The end of the school year also means dance recital time—the time of year when little girls get to become princesses just by donning their costumes. For Helen Gaus of Elmhurst, the end of this year’s dance season is even more special because it is her fiftieth year as a dance teacher, most notable at the Civic Dance Center in Scranton.
“I began with Constance Reynolds at the YWCA on Linden Street, now it is Leahy Hall for the University of Scranton, when I was five years old. In those days it was just either ballet and tap. I started with ballet and added tap. As the years went on and jazz was introduced, I began to take jazz,” Gaus said.
“I just loved to dance and perform and I knew as I got older that teaching was going to be my forte,” she added.
Eleven years after she first put on her ballet slippers, Gaus found herself on a train to New York City one summer to study with some of the best teachers in the business.
“My mother and father put me on a bus and my father said, ‘now when you get there, don’t look up and they’ll never know you’re not from New York’,” she said. “It worked because New Yorkers used to stop and ask me directions. I got to study with the best of the best, like Paul Draper, who is as close to Fred Astaire as you can get. Most of the studios were right on Broadway.”
Gaus graduated from high school at age 17 and from there went right into her career as a dance teacher, even teaching for her first dance teacher, Constance Reynolds. Eventually she opened her own dance studio on Penn Avenue in downtown Scranton. Now her studio, the Civic Dance Center, is located on Mifflin Avenue.
“I just love working with the kids from the young ages all the way up and helping them to become what they want to become,” she said. “There’s a lot of students I have that could become professional dancers but that’s not the kind of life their parents would want for them but I have many, many, many who could become professional dancers.”
“I’ve had students who have taught in Paris and who are teaching in New York City,” she added. “Some have become professors of dance at colleges. There’s so many and so many that went into teaching dance in the area. Most of the younger teachers around here I’ve taught.”
Locally, Gaus is probably best known as the teacher behind the Civic Ballet Company’s annual production of “The Nutcracker” at Christmastime.
“I have people who dance in it that literally live for it all year, it is a beautiful thing,” she said.
After a car accident a year and a half ago that almost took her life, Gaus realized that, despite her long career, she still has work to do.
“I thank God that he wasn’t ready for me,” she said. “He said I still have more to do and I am still teaching and will keep teaching.”
Gaus suggests that anyone can benefit from dance and that not only is a good source of exercise, it is also a great way to develop other qualities.
“For me, it gave me more confidence and poise because I was performing a lot and performing in different places, like the Poconos,” she said. “Dance makes you more confident in front of people and the poise comes with experience. The more you do it, the better you get. It’s like that with anything.”