SHE’S AN ISLANDER WHEN SHE CHOOSES TO BE Thespian, dancer and professor Sandra Halvorson purchased the Cuban rumba dress at left at the Magic & Fun Shop. A trip to Hawaii yielded an authentic grass skirt and uli uli, feathered gourd rattles that proved to be a tough item to pack.
youthful energy about her. Her smooth, unblemished face looks like it has been maintained with expensive regimens, but in truth it receives nothing more than twice-daily applications of Clinique lotion. While a student at Colorado State University, Halvorson approached a graduate student, seeking help with her math homework. A relationship developed and she married at 18 a man who collected rocks and once built a 14-foot fiberglass boat. After earning his doctorate in mathematical statistics — is there any other kind? — Wade Halvorson weighed job offers in four states and opted to go to work for Control Data in his home state of Minnesota. There, Dr. H attended Normandale Community College for 10 years, taking one class per semester, and becoming a member of the school’s dance line, the Dandylions, at age 26. Their outfits included underpants with a smiley face on them. The senior-most Dandylion attracted the attention of a newspaper reporter, MayBelle Wright, and told her that she wasn’t sold on women’s liberation. “I don’t even mind being a sex object,” she said at the time. “In fact, I rather like it.” That was then, and there were MayBelles about. Halvorson started dancing at the age of 2 and took classes as a child in tap, jazz and ballet. In Minnesota, she discovered a liking for belly dancing upon taking a class from the author of a book on the subject at a Dayton’s department store. She went on to teach belly dancing at the Betty Crocker Creative Learning Center, an adult education initiative of the General Mills Corp. Not long ago, at the urging of one of her nine grandchildren, she taught herself the Savage Dance, a Tik Tok phenomenon. She is thinking about offering belly dancing lessons via Zoom. Halvorson and Wade moved to Tallahassee after he accepted a job with ETA Systems that involved installing a supercomputer at FSU. That gig fizzled after the computer proved to be less than super, but at that point, Halvorson was on a roll as a student at FSU, where she would earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a doctorate in communication. Wade, who died in 2008, eventually went back to work with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Through recent years, Halvorson has enjoyed life with her dear companion Delray Miller, whom she met at Mickee Faust, where he, too, is a member of the company. Born in Kansas, Halvorson lived in Colorado for 24 years before moving to Minnesota, where her two children remain, and then to Florida. A Florida resident now for decades, she has never much visited its beaches. “They’re so sandy,” she said. “I used to love to go to the mountains, but when I look out over the water, I can’t help but think of all the dead sailors out there.” “In Colorado, you never thought about all the dead miners or the perished members of the Donner Party?” I asked. “No, I never did, but I will now,” Dr. H replied. “Thank you for that.” Wherever she travels, Halvorson is surely to go lightly afoot. “Dancing is my true love,” she said. TM TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM
May-June 2021
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