Profile Story: Michelle Heffner Hayes

                 In the front of a dance studio tucked away in Robinson Gymnasium, Michelle Heffner Hayes demonstrates the proper technique for flamenco dancing.

"Heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe," Heffner Hayes, a 40-year-old associate professor of dance, shouts to 20 students who try to mimic her complicated footwork. Heffner Hayes' black hair hangs down to her shoulders. She wears a fuchsia silk skirt that hugs her long legs as she dances.

To her right, a guitarist strums a fast-paced Spanish beat. The students' long, ruffled skirts bounce behind her as they stomp their black tap shoes to the rhythm.

 "Michelle's very passionate about her work and teaching everything she knows to us," said Toni Bolger, Des Moines, Iowa, senior. This semester, she's taking Heffner Hayes' class for the second time.

 Wyatt Meriwether, Burlington senior and also a student in Heffner Hayes' class, said she was good teacher.

"She's one of the best faculty members," he said.

Heffner Hayes specializes in contemporary dance and flamenco.

"Contemporary dance was my first love, but flamenco is my passion," she said.

Her passion for flamenco ignited when she was 6 years old after her grandparents brought Heffner Hayes, who was raised in Rossville, a doll wearing a fuchsia flamenco dress from Spain.

 "It left a lasting impression," she said.

Dancing had been all around her. Her mother danced constantly.

"My mother is someone who loves music," she said.

Her grandparents, who live in South Carolina, danced weekends at the Elks Club.

Heffner Hayes didn't start dancing until she was 17, however.

"I got a late start," she said.

Heffner Hayes had always wanted to take dance classes, but couldn't because Rossville had no dance studio within walking distance. At 17, though, she got her first car and her first job, as a bookkeeper for Manpower Prairie Services. As soon as she got paid, she drove to Topeka and enrolled in a jazz dance class at the Barbara Stevens Conservatory of Dance. 

But after graduating from high school Heffner Hayes went into a six-year law program at KU.

"I thought I would be a lawyer," she said.

She nonetheless dotted her class schedule with humanities classes she didn't need.

"I always loved the arts," she said. "I just wanted to learn."

In her sophomore year she gave into her passion and joined the University Dance Company.  It was then that she decided she wanted a career in dance.

"I feel the most myself when I am dancing," she said. "The most at home."  

In 1991, she got her bachelors in dance at KU. In 1996, she earned her Ph.D. in dance history from the University of California - Riverside. While attending graduate school, she taught at a community college and danced professionally.

 During that time she made very little money.

"I was starving," she said. "I would get a paycheck and I would be like okay, this is going to the electric bill or this is going to pay off a student loan."

Then, in 1996, she moved to Colorado and took a job as the artistic director of the Colorado Dance Festival. But as director, an administrator, she no longer danced.

"It was a huge move in my career," she said.

She enjoyed the job because she got to travel and meet other artists. During this time she still taught classes but didn't choreograph or dance professionally.

"I lost my identity as an artist," she said. "I was 38 and I wasn't ready to quit."

Miami was next - after 10 years as the artistic director in Colorado, she took a job as the executive director of cultural affairs at Miami Dade College. She got to use the Spanish she learned in high school and college classes.

"It's practically the first language in Miami," she said.

In 2006, Heffner Hayes applied for and received the job as associate professor of dance at KU after a professor retired.

"It was like a dream come true," she said. "I make a lot less money than I used to, but I get to be in the dance studio every day."

Her background in dance history and administration made her a great candidate, said Jerel Hilding, director of dance at KU.

"The fact that she's a KU alum was a nice little bonus," he said.

He said she also got the job because of her knowledge of flamenco, which expanded the dance classes the program could offer.

"She fills a lot of shoes," he said.

She also teaches dance improvisation and upper-division dance history.

 "She brings great passion and energy to her teaching and choreographing," said dance professor Muriel Cohen.

            Right now Heffner Hayes has a book about to be published. With a working title of "Flamenco History: Exoticism and the Dancing Body," the scholarly book explores representations of the female dancer and how those reveal the different social and cultural tensions at stake at any given moment.

            "I started researching for the book about 10 years ago, but it's really been about six years of intensive work," she said.

            Heffner Hayes plans to continue teaching and choreographing at KU.

"I have no intentions of stopping," she said.

 In the dance studio Heffner Hayes constantly moves. She shifts between the students, correcting arm positions and pulling shoulders back. When she returns to the front of the room to demonstrate a move, she is a bundle of energy. Her arms glide smoothly through the different positions, but her feet fly. Although she has her facial features composed in a serious manner befitting the dance, her eyes betray her. They look nothing but happy.