Saratoga News

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Interpretive Dance

Clareen Dunivin's students learn the value of giving and receiving

By Shari Kaplan

Life's a dance you learn as you go;
sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow.

Clareen Sasse Dunivin's life is like a country song--but with a big exception. Whereas many stereotypical songs are lamentations to broken relationships and broken-down pickup trucks, if Dunivin's life were written in verse, it would be a celebration.

And given her lifelong love of dancing in all forms--including country & western--that celebration could be summed up by recording artist John Michael Montgomery's 1992 hit "Life's a Dance."

While dancing through the 57 years of her life, the longtime Saratoga resident grew and learned much as she went along. Not content to be the only beneficiary of all the good she's found in life, Dunivin has opened her heart and home to so many people in so many ways that even she can't keep track.

A California native, Dunivin took her first steps--walking and dancing--in the Orange County area. At age 4, Dunivin says something "immediately clicked" as she performed a solo in a ballet and tap performance.

"My mom had said, 'I don't know if she'll be able to do this by herself; she's only 4.' But Bob Cole, my teacher, said he knew I could do it. I looked like a little ant on this big stage, but I just lapped it up. I loved being onstage and performing for people," Dunivin recalls.

Dunivin credits this trait in part to being an only child with strongly supportive parents. She also thinks being around adults had a positive effect on her.

There's a time to listen, and a time to talk,
And you might have to crawl even after you walk.

Her love for combining music and movement never waned during her schooldays. Although she earned a scholarship to study ballet in New York, she decided to major in human performance at either UCLA, Mills College or San Jose State University.

"I thought it'd be a more sensible route than the life of a ballerina," she says. She ruled out UCLA because it was too close to home and decided against Mills because it was for women only. That left SJSU, from which she graduated in four years with a bachelor's degree in human performance with a concentration in dance.

While in college she also became reacquainted with Jim Dunivin, the cute boy she'd known since elementary school but had lost touch with. They would later marry and have two daughters, Erin and Meka.

Although many students push themselves through college in four years, Dunivin's graduation was all the more remarkable because of the automobile accident she was in as a freshman.

Among her worst injuries was a crushed right heel that required several reconstructive surgeries--and much pain--to piece back together. She spent nine months on crutches. Doctors told her she would never again walk normally and that she should change her major.

Dunivin proved them wrong on both counts. She healed better than they thought and made full use of all her resources, including therapy, exercise, a supportive family and creative perseverance.

"Dance was already a big part of my life. It was obvious to me I wouldn't be the dancer I once was, but I learned to adapt," she says. She had to forego the rigors of ballet but eventually could do all the other dances she previously enjoyed. This repertoire today includes tap, aerobics, jazz, modern, ballroom and country & western.

For five years, Dunivin was head of the dance department at Buchser Middle School in Santa Clara, where she also taught gymnastics. While there, she got involved with local dance groups, and through those connections found herself as a dancer and choreographer at West Valley College as well as a choreographer for local theater groups.

Dunivin was becoming caught in a large network of intertwined wires. But she didn't mind, because it was what she loved.

The longer I live, the more I believe
You do have to give if you want to receive.

When the family moved to Saratoga 25 years ago, they converted the garage and guest cottage on their wooded one-acre property into an airy dance studio complete with hardwood floors and a mirrored wall. Dunivin thought she and her family would be its main users, but that notion didn't last long.

"Friends began asking if a few of them could come by and have me teach them. It was very small and informal at first," she recalls. "It was never ever in any written form that I did this; I never advertised. It was all word of mouth."

That proved to be the best advertising. Over the years, Dunivin taught many different dance classes. Originally, she focused on teaching children--in schools and in her studio--especially while her daughters were young. She also developed a physical education program for Saratoga elementary schools during the 1970s.

"I wanted kids to learn early in life that the good feeling in giving and receiving is the same," she says in reference to the children's classes in her studio. After they learned routines, the children put on community recitals using Dunivin's big front yard and driveway. She also arranged for performances at convalescent hospitals and retirement homes. An accomplished seamstress, she sewed nearly all of the fanciful costumes herself.

