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A Saratoga Springs dance teacher's students from far and wide get together for a “Curtain Call.”
By RAY MARK RINALDI
Staff writer

PHYLLIS LATIN, left, works students at the bar in her third-floor studio on Broadway in Saratoga Springs. She has taught classes in the city for 25 years. Below, Latin guides her students through rehearsal for this weekend’s concert “Curtain Call,” which features dozens of dancers who have passed through her studio.

City welcomes Russian Dancers
ED BURKE/The Saratogian

Mayor Ken Klotz reads a proclamation while, clockwise, Russian dancers Maksim Gerasimov. Victor Dik, Natalia Korneeva and Oksana Kuzmenko, show producer and. museum board member Robert Hoffman and teacher Phyllis Latin look on Wednesday at the National Museum of Dance. The dancers came to Saratoga Springs from Russia to rehearse "Pater Olympian," a classical ballet written by Hoffman and choreographed by Latin.

Phyllis Latin has had some big moments in her life, but this one, this week, may just be her biggest.

There was the time, as a teenager, when she danced for the president. ("It was supposed to be Roosevelt, but he died and we had Truman," she says) There was the time she managed a film company in New York. ("Mr. Preminger, Mr. Zanuck would come by," she remembers. "Mr. Zanuck was very nice.")

Then there was her two-year stint as ballerina traveling through Europe, and the time she ran a dance studio in Carnegie Hall.
But those times were not as large as now. This time Phyllis Latin's students are coming back.
Dozens of them are returning from the Midwest and Canada, from Europe and South America, from Broadway, all to celebrate their "madame's" 25 years as a ballet teacher in Saratoga Springs.
Some are coming to pay their respects and party. Others will dance in "Curtain Call," a three-performance recital Friday and Saturday at the Spa Little Theatre.

"I can't tell you what it means to have these kids back. Some of them I taught since they were seven or eight years old," said Latin. "They have touched me in ways they will never understand."

The feeling is mutual. Thousands of young students passed through Latin's American Dance Center. Twenty-nine of them have gone on to work as professional dancers in theater and revues and with companies such as the Boston Ballet, the Dayton Ballet and the Joffrey. It's not difficult finding testimonial to her talent and nurturing. Or her toughness.

"She taught me more than dance. She taught me discipline," said Sean Hayes, a student for 10 years, who took two weeks off from a role in "Cats" in Hamburg, Germany, for "Curtain Call." "When you came to class, it was to work, not play around or meet girls."

Times Union/SKIP DICKSTEIN
Times Union
Tuesday, May 25, 1993