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BY BRIAN ROURKE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
It doesn't matter when you meet. Herci Marsden looks the same: like a prima ballerina.
She wears tights, stage makeup and enormous eyelashes that rise and fall like palm fronds fanning a sultan.
Enter the Marsden kingdom. Here, in a small studio in the woods of Lincoln, for 45 years Marsden has ruled, schooled and delivered dance to a state once woefully lacking. "Ballet is my passion," Marsden says. "Notice I didn't say dance. I say ballet."
When Marsden, 67, says "ballet," it's with authority, and an accent. Until 1958, she lived in the former Yugoslavia, where she met and married dancer Myles Marsden. Then she returned with him to his native Rhode Island.
A bastion of ballet it wasn't.
"There was nothing," Marsden says. "Just a couple of schools."
In 1960, the Marsdens started the state's first semi-professional performance dance company: the State Ballet of Rhode Island.
The Marsdens have since parted. But never has Herci left State Ballet. She has instructed hundreds of dancers over the decades, propagating the art and producing performers who now lead other local companies.
For that, Marsden's regarded as Rhode Island's First Lady of Ballet.
This is a woman whose whole world is ballet, who leaves it only when she absolutely has to, who dances daily, who only twice has cut classes short - both times to deliver babies within the hour -and whose granddaughter is older than her youngest son.
Step inside.
But first, remove your shoes. Sand and studios don't mix.
All the history's here, in framed photos. They cover the walls, and chronicle the company.
There are black-and-white pictures, and color ones, too, a great many of Marsden, who performed until age 51. Then there are the others.
"I love these kids," Marsden says. "I know them all. I know where they are.": There are pictures of Marsden's children: Ana, Richard and Mark, who are all dancers. Richard and Mark perform with the company. Ana choreographs, instructs and serves as its executive director.
But Marsden's also referring to other children, most of whom are listing in the pictures. Few hang straight. Such is the tremorous aftermath of dance.
Marsden points to one photo after another. You recognize faces. It's a who's who of Rhode Island dancers.
That's Colleen Cavanaugh of Providence as a girl. She's a doctor now, and an independent choreographer.
"Herci Marsden came here and built dance up," Cavanaugh says. "There wasn't anything else here at the time."
For more than 10 years, Cavanaugh took dance classes at Marsden's studio, which Cavanaugh called her "home away from home," a source of artistic constancy and stability.
Marsden presents dance one way: her way, which is Russian classical ballet.
"I grew up thinking modern dance wasn't dance," Cavanaugh says. "It wasn't until I moved to New York that I began to explore that." The mere mention of modern dance makes Marsden wrinkle her nose.
"I don't like it," she says. "Martha Graham was beautiful and nice, but 1 couldn't watch too long."
Deb Meunier, founder and artistic director of Fusionworks, a modern dance company based in Lincoln and East Greenwich, performed with State Ballet for several years in her 20s.
"There was a way you did things," Meunier says. "You do this. You don't ask why. You don't need to know why."
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For Meunier and many others, Marsden provided & strong dance foundation.
"That's something valuable she has done for this state and ballet," Meunier says. "She has been a vehicle for hundreds and hundreds of dancers."
That includes Mary Ann Mayer, Festival Ballet Providence's dance education director.
"The whole organization had a great effect on us in terms of who we were as people," she says.
At 15, a friend of Mayer's died in a car crash. Marsden encouraged Mayer to return to dance.
"She was right," Mayer says. "I had to get back to what I loved. It was the place to be. It was a comfort."
A stern taskmaster
For the most part, it was also the only option, particularly for aspiring performers.
"I wouldn't be a dancer today if it wasn't for State Ballet," Mayer says. "There wasn't anywhere else to go." Some people couldn't afford to go, but they did.
Miki Ohlsen, founder and artistic director of Island Moving Company, a Newport-based contemporary ballet troupe, took classes for 13 years with Marsden, on scholarship.
"I was just mesmerized by Herci and her wonderful accent and her perfect way of being a ballerina," Ohlsen says.
Marsden was firm but fair, according to Ohlsen, who was "scared to death of her."
You can see why. In one framed black-and-white photo, Marsden's sitting in her director's chair, conducting class, looking stem, pointing at people and saying something.
"Of course I'm yelling at the kids," Marsden says. "I get really excited."
Technical defects in dance won't do, Marsden says. They must be corrected immediately. OthetWise, she says, they become ugly habits.
In this same photo, one baby is in Marsden's anns, another is at her feet. "I wanted my children to be in the studio so they would know me," she says. "I didn't want them to just know me as the strange woman who was always wearing tights."
No other career
Dance is all Marsden has ever known, or ever wanted to know. When you ask what else she considered for a known, or ever wanted to know. When you ask what else she considered for a career, she seems offended.
"Never in my life," she says. "I was born to dance. I danced on tables and chairs, wherever I could. 'Look at me!' "
In Split, Croatia, Marsden grew up in an almost completely artistic family. Her father was a professional tenor; her sister a soprano; and her brother a trumpeter. And in one production, everyone performed together -- on the stage and in the orchestra pit.
"Our mother, you know, was not so musical," Marsden says. "So she would be at home waiting for us with supper." Marsden began dancing at the age of 5, and made her professional debut at 13.
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