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Her Mother's (Dance) ( Dance) Shoes Studio Owner Upholds Legacy
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60+ PROFILE // STORY BY KAREN CAMPBELL // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY RENEE' LUDWICK
D
iane Hansen’s first steps could have very well been a shuffle-ball-change or a pirouette.
“From a very young age, maybe at 2 or 3 years old, I started dancing,”said the owner of Kitty Lee Dance Studio, now 65. It was Diane’s mother, LaVon “Kitty” Lee Dahlberg, a Chicago-born, Chicago company-trained professional dancer, who inspired her daughter and many others in the Omaha community to fall in love with dance. Diane said she was known as “Miss Kitty” to her students. Talent runs deep in Diane’s family: Kitty’s great-aunt was the famous silent fi lm star Lila Lee. Lila’s son was James Kirkwood Jr., who won a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for writing A Chorus Line. Lila Lee also lived in Chicago and was Kitty’s biggest supporter. “I loved when my grandmother would tell me about their visits,” Diane said. “Lila Lee would move the furniture aside and just let my mom just dance and dance.” Kitty’s family moved from Chicago to Omaha, where she continued to perform. Diane said her mom was a big part of Omaha’s Show Wagon, a mobile stage with performers who went to parks and neighborhoods, “back in the day.” Kitty met and married husband Jack (who also loved to dance) and they remained in Omaha. When their family was young, Kitty wanted to stay home with Diane and her two older brothers, but she also wanted to teach dance.
“She started out teaching neighborhood kids in the basement. That went really well and her studio just grew.” -Diane Hansen “She started out teaching neighborhood kids in the basement,” Diane said. “Th at went really well and her studio just grew.” Shortly after she started teaching, the family moved to another home in North Omaha near 54th and Browne streets and Kitty taught out of that basement for about 18 years.
While growing up in Omaha, Diane was active in the studio, particularly when it came to choreography. She graduated from Benson High and studied business at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, knowing she would one day take over the dance business. While in the middle of her studies, a friend called and asked her to join a dance troupe out of Miami, Florida. Diane laced her dance shoes and put a hold on school. “We joined a USO tour and spent a month in Singapore, traveled up and down the east coast, and went to Madrid,” she said. It was in Madrid that Diane met her now-husband Scott, 70, who has since retired from the Air Force and Union Pacific. The couple wed and had three children—Ryan, 40; Leslie, 37; and Lauren, 34. The military family moved to Arkansas, Texas, and Illinois. Diane continued to teach dance—she taught on military bases and even had a studio in Lebanon, Illinois, outside Scott Air Force Base, which Diane said “grew like crazy” to the point she would have had to relocate to a bigger town. “We ended up coming back here and I helped [Kitty] run the business,” she said. “While I was away, though, I would help my mom with the studio from afar.” The studio continued to flourish, and over the years, as student numbers rose, the studio relocated to rented space at 90th and Blondo streets, 120th and Blondo streets, and 156th Street and West Dodge Road. Kitty continued to run the business like clockwork while Diane taught and helped out with the business. The studio is now located on the southwest corner of 168th & Blondo streets in a building owned by Diane and her husband.
“She was just always right there so when she passed, it was really hard,” Diane said. “She was the best at handling every situation.” Maintaining a small family business is important to Diane, as it was to Kitty. The studio has four full-time employees, between 10 and 12 part-time staff, and between 475 and 500 students. Diane said she does not have plans to open another studio location. “We have grown over the years, but have still always kept it a small family business,” she said. “I do not want the studio to ever get so big that I am not hands-on or don’t know every person.”
“ We have grown over the years, but have still always kept it a small family business. I do not want the studio to ever get so big that I am not hands-on or don’t know every person." -Diane Hansen Following in the footsteps of their mom and grandmother, Diane’s daughters are employed as teachers at the studio and have been in dance all their lives. The majority of her studio’s teachers grew up in Omaha and were dancers there. When asked if her daughters will one day take over the studio, Diane responded with a chuckle, “I am sure they will. I won’t be here, but my hope is the studio will be around for at least another hundred years.” Visit kittyleedance.com for more information.
In 1994, Kitty retired. She was 80 years old and wanted to simply enjoy the studio and not experience any of the burdens of the business. “Even after she retired, she would always come in and help the teachers and be with the kids,” Diane said, smiling. “Everybody really loved her and looked up to her.” Kitty passed away in 2013 at age 85.
