COUNT BY COUNT: Syracuse City Ballet celebrates 20 years of turning out dancers

Two, two, three, four.

It’s been 20 years since Dattellas donned that bumblebee costume, but Rathbun’s voice still plays her in head the same way the smell of dried sweat and hairspray still clings to the walls.

Tucked away in the basement of Robinson Memorial Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, the pungent odor of dance pierces the nose upon entering the small, cramped studio.

The space has been acting as one of the classrooms for the Syracuse City Ballet for 20 years — 20 years of turning bumblebees into professional dancers. The company will begin its season Thursday with “An Intimate Evening With the Syracuse City Ballet.”

Rathbun founded the company in 1996. Many dancers train at Rathbun’s dance school — Ballet & Dance of Upstate New York, founded in 1990 — before filtering into the company.

She still teaches dancers ranging from ages 3 to 18 and has garnered a reputation for being tough on her students.

“I try to push people to beyond what they think they can do,” Rathbun said. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

The pounding rhythm of drums fills the room, reverberating up through the floor and bouncing off the walls. A dancer leaps and spins across the floor, head whipping around to find its mark. When the music subsides, the room is instead filled with the ballerina’s heavy breathing.

The corps de ballet consists of 20 dancers between the ages of 14 and 18 and allows them the opportunity to gain stage time alongside professional dancers. Students have left the school and moved on to obtain dance degrees and roles with professional dance companies.

Two former members of the company will return this week to dance in the season premier: Rathbun’s daughter and Jake Casey, who now dances with the Cincinnati Dance Company.

“I remember when I was younger and training there and they would bring in guest artists and other professional dancers,” Casey said. “It was super influential for me.”

Dattellas spent a number of years dancing professionally before returning to the company, where she now acts as the ballet mistress.

Ballet is gradually becoming more mainstream, Dattellas said. The norm of a tall, stick-thin girl is fading out with more muscular, less vertically-endowed dancers like Misty Copeland stealing the show.

Dattellas likened ballet classes to the training regime of a professional athlete playing football or baseball.

While the movements appear effortless, glistening beads of sweat turn to trickles as they track down the back of each dancer.

“Not everybody can do this — I hate to say it like that, but their feet are probably killing them,” Dattellas said. “But they push through it. They have to.”

The dancer hunches over the barre at the back of the room, panting after completing a movement. After a few moments, she straightens up, composes herself and joins her fellow ballerinas at the side of the studio.

Dancers spend up to five hours a day at the studio, seven days a week.

Sixteen-year-old Delaney Glassford has dedicated nine years to her craft, balancing dance and school.

Waking up at 6 a.m. every day, Glassford constantly snacks on pickles in addition to her regular diet to maintain a healthy electrolyte level, before heading to the studio for rehearsals — which can go as late as 10 p.m.

Glassford takes up to half an hour to get ready for rehearsal each day. Show days require between two and three hours of prep — time spent fixing hair and elaborate makeup.

A twisted, woven lock of hair spirals around a tight bun perched high on Glassford’s head. Some girls sport simple buns, while others wear intricate designs on their heads, but each wisp and strand is glued tightly in place.

Posters hang on the wall of the studio entrance where each dancer has inscribed their goals for the coming rehearsal period. Glassford’s focus is on her next performance.

“When I first go on, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, there’s thousands of people,’” Glassford said. “After a while you just get into it and don’t even notice they’re there. I feel like I’m free.”

Three, two, three, four.

Dattellas is now teaching her own choreography in a dress rehearsal for Thursday’s show. She shouts at her students in a similar manner to Rathbun 20 years ago.

“Rings, necklaces, jewelry — off.”

“Those nails have to go.”

“If Mrs. Rathbun were here and said, ‘No jewelry,’ would you be whining?”

Plain black leotards and pink ballet tights are the standard uniform for dancers. Their pointe shoes are constructed from paper mache, satin, leather and elastic.

Personality shines through in the cut of each dancer’s leotard. Some sport a straight back, others an intricate system of straps, one dancer has a sheer mesh back — a heavy contrast from the straight cut front.

Dattellas announces that a small black choker will be added to Thursday’s costume and a collective groan reverberates around the ballet barre and poster-lined studio walls.

The girls spend 15 minutes taping their toes, recalling horror stories about feet turned bloody and blistered from hours on pointe. One dancer compared pointe shoes to “a civil war on your feet.”

A pair of pointe shoes costs about $100, and can wear out in as little as two weeks. At any given time, each dancer could have up to 20 “dead pairs.”

The shoes cause the dancers to walk into the studio flat-footed and clunky, whacking the sprung dance floor with each step. But when the music starts, each ballerina snaps up, growing two inches and gliding across the room.

Dattellas and the assistant ballet mistress, Rachael Cierniakoski, watch from the sidelines with a critical eye. By the end of the first run through, Cierniakoski has three pages of notes and corrections for the dancers.

Instructors spend years making notes and giving corrections to each dancer, molding them into the ballerinas rehearsing for shows that sell out, with audience members coming from as far away as Canada.

“Some of these girls I have known since they were born, so to see them evolve into the young women they are now with the talent they have — it makes it fun for us,” Dattellas said.

Choreography is a collaborative process — Thursday’s show was created by Dattellas and Cierniakoski. Many shows incorporate choreography from several of the school’s instructors.

“I’ll be teaching choreography of Kathleen’s and all of a sudden, I’ll get this memory of ‘Somehow I remember doing this at one point,’” Dattellas said. “It makes it such a full experience because it comes full circle.”

Rathbun has no plans to retire, but is finally nearing a point where she feels she can — leaving the studio in younger hands that can take the company to the next level. That step consists of expanding the company’s outreach program — bringing dance to Syracuse city school children — and obtaining a new space.

One corner of the studio boasts awards, photos and signed ballet shoes from dancers that owe their careers to Rathbun and their instructors at the school.

Some of the photos that adorn the walls depict dancers who now have children — children that have just begun dance training with Rathbun.

“I always try to be the best role model I can be for them. Sometimes things get crazy in the theater when things aren’t working right and it’s difficult,” Rathbun said. “But we all kind of stick together.”

Four, two, three, four.

With only four days until the show opens, the partially-retired ballerina Dattellas agreed to dance. Cierniakoski laughed and explained that it took some persuading — Dattellas will make only the occasional cameo in a show.

Dattellas instructed the girls to take five and shooed them into the hallway.

Wearing a loose top that read “Meet me at the barre” above a drawing of a martini glass decorated with a pair of ballet shoes, she began to dance.

Mouthing the movements to herself, she darted across the floor, twisting and turning in a modern, jazz-style routine.

She smiled to herself as she saw her young proteges peering in through the open door, drinking in her every movement. They sat in a train-like formation, one peering over the shoulders of the next, mouths hanging open in awe.

As Dattellas whips around the space, her shoulder reveals a tattoo: Italian words in elaborate cursive. Her grandmother messily scrawled these words in a card presented to a young Dattellas after a ballet recital.

“Always remember to walk in the light, dream big and fear nothing.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, Stephanie Dattellas’ name was misspelled. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Banner photo by Frankie Prijatel | Senior Staff Photographer