Swan song for Columbia Dance’s artistic director

Jan Hurst’s hands floated overhead and waved back and forth as she portrayed the towering, dome-topped windows at The Ballet House, her childhood dance school in Portland. It was a fancy old place, and Hurst was “just a little peanut,” she remembered, running all around and taking in the magical atmosphere.

“It was so inviting. I was always at the studio,” she said as her arms gracefully swept the air. “It was an amazing place to be a child.”

Decades later, Hurst studied the undulating arms of students at Columbia Dance in downtown Vancouver, as they rehearsed a scene from the classic ballet “Swan Lake” for their upcoming annual showcase.

“Want to try it like this?” Hurst suggested, demonstrating a languid, liquid motion. “It’s a gentle, reflective moment. You’re saying, ‘Oh, I’m so lovely, and I’m ready to dance.’ Elbows together. Elbows together.”

Over a couple of hours one spring break morning, Hurst reviewed and “cleaned up” the steps of three of her “Swan Lake” leads, often soliciting their ideas and preferences. “Do you like that?” she asked after one jumped and landed heavily, and they worked together on a more graceful approach: More ankle, less quad. “Isn’t that fun? It looks better, too,” Hurst said.

“One of the things I love most about teaching is personalizing it,” she said. “I enjoy understanding and bringing out the strengths of each dancer. Nurturing them nurtures me.”

“She does that a lot,” added dancer Ainsley de Guzman, 15. “It’s a lot of fun, developing your own variations. It helps you grow.”

Self discovery

Columbia Dance’s students will have to keep growing without her. This “Swan Lake” marks Hurst’s swan song with the group; she’ll retire in June, after 23 years. Becky Moore of Petaluma, Calif., has been hired as the new artistic director.

Also stepping away in June is volunteer Executive Director Jan Asai, who’s been on the scene even longer; she cofounded Columbia Dance in the late 1980s, drawing on her expertise as a professional CPA to incorporate it as Clark County’s only nonprofit dance school and company.

Both women are 68. “My passion for this is still over the roof, but somebody else has to have the passion,” said Asai, who lives in Felida.

“It’s time,” said Hurst, who still lives in Portland and said she devotes up to 60 hours a week to Columbia Dance. “I would like to have a little more personal time. I’m not 21 anymore. It wears.”

Hurst said she selected “Swan Lake” for her final showcase, because it contains her favorite ballet role — the spellbound Odette, swan by day and woman by night — but don’t expect her to take the stage for a swan song solo.

“I’ve had five foot surgeries,” Hurst said. “After the last one, I made a promise to myself. We all live with our bodies, and sometimes we have to make new agreements.”

Hurst’s new agreement with herself is to read, and hang out with friends and her miniature poodles. But she’ll keep taking ballet lessons, too. Her feet can handle that, she said, and she never intends to stop being a student. “I mean to stay on top of this fascinating puzzle, my body, as it keeps evolving,” she said.

That’s the same overall lesson she imparts to her students, she said: “Self knowledge and self discovery are great life skills. We’re all on a journey of self discovery.”

Classical

“I love movement and I love classical music,” Hurst said. Despite studying all forms of dance at the University of Utah, ballet remained her greatest love. She double-majored in ballet and choreography, she said.

“I like the musicality of ballet and the structure of ballet technique,” she said. “I like the challenge of fine tuning miniscule details and nuances.”

Her main influences were her teachers. Hurst grew up studying dance before you could pop a tape or disc into a player, or pull up an online video, to watch the greats doing their thing. “You only learned what you were taught in person,” Hurst said.

She’s spent plenty of time performing, but said she never wanted to join a ballet company and work her way up its ranks. “That didn’t sing to me,” she said. “I had broader horizons than performing.” She taught at numerous schools, colleges and companies, including the School of the San Francisco Ballet, and won the 1976 Utah Bicentennial Choreographer’s Award. But eventually she returned to Portland.

The two Jans

The other Jan, Asai, is a lifelong arts booster (and 2018 recipient of the Clark County Arts Commission Lifetime Achievement Award) who grew up dancing, sacrificed it for a career in accounting, then came back to ballet lessons as a mom in her 30s. She befriended her teacher, Wendy de le Harpe, and the pair launched Columbia Dance in 1987.

The fledgling outfit hopscotched all over town for years while Asai hunted for grant funding and other backing; then de la Harpe left and Hurst came aboard as artistic director. “It was kismet for us,” said Asai. “She was a really good fit. Losing Wendy could have been the end of us.”

Hurst eventually used her inheritance to purchase a warehouse at 1700 Broadway and remodeled it as a spacious dance studio with extra, leasable units. (She’s now looking to sell the building to the Columbia Dance organization, which is fundraising.)

But she never had to think much about the financial end of things, she said. “I’m grateful to the gods” for Asai, who handled all that, she said.

Asai has handed over front-desk duties to office manager Hannah Pass, but she said she used to hang out at Columbia Dance all the time — not just managing the books but also making costumes and sets and getting to know the students. “I’ve watched them all grow up, which has been wonderful,” she said.

Launching serious dancers into careers is also wonderful, Asai added, but she subscribes to Hurst’s philosophy — that studying dance is really studying life. Columbia Dance students have gone on to excel in many fields, she said. “Leadership begins on the dance floor,” she said.

Most wonderful of all, she said, is adult former students who return with their children and sign them up to begin the cycle again.

Past and future tutus

Student Kirstin Pierson, 14, has been studying with Hurst for four years, and said she came to ballet after cracking a bone in her left arm doing gymnastics. She decided to stop “tumbling,” but has continued physical activity through dance, she said.

Sydney Rowley, 18, has been with Hurst for six years. She’s getting ready to graduate from Columbia River High School, she said, and aims to study journalism in college — but she expects always to continue dancing, too, she said, as a way to stay fit and de-stress.

Ainsley de Guzman, 15, has been with Hurst and Columbia Dance since age 3. Just like her teacher, de Guzman remembers being an awestruck tyke on the scene: costumed like a mouse, along with all the other littlest dancers in “The Nutcracker,” and worshipping the sparkly tutus of the big-girl dancers, her heroes.

Years later, de Guzman said, she found herself headed for a “Nutcracker” spotlight while all the little-girl dancers hero-worshipped her and reached out to touch her sparkly tutu. “Pretty amazing,” she said with satisfaction.

Hurst smiled warmly at that, and said to de Guzman: “We have spent a lot of hours together, haven’t we?”