.....It was 1952 when Marya Kennett began teaching dance out of her home on Orange Street in Goshen. The dining room was mirrored, support bars were hung, and a promise of "Saturdays only" made to Walter her husband.

.....With an unwavering passion to live with dance, she gradually added days to her teaching. Within two years, as the eating and dancing area in their home gained populance, she expanded and rented a local studio space. Forty-seven years later, she continues to instruct young dancers and share her ideas and experiences of classical dance. Her beliefs and philosophy are drawn from years of devotion. Kennett danced at the Latin Quarter, toured with the USO, and worked with such notables as Swoboda, Danilova, Stuart, Caton and the masterful creator, Fokine.

.....From these influences and her own beliefs, Kennett teaches her student the importance of discipline, commitment and responsibility. She stresses apprecitation and understanding of the music, and her dancers train their bodies by working with their brains and from within. Kennett, 78, remembers all of her students and likes to know who they are and how they are faring. This season, she proudly works again on body flexibility with friend and champion boxer Evander Holyfield.

.....Kennett creates from and basks in memories of a lifetime full of care, involvement and giving to the dancers she has taught. In her voice are delightful images unspoken, joys and experiences gleaned throught time and shared generously. In reflection of almost a half century of teaching in the area and 25 years at the helm of The Marya Kennett Ballet Theatre she renders, "I have helped a lot of girls into their professional lives and find that they carry on from their training."

.....Over the years, she has seen dancers change. The girls jump higher, are more stretched, and seem to acquire more style at a younger age, she observes. Balanchine (from the New York City Ballet), she says, changed things with a focus toward a certain body type and a demand for higher legs, more turns and complex steps. The focus of her teaching is technique. "Good technique is sometimes missing, and I get my students for a relatively short time," she says. "As they begin to get and understanding they move to the next place in their lives."

.....She also suggests they turn off the TV set in the evening. She speaks of her mother's strength in giving her "the dance." As a child she saw the Ballet Russe and it was clear she wanted to spend her life dancing. She pranced around the front room and into the street in her mother's dress and shoes. The moment she remembers most in her life is during the war. (She giggles, "Of course, the second World War," she reminds.) She was in the USO, and she remembers dancing at the hospital where soldiers lay injured. They pushed the beds to the side and they danced, sang and entertained the men

... "Anything to make them laugh. They would clap and move their shoulders if they could," she said. "I was gratified to make them happy." Raised in the little town of Suncook, N.H., about seven miles from Concord, Marya Brouillette started dancing at the age of 4, and she's seldom stopped. "My mother took me to Concord to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and afterward that was all I wanted to do," she said. The young ballerina was helping to teach classes in Suncook by age 12. All through high school she took the train weekly to dance school in Boston, leaving at 4 am to get there in time for and 8 am class. By the time she was 16, Marya had her own little studio in her parents' farmhouse where she taught local students.

.....A solo career took her away from Suncook and around the work until she married Walter Kennett and settled in Goshen in the early 1950's. They reared five children, and she introduced hundreds of others to the joys of dance, increasing her commitment after her husband's death in 1974. Her son Lee, founded the Kennett School of Gymnasticts in Goshen and daughter Jocelyn runs the Kennett Pre-School at the same location. In a world where some dancers burn out by their mid-30's, Marya Kennett can't imagine stopping. "I've had no health setbacks, and after five kids I think I was strong enough to do anything," she said.