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NOSTALGIA • S RY TO
BY TERRY J EN
N B Y DE R E K J O Y SIG
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PHOTO & N • DE SE
Wednesday might have been Comic Book Night for the gang in the popular TV show Big Bang Theory, but during the Silver Age of comic books —the late 1950s to approximately 1970, according to various sources—Thursday was the best day of the week for comic book collectors. Young readers who dreamed of saving the world were eager to discover their next great adventure. In Omaha, Thursday was new comic book day. Omaha collector David Parsow discovered his first comic book by accident. When he was about 8 years old, Parsow went shopping with his mother and somehow wandered into a Salvation Army store. As he explored the aisles, he noticed a small magazine with a brightly colored cover. The image of a man dressed like a spider caught his attention. Parsow went to his mother and asked her for a dime. “I must have read that Spiderman book 5,000 times. It was the only comic book I had, and I didn’t know what comic books were. It was just so cool,” he said. Young Parsow was hooked. Shortly thereafter, Parsow went with his family to the Country Club Grocery at 50th and Hamilton streets. “I walked in there the first time and this guy had a rack of comic books, apparently the new comic books, and there must have been 100 different titles.” So he grabbed one of each and asked to buy them all. Parsow’s mother suggested he put them back and see if he earned his allowance for the week. “So I got home and started mowing the lawn, even though it was probably already cut, and shoveled, and whatever, and then finally I earned enough that I could go and buy those comic books,” Parsow explained.
When they were older, Parsow and his brother would ride their bikes to Cris’ Rexall Drug on 50th and Dodge Streets. “We’d go in and grab the new comic books and sit at the soda fountain. We’d be reading the comic books and drink cherry phosphates and just have a blast. It was just, you know, like we lived for that first Thursday of every month,” he said. Parsow still believes there was a deeper meaning in the stories he read. “I just thoroughly enjoyed them and they gave me life, the big strong guy, the good guy always winning. Aspirations of being strong and powerful and being able to fly through the air, big muscles and such, and the hero always got the girl. Those were things a young child wanted or needed to know, that there was hope and something to look up to,” he recalled. Comic books were such a huge part of Parsow’s life, in fact, that even when he followed his father’s footsteps as a clothier, comic books—or at least one creator of them—played a role. Parsow attended several comic book collector conventions over the years, including one in 2007 at which he missed meeting Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee because the program was incorrect. Parsow had just left the hospital against his doctor’s wishes due to chest pains. His gumption to risk a heart attack to attend a comic book signing impressed the notable writer, who arranged to see Parsow shortly thereafter. The meeting eventually led to a business deal—rare, signed comics in payment for bespoke suits. Comic book collector Glenn Joy first discovered comic books when he was about 5 years old. The Adventures of Superman was his favorite television program, and one day Joy spotted his hero on a comic book at Gibson’s, a local mom-and-pop store. The rest was history. “Back then they
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didn’t have a comic book store, so you just kind of went wherever you could find the comics. Of course, I didn’t have the money all the time, so I could go when I could get the money scraped up or my parents would buy some for me,”Joy said. As with many boys, pocket money wasn’t always easy to come by. “I used to collect pop bottles because back then they didn’t have litter laws, so people threw pop bottles everywhere. And so you collect them and take them back to the store and they’d give you three cents for each bottle, so if you get three bottles, right there you’ve got like nine cents. If you got four bottles you got enough to buy a comic book,” Joy remembered. Joy and his siblings shared the comics they bought. “Back then, we didn’t have central air, so it got hot in the summer so you’d just go outside on the porch or something and look at the comics. I’d read them on the porch, or in the basement where it was cooler,” Joy said. Some of the books were lost over the years, but he still has nearly all of his original collection. Joy said the biggest change in comics over the years came when story lines extended through several issues. “They’re all continued now. You know, it used to be a one shot deal. You’d get three stories in one comic book and that was it. Since they started continuing everything, you have to get, like, every issue or the story lines are hard to follow,” he explained. Now, new comic book day in Omaha is Wednesdays, and although both Parsow and Joy continue to shop for new titles, they are just as likely to return to favorite comics in their collections. Kept in the pages of those treasured magazines are fond memories of summer adventures with old super-friends.
SECTION // STORY BY XXXXXXX // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY // SECTION //
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Connie Lee Thh rives Onstage 60+ ACTIVE LIVING // STORY BY JEFF LACEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
60+ ACTIVE LIVING One of her first memorable leading roles was in the play After the Fall by Arthur Miller, in 1989. During that production, she met Cathy Kurz, who then ran Brigit St. Brigit Theater. Lee cited Kurz as someone who really fanned her passion for the craft of acting.
