC At the age of 15, he took his
first dance lesson there. His father, a construction draftsman,
didn’t want a “dancing son.” To pay for his lessons, Ray’s
mother sold Readers’ Digest subscriptions in addition to
her teaching job. Ray credits her with inspiring him to pursue
dance.
His first professional teacher, Ruth
Lewis Adams, a former Rockette, soon discovered Ray needed more
advanced training and sent him to Raleigh, NC, to train with tap
master Doug Beddingfield. In the beginning, Ray did odd jobs
around the studio to help pay for his lessons, but eventually,
most of his lessons were complimentary because “they felt I had
the talent to go on and knew my resources were small,” Ray said.
While performing in local community
musicals, including the
Jaycee
Jollies where he was featured as the “young dancing
dynamo” or “Mr. Twinkle Toes,” Ray quickly became known around
High Point. Even though in the movies, male dancers were
considered manly, it was difficult for a young boy to be a
dancer and still be respected as a male. Ray, however, was a
strong athlete excelling in both baseball and track.
When Ray was around 16, his two older
brothers often took him into the local clubs. “They would put
me on the tables to tap dance, and while I was dancing, they
would pass the hat and collect the pennies. I never saw the
money, but they did take me out for a slice of pizza
afterwards.”
Dancing for pennies was a good start for
Ray. Besides being excited about dancing, he learned that he
had to please the crowd. And please them, he did. His
please-the-crowd philosophy combined with his true love of dance
and drive to share that love have made him a legend in the dance
field.
After graduating from high school, Ray
won a full track scholarship to Duke University in Durham, NC
“But after six months,” he said, “I decided I truly wanted to be
a dancer and packed it in and headed for New York City.”
Ray lived in Greenwich Village and, like
so many aspiring performers, waited tables to pay for lessons.
“One of the teachers I remember was Carlos, an old tap master. I
took limited jazz and ballet classes, but tap was what
fascinated me most as I tried to follow in the footsteps of the
greats like Dan Dailey and Fred Astaire.”
At 19, Ray was drafted into the army and
sent to Korea. Typically, he excelled and went from private to
sergeant 1st class in only six months. “After that,”
Ray said, “ it was never hard being a guy dancer, especially
since I was the sergeant.”
 Ray danced in
army productions in Europe, Korea and Okinawa and was a lead
dancer in the entertainment shows for the troops. In 1960, he
won the United States Army Pacific Command entertainment contest
and made several appearances on the recruiting nationwide
television series,
Talent
Patrol.
“The army gave me skills that I later used
in teaching dance: believing in yourself and having discipline
and an agenda to follow to get to the next level of
achievement,” he recalled. Ray reenlisted and landed the
leading role in the musical
Pal
Joey which the army was staging in France as part of
the entertainment series. Under the direction of
director/choreographer Harold Lang, Ray learned to sing and act.
“I loved living in Paris and performing
nightly. On their slanted stages, you quickly learn upstage from
downstage. I met and worked with a lot of celebrities including
Eddie Fisher, Frank Sinatra, April Stevens…I even got to be
Debbie Reynold’s dance partner in a show that ran for about six
months,” Ray remembers.
During his three years in Paris, Ray
sought out choreographers and teachers to hone his skills and
was asked to audition for MGM to dance along with some
well-known dancers including Gene Kelly. Ray turned down the
offer and went home to High Point.
Now in his late 20s, after nightclub
appearances and teaching ballroom dancing, he realized the
industry as he knew it was changing. He saw classical styles
being replaced by go-go performances. At the age of 30, Ray
opened his own studio in High Point to share his ability and
love of dance. While he now admits there have been moments he
has had some regrets about his decision not to audition for MGM,
he has found fulfillment not only in developing his own talents
and character, but in developing students with those same
passions.
About a year after he opened his studio,
Cindy, a student at Woman’s College of the University of North
Carolina in Greensboro goldrush magazine • Nov/Dec 2005
called to ask if she could take lessons
with him. Ray invited her to audition.
“She did well, and we found a love of dance
to share. We became dance partners, then life partners. The
creativity we have together was and is wonderful. She has always
been there to push me on and make me want to excel,” he said.
While Ray was performing at a local
nightclub in Martinsville, VA, a couple asked him to consider
opening a dancing school there. Because he was touring, he
refused, but the next time he performed there, the couple asked
again.
“When I arrived the first day to see
about teaching, more than 100 kids were waiting, and Cindy and I
have been in Martinsville now for more than 35 years,” he told
Goldrush magazine.
He believes his success has come from his
ambition to be better at what he does, to teach the dancers who
come into his school and enable them to progress through the
years so they might achieve their goals. His sensitivity to his
students’ individualities and his nurturing demeanor have
created legions of confident, self-reliant lovers of dance.
Asked what his secret was, he answered in
his soothing, almost musical, drawl, “Darlin’, I love the
students from the time they come in until the time they leave.
Some come from good backgrounds, some, not so good. They come
with different wants and needs. It’s important to try to fulfill
those needs, to reach for the good in each student and turn that
into dance.”
To teachers who want to open studios, Ray
says, “You need well-rounded backgrounds in dance arts. You must
have desire and be willing to do hard work. You must want to
give of yourselves. You must love to teach. You must be able to
press the message of dance forward. Understand that your
teaching on the floor is the most important, and you must make
the connections with your students. Not only must you be
excellent and impart dance technique, you must love the
students. You must be awesome.”
To young dancers who want careers, Ray
says, “You must work, work work. Have your own special quality.
Have all the technique and background, but make it your own.”
Ray’s reach has extended far beyond the
walls of his studios. After Jacqueline Dorminy of Winston Salem,
NC, gave Ray his first seminarteaching opportunity, “it seemed I
was one of the in-demand teachers for the circuits.”
During the time of Danny Hoctor and Jules
Stone in the early 1950s, Ray met Dobbie Hempleman, a tap
master, and Charles Grass, a
ballet master as well as a member of a tap triothat included Bob
Fosse. The three formed the seminar company, “Take Five Dance
Seminars.”
“I became the
jazz stylist,” Ray said, “and our first guest teacher was Peter
Gennaro.”
The
organization was short lived. However, at a National Association
of Dancers and Artists [NADAA] meeting, Dobbie approached Ray
with the idea that the two of them had enough for their own
organization.
“One day,
Dobbie called and said, ‘It’s time.’ We were unhappy with some
of the management of NADAA at the time, and thought we could
present a better product and, dedicated to offering good quality
dance, we formed H & H Dance Troupe. Continued...
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