McPhail family members Kristin Worley, Judy McPhail, Elizabeth Worley and Edwina Worley with SMSD “family members” Kelly Treybig and Kasey Treybig.
B lood relations or not, many Austinites
consider themselves part of the SMSD family. Kelly Treybig met Miss Shirley when she was 4 years old, after the Air Force had moved her dad’s job from Turkey to Austin. She was allowed to watch the class with her mom, and from then on, she would wear her yellow tutu and tap shoes all the time. She went on to attend what was then Southwest Texas State University to study child development and dance, and when she graduated, she called Miss Shirley. “She said, ‘Well, of course you will come teach for me,’ in typical Shirley fashion,” Treybig remembers. “That was the summer of 1986, and I’ve been with SMSD ever since.” Now, Treybig’s daughter, Kasey, also teaches at the studio, working at the Dancer’s Den and choreographing for SMSDance Troupe, the performance group for the studio. “I often tell people that, in a way, I was dancing at SMSD even before I was born, since my mother, Kelly, was teaching there while she was pregnant with me,” Kasey Treybig says. “When I was 2 years old, I asked my mom when I would get to start taking classes at SMSD. She told me that I needed to be potty-trained and couldn’t wear my Pull-ups anymore, so I immediately took off the one I had on and went and put my big-girl panties on. I started my first class with Miss Trish the summer before I turned 3.” Trish Kellam, or Miss Trish, didn’t grow up dancing at the studio, but she is most students’ first memory of SMSD,
70 | Austin Woman | may 2016
having taught at the studio for 42 years. In the early days, she would teach seven hours in a row of classes consisting of dancers 8 years old or younger. “We have people call the studio and ask, ‘Is Miss Trish still there?’ ” Edwina Worley says. “She’s been a huge mainstay over the years.” Now almost 80, Kellam still loves her “babies,” as she calls her students, and considers teaching at SMSD a blessing. While teaching, she uses a cane covered in roses that her students fondly call Rosie. “My doctors want me to quit and I just say, ‘No, no, no,’ ” Kellam says. “I love teaching, and my heart still has all the love to give. I just love when my babies come running in the door. I just want to love them and hold them. It’s just wonderful.” Those who have danced at SMSD throughout the past 46 years say the family aspect of the studio is what sets it apart. Mandy Niles began dance with Kellam and Shirley McPhail when she was 4 years old. “Miss Trish is one of my most memorable teachers and was absolutely the reason that I signed up my daughter at age 3 for dance at Shirley McPhail’s,” Niles says. “If she could have even a taste of the love of dance that Miss Trish shares, then I didn’t want her to miss that opportunity. Watching her teach my daughter is like having time stand still. Familiar songs, phrases and sweetness washed over my daughter as she tiptoed across the floor in her pink ballet shoes.”
Jennifer Hutcheson has taken tap classes at SMSD for the past 10 years, and her son started taking classes when he was 4 years old. “It feels like you are part of the dancing family they’ve created over the past 40 years,” Hutcheson says. “The family atmosphere continues through all of the adult dancers who treat each other like extended family.” Because of this, the instructors have a connection with the students that goes beyond teaching shuffle steps and pliés. Through the years, it’s estimated the studio has supported more than 25,000 students. Some of those students have gone on to be Kilgore Rangerettes, Dallas Cowboy and Houston Texan cheerleaders or dance teachers themselves. “We genuinely care about each other and every student that dances across our floors,” Kelly Treybig says. “We know not many of the children or adults will dance professionally or want to teach dance later in life, but if they do, we want to give them the structure and discipline and a base to build upon that can take them as far as they want to go.” “Edwina is like a second mother to me, and Miss Trish is my grandmother. At least she loves me like she is!” Kasey Treybig says. “Not only are we all equally invested in the studio because of this, we are equally invested in one another, as well as our students. The McPhail family has created a lasting legacy at SMSD that reflects their kind and compassionate nature.”
When Shirley McPhail first opened SMSD’s
doors in 1970, she may not have known the famous quote by Martha Graham, the American choreographer and modern-dance icon, who said, “Dancers are the messengers of the gods.” But maybe she did, because the message from the dancers at her namesake school is that the show will always go on. Surely, after 46 years in business and no curtain call yet, that’s something to dance about for the McPhail family, even if Miss Shirley is dancing in heaven.
A portrait of Shirley McPhail that hangs in the studio.