Not Just Another Johnson at the Beach

Lorin and Lisa Johnson in Reunions, 1998, www.lorinjohnson.com

There’s something about the Johnsons when it comes to the dance department at Cal State Long Beach. Lorin and Lisa Johnson are husband and wife and have both taught ballet at the university, among other things . Keith Johnson http://www.csulb.edu/depts/dance/faculty_pages/full_time/kjohnson/k_johnson.htm is a modern teacher there. Holly Johnston http://cfa.lmu.edu/programs/dance/faculty/part/johnston.htm taught modern dance there last spring but is currently at Loyola Marymount University www.lmu.edu. However, for this blog post, I decided to interview Lisa Johnson, my ballet professor this semester at California State University Long Beach, who has been teaching there since 2006. Here is her bio on the CSULB website: http://www.csulb.edu/depts/dance/faculty_pages/part_time/ljohnson/lisa_johnson.html



Lisa Johnson www.csulb.edu

Born in Long Beach, California, Johnson began dancing at the age of five at Audrey Share School of Dance in Long Beach. She trained in the Royal Academy of Dancing Method (RAD) http://www.rad.org.uk/ for five to six years. Johnson has vivid memories of her teacher, Audrey Share.  “She was a cute little English lady,” says Johnson. Johnson remembers dancing in a Russian gathering of the green and with a bird cage under Share’s tutelage. In 1981, David Wilcox bought the school and changed the name to Ballet Arts Center of Southern California http://longbeachballet.com/history.html.
 Johnson continued there for another eight years, attending summer programs on scholarship at Marin Ballet http://www.marinballet.org, Cleveland Ballet http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=CB2, the School of American Ballet http://www.sab.org, and Toronto’s National Ballet School http://www.nbs-enb.ca/about/default.aspx. In addition, Johnson was awarded first place in Marguerite A. Hoffman national ballet competition at UCLA and was a semi-finalist in the Prix de Lausanne. http://www.prixdelausanne.org Johnson then accepted an apprenticeship with the National Ballet of Canada http://national.ballet.ca/ when she was 18. Apprentices got to train with the school and dance with the company. Johnson enjoyed a western tour of Canada where she danced in Napoli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoli_(ballet) , Giselle, and La Bayadere http://dance.about.com/od/famousballets/tp/Classical_Ballets.htm.

Lisa Johnson www.csulb.edu

However, at five feet eight inches, Johnson was considered quite tall for a dancer. She realized if she was to have a chance to dance better roles, she needed to join a smaller company. She then joined New York City’s Feld Ballet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Feld a company that was exclusively devoted to performing contemporary ballet choreography by Eliot Feld. However, the turned in movements and pointe shoes didn’t mix very well for Johnson. She soon developed a stress fracture and could not plié, which is a basic ballet step where the dancer bends their knees. “They fired me, “says Johnson, “and I went back home.” Although Johnson notes that this practice is now considered illegal, she was not protected back then.  “I did perform one piece,” says Johnson. “I had healed enough so that I could put on my flat shoes. I learned a lot of their rep as I was forced to go to the theatre every night. I learned a lot by watching.”
Johnson was able to recover once she came back to California. She did a great deal of guesting all over Southern California, including City Ballet of San Diego http://www.cityballet.org/school/index.php and State Street Ballet http://www.statestreetballet.com/ Johnson also did commercial work, which included a Haagen-Dazs commercial which she believes only aired in Japan. Johnson was one of the swans with pointe shoes on a lit stage. The lead girl, also in a swan costume, held an ice cream cone instead of dancing. “They made fake mashed potatoes for ice cream and varnished it; something like that,” says Johnson, “It was pretty funny to see it behind the scenes.”




Lorin and Lisa Johnson in Reunions, 1998, www.lorinjohnson.com

Johnson then danced with Germany’s Hamburg Ballet http://www.hamburgballett.de/e/index.htm in 1995 before retiring from dancing. “I got to experience the classical and contemporary throughout my career,” says Johnson, “I achieved what I wanted to. That’s why I was content to retire at 28. After a period of time I began teaching, and I found that I really enjoyed teaching.” Johnson’s husband, Lorin Johnson http://lorinjohnson.com/, is also part of CSULB’s faculty. They worked in the same building in New York when she was with Feld Ballet and he was with American Ballet Theatre. www.abt.org The experience repeated itself when he was with San Francisco Ballet and she was attending auditions in the same building. However, they did not meet until they were paired up to dance as guest artists with Ballet Pacifica http://balletpacifica.org/. They now have a son and a daughter, a dog, two cats, and two fish. Her daughter, Annelise, is 11 and loves the violin. In the future, Johnson sees herself continuing to teach, but not necessarily choreographing. Although Johnson has taught at several schools, Orange County High School of the Arts http://www.ocsarts.net/ is the only other place that she is currently teaching at. “I enjoy what I do, so I’d like to do it as long as I can,” says Johnson, “I would like to help children succeed in whatever they’re going to do and be there for my kids.”