How the Dance Community Helped California Wildfire Victims Continue Their Training

The postapocalyptic news footage from California at the start of the year seemed like something from a movie: 14 wildfires raged from January 7 to 31 in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. The fires caused at least 30 deaths and more than 200,000 evacuations, ultimately destroying 18,000 homes and businesses.

The Eaton Fire caused so much water, smoke, and mold damage at Unbound Dance Studio in Altadena that the landlord prorated and refunded January’s rent along with the security deposit, releasing Betsy Uhler Colombo from her lease. She had started the studio in 2018 with 17 students and had 220 before the fire. In addition to losing her studio, Colombo learned that over 30 students no longer had homes. Some had lost their schools. Others are still displaced because of smoke damage. 

“For many of my students, dance class is the one sense of normalcy they have left,” Colombo says. That’s why she hustled to orchestrate a class schedule utilizing six temporary locations less than two weeks after the fire.

“Having the consistency of the dance classes while we’ve had to relocate has been a huge benefit for my daughter, both emotionally and physically,” says Kevin Van Houten, father to 13-year-old Siena. Fellow dance dad Brock St. James agrees: “It’s been the one sane thing in our lives.” 

He learned his house burnt down as he was traveling home from a family vacation. “That studio was our bright, familiar, and necessary spot. It was 3 minutes and 37 seconds away from the house, so it was just a part of our lifestyle, a part of our community […] literally family,” says St. James, who is father to Guinevere Arnold, 8, and Kobe Arnold, 3. “Their classes have helped our girls emote. They get to see their friends and they know it’s going to be okay. There is still some normalcy in life.”

Scholarship Fundraisers

More than 50 people associated with Westside Ballet in Santa Monica—including students, faculty, directors, and alumni—also lost their homes in the Altadena and Palisades fires, executive director Allegra Clegg and artistic director Martine Harley among them. The facility itself was unharmed, so the executive team kept classes running as normal. “The studio has been a touchstone for everyone,” Harley says. “It was the structure that everybody needed, especially for our younger dancers, who could be with their peers and have somewhere familiar to land every day.”

Harley added that it has been overwhelmingly emotional and humbling to watch the dance community respond so swiftly and generously. The Westside Ballet Guild launched a GoFundMe campaign right away and raised $75,000 for emergency aid, and it established a Fire Relief Scholarship Fund that raised $25,000 to assist with tuition, performance fees, and dancewear replacements. The studio also collaborated with the Youth America Grand Prix during its benefit gala in early March, which featured guest artists like Tiler Peck (New York City Ballet principal dancer), Elisabeth Beyer (American Ballet Theatre soloist), and Isaac Mueller (Boston Ballet soloist). All proceeds directly supported fire-affected dance families, in collaboration with the Irvine Barclay Theatre Foundation. YAGP also showcased videos on its social media from Unbound dancers Guinevere Arnold and 10-year-old Emma Salas.

Dancewear Donations

Brittany Cavaco, a professional ballet dancer and founder of The Ballet Agency, a Los Angeles–based consulting and marketing firm that aims to elevate the standards of ballet in entertainment, learned of 42 Westside Ballet families that had lost their homes to the L.A. fires. It made her think about how difficult it would be to suddenly lose all of one’s dance attire, so she put out a call on social media asking for new or gently used dancewear donations, and she launched an online form for fire-impacted dancers to submit style and sizing requests. “It was so beautiful to see so many major dance brands reach out to us and so many others wanting to know how they could help,” says Cavaco, adding that the initial $30,000 worth of donations helped more than 75 dancers get back to class in early February.

The new and gently used dance apparel and shoe donations continued to arrive en masse from dance brands, studios, and companies from across the country. The Ballet Agency distributed those items, estimated to be $80,000 in value, to hundreds of dancers (ages 2 to mid-80s) during a two-day outdoor event in Westside Ballet’s parking lot. The remainder of the donated items were given to Palisades Dance Studio, which was destroyed along with the homes of 98 of its students and the studio’s owners, Cavaco says.

Colombo, who recently found a new permanent home for Unbound Dance Studio, has also been overwhelmed by generous donations of new and gently used dance apparel and costumes from across the country. The dancewear and costume company Weissman donated 80 percent of the spring recital costumes she had initially planned to order, and other studio owners have supplied the rest. Not one student affected by the fires has had to purchase anything. “It’s all been covered by donations,” Colombo says, adding that she waived tuition fees for fire-impacted students and performance fees for all of her students. “The national dance community truly came together to help us. We are definitely feeling the love.”

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