hen she was in fifth grade, Connie Lee was cast as Gretl Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. The production was being staged by Thomas Jefferson High School, and it was Lee’s first role. She had taken tap and ballet classes in a local studio with Marsha Tiessen (then Marsha Bigham), who would become her dance mentor for many years to come; however, she hadn’t had any acting classes. She tried it anyway. That, as they say, was that. “I was hooked, and have been hooked ever since,” Lee explained. The flame that ignited in 11-year-old Lee during that production of The Sound of Music stayed lit. Decades later, Lee, 66 and approaching 100 total performances, is considered by many to be a gift to the Omaha theater community. She recently acted as Mrs. Helen Hubbard in the Omaha Community Theater’s production of Murder on the Orient Express, but the tracks of her story don’t stop there. Lee’s first professional show was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, staged at the Talk of the Town Dinner Theater in 1974, located in what is now the Shriners Temple on 84th and Center streets. From that point on (apart from a period of about 10 years from 1975 to 1986, in which her private life demanded most of her time), Lee has been steadily active in theater in and around Omaha. In 1987, Lee hit her stride. She had danced in a couple of operettas in the Norton Theater, and it was then she realized the direction she wanted to take regarding her stage life. “I figured out then that I liked doing scene work,” she explains. “I was falling in love with it. I did some shows at the Upstairs Theater, and The Firehouse, and I saw a production of a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Norton.” That is the production that Lee said really amplified the call to acting. “I saw that, and thought, ‘That. That is what I want to do.’” // 80 //
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The joy of learning the craft has become one of her central motivations. Lee loves to learn, and tries to see each role with fresh eyes. “I still don’t really know how to prepare for a role,” she said. “I go in thinking, ‘I have something to offer, but I need to find out what it is.’ I find it by working with the actors, the directors, the script. A lot of times, it just comes with thinking about the script.” Lee continued, “I learned by doing it. By doing and doing and doing, and working with good people.” Susan Baer Collins, a former director at Omaha Community Playhouse, can attest to Lee’s incredible work ethic and enthusiasm for theater. Collins said Lee is a gem in the Omaha theater community. They first worked together in 1993 when Collins directed Lee in The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. “She played an interesting character named Sabina,” Collins said. “She took it so seriously. Outside of rehearsal, Connie would find time during the day to get together and work on ideas. She always wants to get it right, and is always interested in hearing what the director says. She loves new ideas.” Collins has worked with Lee several times throughout the years, and said that Lee’s willingness to experiment and work with lots of different people is another characteristic that makes her special. “Connie is one of the few actors in town that moves easily from one theater to another, and has the kind of personality and ability…to do that,” Collins explained. Along with OCP and Brigit St. Brigit, Lee has performed at Shelterbelt, Bellevue Little Theatre, and more. “Omaha is a good area to be in theater,” Lee said. "There are so many groups around here doing really fine theater, and if you want to be involved, you can be. It doesn’t mean you will be cast, but you can be involved here. It’s also small enough that if you do it for a while, you get to know people. And more and more theaters are paying actors, too.”
She also thinks live theater is essential in today’s world. “Stories need to be told,” she said with urgency. “Everyone’s stories need to be told. More and more, we’re getting a wider array of stories, and stories by local playwrights, that are being well received.” Lee doesn’t see theater as frivolous. She makes a convincing argument that it’s not only fun, but a human necessity. “It’s a human need to tell stories, and to identify with characters,” Lee said. “The communal world that the actors and audience share, and will never be repeated again, is powerful. In an age of all this technological immersion, it is a truly human connection.” “It especially teaches empathy,” she believes. “Empathy grows from those theater experiences. It deepens our world.” One of the shows that embodies this for Lee was A Piece of My Heart at the Blue Barn Theatre, directed by Susan Clement, staged in 2002. The show was about women who served in the Vietnam War, and the experience culminated in a trip to Washington, D.C., in a performance for the 10th anniversary of the Women’s Vietnam Memorial, where the show was seen by an array of military personnel. “We wanted to get it right, and those vets just opened their arms,” Lee said. “That was just the most amazing experience. It changed my life.” That isn't to say that life in the theater is a constant stream of epiphanies and beautiful moments. There are also struggles. Lee faces a lack of roles for women her age, and the statistics suggest that the struggle for female actors, in general, is real. According to a 2022 report by The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, “In 2021, male characters outnumbered females by almost 2 to 1.” While this is a celluloid statistic, Actors like Lee still wrestle with issues of equity and representation. This doesn’t discourage Lee terribly. She is well respected, a master of her craft, and willing to explore new ideas. The recently retired administrative assistant shows no signs of theatrical slowing: currently, Lee is working on costuming for a SNAP! theater production, has just been asked to do a play reading for the Great Plains Theater Conference, and, of course, has been looking for potential shows to audition for. Lee is a wonderful example of what poet Maya Angelou suggested life’s mission should be; that is, “not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style."