By Toby G. Hayes

LOGAN – Her shoes were once pink, but their constant use have faded them the color of her fair skin. Her outfit is a fashionable combination of a solid green top, and shorts striped blue and green. The pink tights she wears fits the stereotype in everyone's mind. So does the hair she fits neatly into a bun. The gold locket she wears bounces and spins as she twirls, bounces and spins. For Vivian Schafer, it is more a hobby than a job. After 12 years of dancing and performing ballet, it has become her escape from the world.

"I was always really into dance,” Schafer said. "But a friend invited me to
go see a ballet she was in, The Nutcracker, and I said, ‘this is what I want
to do'."

For 12 years she has been doing it. Practice is a must in the world of ballet, so Schafer attends classes at least once a week at the Old Whittier School in Logan.

"This ballet school is where I started,” she said.

The school itself was built in 1908 as an all-purpose school for children in
Logan, but is now home to a local ballet company, just as the sign reads. The sign outside says "Home of Cache Valley Civic Ballet,” with half of the "C” in Cache broken off and missing. Mirrors adorn the walls in the rooms used as dance studios, which is most of the rooms in the building, upstairs and down. The wood floors are faded and well used. In fact, they have been so well utilized over the years, not to mention the more recent perpetual pounding of dancers on them, the floors no longer creak.

She is well beyond her prime...as a dancer anyway. She is already in her late 20s. She is also quite tall, about 5'10" in her ballet shoes, but if they were new shoes then she might be a bit taller.

On this day, Schafer was in technique class, where they teach you to bend and move without creaking yourself. Instead of telling you to bend, the instructor tells you to plié, a French word that means to bend.

Ballet has a language all its own, most of which is composed of French. Words like tendu, chassé, pirouette, and jeté are mixed with numbered positions to tell the dancers how to move and how to place their feet. Combine the French and the coded talk, and the dancers move in sync with each other. It's like football. Tell 11 men on the gridiron to run an end around fake, flea-flicker pitch to the outside flanker and to watch out for the red dog. It's a language only they understand.

"We're going to do a PK turn, then chassé. Now this is where it gets tough to remember,” instructor Stephanie White tells her class. "Pas de chat, Pas de chat, Pas de chat, Pas de chat, Pas de chat, petit jeté, petit jeté, petit jet
é, then lift. If you can, I would like this held one, two."

The class follows with amazing accuracy.

"Ballet is different because you could do a million things wrong, but when
you do that one thing right, it's so fulfilling," Schafer said. "I think ballet helps relieve tension and stretches your muscles out after a long day of work."

For Schafer, ballet is an escape from her world of tips, tables and daily lunch specials. For the past eight years she has been waiting tables; six years at the Blue Bird and the last two at Angie's.

"It's pretty stressful trying to make a million people happy everyday," she
says.

It's one of the most stressful jobs on the planet. Instead of tights and previously pink shoes, Schafer scurries from table to table donned in khakis and a deep red shirt emblazoned with the name, Angie's and her little gold name tag giving her away as just plain "Vivian".

"How are you folks doing today?,” she asks. "Have you decided what you would like?"

Her polite calmness is contagious, but soon gives way to a blur as she rushes to the kitchen to drop off an order, then pick one up. When she comes to your table, she offers only questions, she has time for little more.

"Can I get you anything else?"

She can't remember why she got into waitressing, or even why she stays at it, except that "it's different everyday and I get to meet all kinds of people," she says. "I can't sit still for a job, so sitting behind a desk is out of the question.

On the dance floor she sets herself apart from everyone else. As the floor pounds under the impact of 14 dancing feet, Schafer seemingly glides across the floor. She rarely appears to even be breathless. While others catch their breath or just talk among themselves as the instructor changes the music, Schafer walks across the room on pointed toes or will take every opportunity to improve her already flawless technique.

"Ballet is all about body alignment," Schafer said. "I like to get as much practice in as I can."

After all, her time is pretty well stretched to the max. On top of working full-time and studying ballet, Schafer also attends Utah State University, majoring in elementary education, which meshes well with her other duty, she teaches ballet to children on the side.

"I used to teach a lot of younger girls, but now I teach more older dancers,”
she said.

For two or three days a week Schafer comes to the school where she learned to dance to teach ballet to groups of girls. Balancing ballet and the barrage of customers, she has been teaching for the past two years. It's an aspect of the art she loves.

"I like to teach the younger kids because I get to watch them develop as dancers,” she said.

In the process, the ballet she teaches fosters discipline, logic and confidence in those young dancers.

Through all she does, Schafer remains humble.

"I wouldn't say I'm great at anything, but I would like to believe I'm good at quality and form in my dancing,” she said. "I guess I'm good at covering up my weaknesses, let's just say that."

Schafer's shyness and humble nature keeps her in Logan, otherwise, her talent would have had her packing years ago.

"If I had any guts at all I would go to Salt Lake and study dance at the U,”
she said. "I don't know though, I'm kind of a chicken."

As for now, she loves the life she chose. She loves the regulars she sees at the restaurant and students she gets to see grow up in her classes. Maybe they will follow their desires and dance themselves out of this valley to find their fame.

TJ
TJ