by Elaine Durbach NJJN Bureau Chief/Central
by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central
February 19, 2009
When she was a young woman, teaching ballet in Newark,Hortense Greenwald Shider's mother, watching from the sidelines, would shake her finger when her daughter joked too much with the children. "The teacher was always supposed to keep herself above the students," Shider recalled with a grin.
Now 99, the dark, dramatic hair-do of her youth replaced with a halo of white curls, Shider still prefers amusing anecdotes to any talk that gets too serious. According to her former students, "Miss Greenwald" - as she was known in her teaching days - was always fun to be with, but she also had a glamour they never forgot.
Former students gather around ballet teacher Hortense Greenwald Shider,
from left, Rena Birnbaum, Audrey Silverman, and Shider's daughter Harriet Keehn.
Photo by Elaine Durbach
Interviewed in the Springfield home she shares with her daughter, Harriet Keehn, Shider said, "I never saw myself as beautiful, but I was always full of life."
Her balance is sometimes shaky, so getting around isn't easy, but she still loves to dance. When her daughter invited her to show her stuff, she put aside her Lucite walking stick - "my third leg," she called it - and whirled about the living room in a quick waltz, before sinking back into her chair with a rueful sigh.
She doesn't like aging, no matter that the years have treated her gently. With a wry grimace she pointed to fine lines on her forearms and said, "Look - the map of New Jersey on this one, and the map of New York on this one."
Shider taught ballet for over 40 years, in Newark and later in Hillside. She taught until she was in her late 50s, always demonstrating every move.
Harriet and her sister, Helen Hermann, who lives in Endwell, NY, were among their mother's students. To her delight, her daughters were talented dancers. Vouching for that fact after all these years were two lifelong friends and former students who came by to join in the reminiscing, Audrey Silverman of Scotch Plains and Rena Birnbaum of Berkeley Heights.
"I was so honored to be dancing with the teacher's daughter," Birnbaum said with a laugh, thinking back almost 50 years. "I remember Hortense tapping me on the shoulder to correct me, but we were never scared of her. It was always fun being with her, and she was so glamorous."
"I was only about three when I went to her for lessons," Silverman said. "But I still remember how beautiful she was. She had such an air about her."
"I used to say to them, 'You could do betterer than that,' and wait to see if anyone would correct me," Shider said. "Not one of them did. They either thought I was dumb, or that anything the teacher did must be right. The kids all used to kiss me on the cheek as they left."
Inevitably, there were some parents with oversized terpsichorean ambitions for their children. Shider said, "We would say to each other, 'Shall I call New York?'" - family shorthand for anyone who was a little too stage-struck.
Shider herself had visions of the bright lights. "I hated school, but I knew I wanted to dance," she said. Growing up in the Jewish community in Newark, she started lessons at about seven and never stopped.
At 15, she began teaching neighborhood kids to earn enough money for her own private lessons. By the end of her first year of teaching, she had about 25 students, charging 35 cents a lesson.
Her own lessons were $7 each, a serious outlay. She went into Manhattan once a week to study with a master teacher. Her mother accompanied her; "I was a devil," said Shider. "She wasn't going to let me go into the city alone."
The whole family supported her teaching, her two sisters and her parents all helping out. After she got married at 23, Shider's husband, Leon, who died in 1973, was just as supportive. He was an immigrant from Vienna, an X-ray technician and then a medical supplies salesman, and they loved to waltz together.
But the whole family - Leon included - were adamantly opposed to Shider's going onto the stage professionally. The dream never died - she still gets a misty look talking about it - but she did yield to the responsibilities of family life. "I was a good mother, wasn't I?" she asked teasingly. "The best," her daughter replied.
Her classes grew over the years until she had 200 students and was hiring the 4,800-seat Mosque Theater in downtown Newark for her annual recitals and an orchestra of professional musicians. Keehn, Silverman, and Birnbaum lit up talking about the thrill of those shows.
The family moved to South Orange, and back to Newark, and then to Hillside, along with so many other Jewish families, and finally to Springfield. Shider reluctantly retired from teaching in her late 50s.
She couldn't bear to sit around doing nothing, so she went to work at a dress store. It was another way to help people attain glamour, and again she built up a devoted following. But her passion for dancing never died. "I still have dreams that I'm starting a ballet school," she said.
Shider's beaming smile fades briefly as she talks about growing old. She still goes to Shabbat services every Friday night at Temple Sha'arey Shalom, and she was an avid reader until last year when failing eyesight made it too difficult. Once or twice she apologized for losing her thread of conversation, but then continued with perfect recall of names and places and incidents.
Her birthday is on Sept. 25. "I've promised my daughter I'll stay around until I'm 100," she said with a little shrug, appreciative of what she has but not eager for a future without her dancer's strengths. "I supposed I've been used to always being so fit," she explained.
"I haven't made any plans for the party yet," Keehn said. "I'm so scared to jinx it. I'm in denial, I suppose, but I want her to be around forever."