Rexburg dance teacher celebrates 50 years of living her passion

REXBURG – For Melanie Schwendiman, it all started with a gold costume.

“My mom was a ballroom dancer, and she had this music called Blue Tango by Hugo Winterhalter. When I heard the song, I thought oh, this is going to be so cool, so I decided to make up a dance. So I made up an acrobatic dance, and I did it for my little dance reviews,” says Schwendiman. “Then, my mom said, ‘Hey, there’s a farm bureau contest. Let’s get you a real costume.”

Little did either of them know that this choreographed dance, and costume, would change her life forever.

“So she found a used costume, a little gold costume, and she bought it for $10. So I performed her music, Hugo Winterhalter, and I won the local farm bureau contest,” says Shwendiman. “Then I went to state, and I won that, and then I went to nationals in Florida, and it was the first time I’d been on an airplane.”

With this same costume and dance routine, Shwendiman went on to dance at various events such as at the Junior Miss Idaho pageant, Miss Idaho Pageant, and as part of the Valhalla Dance team during her time at ricks College, which is now known as BYU-Idaho.

During this sensational time, Schwendiman took her skills overseas, traveling around the world to places like Europe and Africa to pursue her dreams as a young dancer.

“We went to Europe, and my mom said, ‘Just throw your gold costume and your cassette tape in.’ She knew the directors, and she said, ‘If you ever need a number, Melanie’s got this dance.’ I did it on the first performance, and I ended up doing it on the whole tour, says Schwendiman. “The next year, I was on the Showtime Company, and we went to Africa, and I ended up doing it in Africa too. That old dance and that old costume just kept following me around.”

Schwendiman is currently celebrating 50 years as a local dance teacher. Originally from Rexburg, she began her life of dance at only three-years-old.

“When I was three, I took a couple of classes and knew that I loved it. I didn’t get to take (classes) again until I was in fourth grade, and I found a teacher. Her name was Lolita Shirley. I loved taking from her,” says Shwendiman. “I took from her for about 5 or 6 years, but when I was in 7th grade, that’s when I thought, I would love to teach.”

Luckily, Schwendiman had sisters and neighbors ready to be taught, and a garage at home that would become her first dance studio, after her parents house was flooded due to the catastrophic 1976 Teton Dam flood.

“I started with my two little sisters and two neighbor girls, and I taught them in my parent’s bedroom. Then the next year, we went out to the family room, which was a tiny bit bigger. Then the flood came, the Teton Dam flood,” said Shwenidiman. “It flooded our house, so my parents fixed up the garage and put some heaters in it, and so every day that I would go out and teach I would sweep and mop it out, and roll out some carpet, and I would teach there. I taught in the garage for about 6 years.”

Now, at 62, Melanie has been a dance teacher for over 50 years, much of it as the owner of Melanie’s Dance in Rexburg. And she doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon.

As part of the celebration, the studio held its dance program in May, titled “50 Fabulous Years.” But this time, all of Schwendiman’s students, past and present, were invited to participate.

To make it happen, Shwendiman and her daughter, Ashlie Sutton, began a mission to contact all former dance students of Melanie’s Dance. At the end of their list, they discovered she had over 2,300 students. Consolidating, there were 900 students who had taken multiple classes.

“Honestly, I’ll tell you, I didn’t know what kind of impact I had,” said Schwendiman. “A couple of years ago, someone said to me that I’d been an influence on their daughter, and it caught me off guard a little bit, because all this time, I was teaching dancing, but I wasn’t really thinking about this big influence I had, I was just doing what I loved. And it must have showed through.”

The May recital had many special moments, including a specialized dance for each generation of students that have been taught and had their passions for dance shaped by Schwendiman.

“In their decades, they came on stage, so the 1970s did a little dance to ‘Save the Last Dance for Me,’ and then the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and then the 10’s, 20’s,” says Schwendiman. “And at the end, they all went out on stage and I went with them and we did the dance together. It was just so much fun to do a dance with all of these former dance students.”

At the end of the night, during the finale, Schwendiman’s own dance teacher from the age of three, Lolita Shirley, also joined the group on stage.

Also wearing a gold costume, Shirley got to participate in the celebration of half a decade of her own student’s dance teaching.

“The song was called ‘Turning Hearts,’ and I walked onto the stage and said ‘Ladies and Gentleman, may I introduce my dance teacher!’ And her son strolled her out in her gold shirt, and I had my gold costume on, and we did our little dance,” says Shwendiman. “Oh it was so special. It was so meaningful to me.”

After the show, as a gift to her mother, Sutton surprised Schwendiman with a book filled with comments and stories from many of her former students, detailing how much of an impact dance has had on their lives, and how they cherish the time spent with Shwendiman.

Many of them even described how it feels to have Schwendiman now teaching their children and grandchildren.

As she continues teaching and loving her life of dance, Shwendiman often reflects on her students and specifically, how she sees herself in those who share her passion.

“When I think of the little girls coming in the studio, I’m thinking of one girl in particular. Right now, she comes in, and you can just see the look on her face. She just walks in as a dancer,” says Shwendiman. “I think she just wants to dance more than anything, which is exactly how I felt.”