"I could see the children grow from those experiences. They brought so much to those people and gained so much in return," she says. Some of these children now have little ones of their own, she adds.

At the same time she worked with children, she also taught various adult dance classes and ran an aerobics dance company whose members traveled to South Bay high-tech firms, hospitals and other companies. The group, "Dance with Energetics," helped employees relieve stress, socialize and get in better shape.

Eventually, Dunivin realized she was spreading herself too thin and took a six-month hiatus. After refreshing and regrouping, she focused on women's dance classes. Just as she encouraged the children to take their show on the road, Dunivin did likewise with her adult students and still does today. They call themselves "the Sasse Dancers" after Dunivin's maiden name, not to mention her vivacious outlook.

Seven or eight years ago, Dunivin became interested in country & western dancing through a friend who taught at West Valley College. Sometimes accompanied by husband Jim, she attended various local country dance classes and decided she liked it so much she wanted to teach it. And that she does, to women and couples.

Her repertoire now features line dances as well as the two-step, country waltzes and West Coast swing. She also teaches patterned couple dances such as the Cowboy Cha-cha, the Drifter and the Horseshoe Special.

Now when the Sasse Dancers perform at retirement homes, convalescent hospitals and other care facilities--including the Odd Fellows Home in Saratoga and the Alzheimer's Activity Center in San Jose--they offer an eclectic show of aerobics, country line dances and others.

"We don't even consider ourselves a performers' group; we're basically an exercise group. What we enjoy most is interaction with the people. We go out and encourage the residents to join us. It opens up a floodgate of memories for them," she says with a smile. "I cannot say enough about all the great women who've crossed my path here at the studio. These women have been a real gift to one another."

To those women, Dunivin is the gift.

"There's a nucleus of us that have stayed because of Clareen's incredible kindness and character. We've become close friends. Clareen says she's not the reason the group's stayed together, but she is. She's really sets the standard. She's brings out the best in everyone," says Saratogan Ginny Schlomann, a friend and student of Dunivin's for 15 years.

"She's a wonderful, thoughtful teacher. She often talks in general terms without anyone knowing who she's actually correcting. No one is ever embarrassed," Schlomann says, admitting to being a intimidated at first by the thought of dancing in front of others. "She also has a knack for writing [aerobic] dance routines that are fun to watch and fun to do."

Gay Crawford, another friend from Saratoga, says she once shared Schlomann's reluctance to dance and will always share her warm sentiments for Dunivin.

"Clareen's love of life is contagious to everyone around her. She has sensitivity and love and compassion for everyone and everything. It just energizes everyone around her," she says.

Furthering that energy is the annual Western dance party and potluck Dunivin throws to give her friends--students and nonstudents alike--a chance to socialize and show off their boot-scooting talents. The theme of this year's hoedown, which took place June 7, was "The Last Roundup."

Don't worry 'bout what you don't know;
Life's a dance you learn as you go.

With their children moved out and Jim's upcoming retirement, the Dunivins will be selling their home and moving from Saratoga sometime this year. They may move somewhere close enough so Dunivin can still teach some classes at a rented studio, but she's not sure yet.

"I'd like to express my thanks to this community for all their support over the years. I just want in some way to say thank you to everyone," she says with a smile that is both happy and sad.

When not teaching in her studio or spending time with her family and friends, Dunivin keeps busy volunteering with the American Cancer Society, especially in teaching dance at the ACS's two major annual fundraisers: the outdoor Festival for Life in June and the Cattle Baron's Ball in September.

She also sits on the board of directors of and teaches yoga for the Los Gatos Healing Center/Miracle Resource Center, a nonprofit educational psychospiritual organization offering meditation, exercise, healing and stress-reduction classes, workshops and support groups on a variety of topics, guest speakers and other programs.

Additionally, each year before Christmas, Dunivin rounds up her circle of friends to donate time, money or supplies to a family in need who for some reason is not helped by a social service agency.

"It was always a win-win situation for me," Dunivin says of her lifelong attitude toward doing for others. "Giving and receiving are truly the same; it's a cycle."

In the dance of life, Clareen Dunivin is a teacher worthy of imitation.

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