Dancing Through Life

About the Book

Internationally traveled and familiar with salons and personalities of the dance world, we find a stroll through the years as Dorothy Dean Stevens gives us glimpses of personal encounters with leading dancers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

She begins by tracing her ancestors settling in the west; on through her early years, then to her entrance into the hallowed halls of European Ballet and the continued ties with leading dancers. Early in her life she studied at Cornish School of the Arts and later with Eugene Lorin. Such notables as Adolf Bolm, and Dimitri Romanoff, instructed in her dance studio in Monterey California. Sucessful dancers such as Frank Bourman, and Michael Smuin, who later founded the Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, taught for a time at Dorothy's studio.

She also covers the development of the cultural arts, tracing theater and talent that existed in the central California region of the Monterey Peninsula. But there is more to her life than this; travel and adventure, business and pleasure all woven into a tale of her life. Dorothy dances through joys and sorrows to the encore years in which her family, once again, takes the spot light.

About the Author

Born in 1917, Dorothy Dean Stevens learned from her father that the world is filled with "wondrous things to do." She recalls song and dance as integral to her formative years. Moving from Washington State to Monterey California as a child, then after years in the San Francisco East Bay region back to Monterey, established her delight with travel.

She soon found the expression of her talent by developing the Dorothy Dean School of Dance, which started her on a lifetime of growth and adventure. Once the Studio was secure Dorothy began traveling in Europe, as a study tour guide for Student International Travel Association. (S.I.T.A.). She became acquainted with and many of the renowned dancers of the 19th and 20th centuries.