Meeting in small clusters, they practiced steps and pushed away the butterflies in the dark corners of the theater and backstage until it was time.
Then stepping from the wings, more than 50 men and women came together, packing the stage and kicking up their heels in unison. Their unrestrained joy was expressed in thundering percussive clicks and firebird leaps defying gravity, all in sync to the rhythm of the song, “Presto! Let me be a dancin’ fool!”
The dancers were all students or alumni of the Earle Cobb Dance Studio celebrating the studio’s 95th anniversary during its annual dance revue at the Lila Cockrell Theatre.
Founded by Earle and Dorothy Cobb in 1929, the studio in its early years was popular for its ballroom dance lessons with young soldiers in San Antonio for basic training, and with people who were hearing impaired and learned to dance by following the rhythm of tap.
The first dance revue was held on May 30, 1930, at the Municipal Auditorium and was billed in a newspaper ad as “the best show in town.” The audience couldn’t know then that it also would be one of the longest-running shows in town.
‘Organized chaos’
For the highly anticipated 95th annual revue on June 9, dozens of former and current dance students returned to the stage for the reunion number choreographed by owner Dena Mabry, the founders’ granddaughter.
“It’s organized chaos but I’m very comfortable with a little chaos,” Mabry said. “A lot of choreographers don’t like big numbers of dancers, but the more the merrier.”
Wearing matching reunion T-shirts for the performance, several of the dancers were mother-daughter pairs and some had been students together as children and teens before they also joined the dance faculty.
Some traveled from several states away, one from a renowned dance troupe in New York City, and one was a student of Earle Cobb himself.
Margaret Mann enrolled at the dance school as a child, one of the studio’s earliest students. She remembers Cobb as “always well-mannered.”
Later, in the 1960s and ‘70s, Mann taught the Cobbs’ granddaughters baton and ballet at the Earle Cobb Dance Studio. She’s remained close to the family ever since and, at age 82, returned to the stage for the reunion, her fellow dancers encouraging the tentative Mann with high-fives.
Mann said she felt a little rusty getting back on the dance floor. “It makes me feel like I’ve missed out on a few years,” she said.
Hundreds of students
Cobb opened the small dance studio above a grocery store at the corner of North Flores Street and Woodlawn Avenue, offering lessons in ballroom, tap, acrobatics and ballet. It was the start of the Great Depression.
Ballroom dancing generated most of the revenue in those early years, Mabry said, because military officers stationed in San Antonio and their wives took classes at the studio.
Over the years, the studio has been relocated several times before settling into its current address at 4278 Lockhill Selma Rd.
The studio, which opened in March 2020 and then briefly shuttered during the pandemic, is now a 10,000-square-foot dance school with 550 students on the far Northwest Side.
For many years, there were only two teachers; today there are 18.
“When we celebrated our 75th anniversary, my mom said that probably there are over 15,000 sets of feet that had been through the studio by that point,” Mabry said.
The studio’s longevity makes it one of the oldest, family-owned dance studios in the U.S. and a place with a family tree of interconnected students and teachers who consider the studio their home.
The Cobbs’ daughter Sandra Mabry returned to the studio in 1952 after graduating from college with a degree in costume design. She taught classes with her mother until 1962 when she took over managing the studio.
“There were many years I’m confident the studio made no profit whatsoever, maybe for a long time,” said Dena Mabry. Her father was a tennis coach at Trinity University at the time, and “they were able to make it work.”
Slice of cake
When her mother died in 2011, Mabry had the opportunity to run the school but said she worried it would be “a disaster,” until a friend reminded her that she’d grown up in the dance studio, and, “it’s worked out OK.”
Growing up in the studio, dance was all the spirited Mabry ever wanted to do, she said. Her oldest sister, Terri Mabry, gravitated from dance to baton and opened a school for twirling. Her other sister, Sandi Mabry Hill, who enjoyed sports, started the California State Games.
But Mabry loved being at the dance studio while her mother taught lessons. At one time the studio was located in the same shopping strip center as Nadler’s Bakery.
“It made it much easier to spend hours on end at the studio, when there was a slice of cake at the end,” she said. “And all the Nadlers’ kids took [lessons] from us.”
Mabry majored in dance at Oklahoma State University and went on to dance professionally at Opryland in Nashville and on cruise ships, later performing with tap dancer Gregory Hines before returning home.
She now teaches ballet, tap and jazz, and for 26 years led the dance program at the Northeast School of the Arts while also managing the school her grandfather started.
Making space
The reunion recital piece came together after only three rehearsals in a large studio painted purple, with mirrors along one side and viewing windows on the other.
About 50 dancers gathered in the space on the Thursday before the revue, a cacophony of chatting, laughing and prancing shifted time and again into precise rhythmic form as the animated Mabry led the class “one more time.”
Not a single dancer had to be reminded to smile. The glee at dancing among friends and family was infectious.
At the final practice, Mabry forewarned the dancers to expect other alumni to show up at the event without having rehearsed with the group, and to be sure and make space for them. And they did, for about six dancers more.
Among the tap dancers at rehearsals was alumnus Alicia Bouardi, who attended with her daughter Lauren Bonnema, also an alum.
Bonnema was initially reluctant to participate but her mother convinced her. “She’s my best friend, she pushes me out of my comfort zone,” she said.
After living out of state 10 years, Bonnema recently returned to Earle Cobb and enrolled her daughters, ages 8 and 6.
“My grandmother, my mom, me and my two girls came on their first day,” she said. “It was all four generations, just to watch them, because it was nostalgic.”
Also reuniting at rehearsals were four Earle Cobb dance moms who had danced together as youngsters, then became teachers, and now watch their own daughters learning routines together through studio windows. Dance teaches important life lessons like resilience and confidence, they said.
“You just go with the flow, you have to be flexible sometimes,” Briauna Newhouse said. “Like your tap shoe flies off in the middle of the routine, but the show must go on.”
Having fun
Mabry believes the Earle Cobb Dance Studio also is fostering advocacy for the performing arts.
“Even if you’re not dancing, you can go see beautiful performances and appreciate dance, and I think that appreciation starts from very young,” she said.
That doesn’t come from pushing students to compete and win at contests. It comes from having fun, Mabry said.
But the students do win competitions, said one mom — because they are happy and that shows through on stage.
So in the halls of the studio, there are very few dance trophies on display despite its 95 years in business; Mabry sends them home with the winners. And she doesn’t knock more competitive programs. “There’s a place for everybody,” she said.
Dancer Nick Fearon also participated in the reunion. He started dancing when he was 10 years old and his mother taught at Earle Cobb.
Fearon, now 31, dances and travels the world with the modern dance company Parsons. “It’s what I’m most passionate about — it’s everything,” Fearon said.
Ariana de Leon, who recently graduated from North East School of the Arts, has been dancing at Earle Cobb for four years and experienced the reunion performance for the first time this year.
“Watching all of these past dancers and some of my teachers performing on stage was so amazing,” De Leon said, adding that she is already planning to return in five years for the 100th-anniversary reunion.
“I can’t wait to perform with my friends again — and to perform with my mom!”
