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Friday, August 8, 2008
Springboro dancer gets New York scholarship
Jeri Dickey has herself to blame and thank for the fact that her daughter Jenna has left home at 14 years old.
She did a great job as Jenna’s first and only dance teacher until four years ago, when Barbara Pontecorvo took over shaping the Springboro girl into a potential high-level performer.
Now Jenna has moved to New York City on full scholarship to the prestigious School of American Ballet, which doesn’t accept many.
Only a dozen of 200 students from the around the world who studied there this summer were asked to stay year-round. Only Jenna was awarded a full scholarship covering tuition, room and board. She’ll live at Lincoln Center in the Juilliard School dormitories. She has a great view of the city from her window.
She won’t be neglecting her academic work, after earning straight-A’s at Bishop Leibold School East and Springboro Junior High School. She has also been accepted into the Professional Children’s School in New York, which limits enrollment in grades six through 12 to 150.
“When I took her to study at Pontecorvo Ballet Studios, I just wanted her to do a ‘Nutcracker’ and take class from someone other than her mother,” her mother said. “She didn’t want to go, saying it was a ‘ballet’ studio. She was much more into jazz and competitive dancing. After one class with Miss Barbara, she begged me to study there and nowhere else.”
Dickey said Jenna is now passionate about “the Balanchine style and has the body for that choreography. I think that’s why they fell in love with her at SAB.”
The young dancer went to SAB this summer hoping to stay. “After they asked her to stay, I said the only way I would allow my 14-year-old to move to New York City is if they were going to pay her way. I never thought that would happen. I thought I was buying at least another year with her at home. But she will come home when she can, and I wasn’t going to stand in the way of her dream. I am very proud of her.”
Two of Jeri and husband Joe Dickey’s four children have cystic fibrosis and she has produced a fund-raising performance, Step Up 4 a Cure, for 10 years.
“We will all miss Jenna so much. We are a very close family,” she said.
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