Smetter’s final curtain call

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Shelly Smetter has been dancing since kindergarten and teaching since high school. April 16 was her final dance recital.

“I started dancing when I was 5,” she said.

She went to a studio in Lincoln because there wasn’t one in Seward. In 1974, when she was 14, she changed that.

The high school freshman started teaching tap and ballet in her parents’ basement at their home on Fourth Street. They were there for eight years and then her parents, Charlie and Vera Thorell, moved to East Seward Street. Shelly continued to use their basement as a studio.

Her first students were elementary aged dancers.

“Those parents trusted their kids to a 14-year-old,” Smetter said with a laugh.

She thanked her brothers Shane, Travis and Trent “for putting up with music coming up from the basement.”

Smetter graduated from Seward High and attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she majored in dance and earned her bachelor of fine arts degree. She was also part of the flag corps while at UNL.

She drove back to Seward twice a week to teach.

“I knew I wanted to stay a dance teacher,” she said.

That was a far cry from when she once told her mother she never wanted to teach dance.

She also married Sam Smetter from Goehner during that time.

In 1982, Clark Kolterman told her about the space upstairs at 627 Seward Street. Chuck Matzke at Jones Bank helped with financing, and Smetter bought the space that became Shelly’s School of Dance.

“My parents had to cosign” because she was only 22, Smetter said.

Downstairs was home to two bars at the time, she said.

When she started, she taught everything – ballet, tap and jazz. She spent from 4 to 10 p.m. at the studio Mondays, Tuesday and Thursdays and quit early on Wednesdays for church.

“At one time, I was teaching 19 hours a week,” Shelly said.

She’s worked with music on vinyl to cassette tapes to CDs and digital files.

Janet Jerger joined her in 1994-95 and taught one ballet class. She eventually took all the upper level ballet classes.

Daneen Kovar started teaching in 1998 with middle school and has taught classes since then. She also retired this year.

Brooklyn Rader was the next addition in 2020 when Jerger retired, Smetter said. Rader will take over the studio, which will be called Artistry in Motion.

Smetter’s students performed recitals at the little theater at Seward High originally and needed three performances for everyone.

They moved to Concordia University’s Weller Hall for awhile and then back to the high school when the new theater was done in 2002.

Each recital had a theme, and some included longer ballets, including Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.

Smetter usually had an idea for the recital theme by August and would look for songs she liked that had a good rhythm or tempo. Two of the dances from an early recital, for example, were “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “Ain’t She Sweet.”

Occasionally a song will work for different genres. One instructor might hear it as a tap piece, while another might envision it as ballet.

When Smetter choreographed all the dances, she might have 32 or 33 different performances in her head.

“I knew them all,” she said.

This year, she chose more themes from TV shows. She said when chosing music, the songs need to inspire steps.

Smetter said for years she averaged 140 to 160 students from kindergarten through high school. Then covid struck, and that hurt enrollment. William Henry School of the Arts opened, as well, giving young dancers another option for classes.

While most of the dancers Smetter has taught were young ladies, a few young men found their way to the studio.

One year, she said, her brother Trent and his friends Rob Brigham and Christopher Valle took tap. For a couple years, she had a class of six boys. Another brother, Shane, played Micky Mouse in one recital.

She also taught all four of her children – Chelse, Zach, Zoie and Grace.

“It was fun to teach my own kids,” she said.

She asked Chelse once what it was like to have her mother as a teacher. Chelsea’s answer was that when she was in class, she thought of Smetter as her teacher.

“I feel really blessed,” Smetter said.

In her comments to the audience after this year’s recital, Smetter thanked God for His creativity in creating music and dance.

She said she knew it was time to retire, however. She plans to spend more time with her grandchildren, all seven of whom live out of state.

She will also help at her church and with Sloup/Thorell Detasseling this summer.

Smetter said she probably won’t really miss dance until August when she began classes for the last 49 years.