Glen Hunsucker
Written by Rick Archer, October 2003
Updated February 2008

After 30 years in the dance business, I think it safe to declare that Glen Hunsucker will forever remain the single most influential person in my career. 

Glen was my dance teacher for six years from 1978 to 1984.  Not only did Glen give me the valuable training I needed to become an effective dance teacher, it was Glen who saved my skin in 1980 when I was thrown out of my first dance studio.  

By offering his own studio as a safety net, he stepped in to offer me a place to land at a time when I had no other options. For the next eight years following the rescue, I subleased space from Glen at Dance Arts.  These years marked a period of great expansion for my business.  I compare the Dance Arts Era to the protective time a parent gives a child to grow up and prepare to take care of himself.  Under the shelter provided by Glen, I was able to mature as a teacher and a leader.

In an odd twist of fate, Glen indirectly donated his studio to me in 1988, the pivotal move that opened the door for SSQQ to become the largest dance studio in the city of Houston.  Unfortunately this was also an unhappy time that marked a parting of our ways. I never saw Glen again.  Nor did I speak to him again.  Here is the story.

Two weeks later on September 7, Victoria and I began taking private dance lessons from Glen.  Back in 1978 Glen's dance studio was located at Westbury Square. Dodging heavily padded poles throughout Glen's upstairs studio, Victoria and I would practice the Latin Hustle to our heart's content. 

The Latin Hustle was my first love in dance. With footwork similar to Swing, the Hustle was a fluid, graceful partner dance that worked perfectly to Disco music.  Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end...

As we learned the Hustle, Glen also taught us acrobatics. Victoria had a lot of guts. I have to hand it to her - there were moves where I threw her in the air and sometimes didn't catch her very well on the way down. I guess we were too young to know how stupid we were.  

But I will tell you what - thanks to Glen's expertise, Victoria's courage and athletic ability, and my broad shoulders, we looked pretty good for a while there. 

Victoria and I became terrific dancers, good enough to be hired to perform on many different occasions.  Glen had taught us very well.  

Unfortunately Victoria and I were more than slightly cursed when it came to performing.  We had one horrible mishap after another. 

Once Victoria almost broke her neck in a fall - with her feet straight up in the air, a ceiling fan we hadn't noticed caught her feet and toppled her over.  A miraculous catch on my part literally saved her life.  Another time during a performance she flew face-first into a corner - this time her skin-tight Disco pants was the culprit as she slipped right out of my arms. A third time during a performance she nearly collapsed a woman's throat with an accidental karate chop.  As we danced, a woman standing next to the floor accidentally stepped into the blow.

Although all of our mistakes were of the "freak accident" variety, they occurred nonetheless more frequently than seemed normal.  Each accident was very discouraging.

Plus Victoria had a lot on her mind that prevented her from putting in the extra time and concentration needed to overcome our jinx.  Sometimes things are simply not meant to be despite the best of intentions.  Victoria and I parted ways in 1982.  The story is chronicled in a rather bizarre tale known as Risky Business.

The Most Dangerous Man in Houston

First, my leads became very strong.  Let's face it, Glen was a phenomenal dancer and very light on his feet, but he still weighed 180 pounds.  I had to learn how to use my strength to move him.  He taught me how to put my 'follow' exactly where I wanted him/her to go.  If that meant using my shoulders to make it happen, well, then that's what I did.  I was taught to be firm.

Second, I learned to help when needed.  Glen was a gifted turner.  If a song was fast, he just turned a little faster and kept up with the beat.  No song was too fast for him.  Once in a while he encouraged me to use a little more speed in my lead to help him stay on the beat.  Throw more wood on the fire!  I learned that no matter how much power I used, he could handle it.  Glen was faster than a speeding bullet when he turned.

The first time I got out on the floor, I nearly sent my lady partner through the roof with my leads!!  I had learned to pull and push a "woman" who weighed 180 pounds and now these 110 pound women were in for the terror ride of their lives.

Yes, I admit I was a beast that first night, sort of a Hulk Learns To Dance episode. It might have been funny to watch from the sidelines, but I definitely hurt or frightened many women who danced with me with my power. 

Fortunately I realized my first mistake.  As I practiced, I began to adjust my leads to the size of my partner.  It took me longer to overcome my second problem.  I was using too much power on spins, but I wasn't aware how much women disliked what I was doing. 

I quickly discovered no woman I ever danced with could turn as fast as Glen did, a fact which increased his already Mythic status in my eyes.  And since Glen had encouraged me to use force to help him catch the beat, I assumed this was okay for all women as well.  

Having trouble turning fast enough?  Here, let me help you turn faster!! 

That's when I would pump up the volume. 

Further Insights and Discoveries

Glen had some interesting training methods.  One incident that comes to mind was the time I had fits learning the Compression technique in Waltz.  I have to confess I am not a natural dancer.  I learn slowly.  Nothing ever comes easily to me on the dance floor, a fact that has embarrassed me all my life.  I wish I could move gracefully without having to work at it so hard.  But if persistence is the only way I can learn, then that's what I will have to do.  Slowly but surely... that's me.

In the case of the Waltz, I really struggled more than usual.  Glen had already invested two hours in previous lessons trying to teach me the intricacies of first step in Waltz.  He told me to lower my weight into my supporting leg as I simultaneously took a long reaching step with the other foot.   I wanted to transfer my weight to the foot that was moving, but the technique called for my weight to stay over the original foot.  This did not feel natural.  How are you supposed to get somewhere if you don't move your body with your step??

Exasperated, Glen went to the storage room and found a 2 by 4 board. At first I thought he was going to beat me with it. Instead he told me to get up and stand on the board.  My job was to touch the floor with one foot while remaining on the board using my weight-supporting leg. If I did it wrong, I fell off the board. This is how I finally learned how to "compress" properly. 

The Negotiation that Changed My Life

My Big Break

One Sunday I wandered over to TGIS for the first time because one of my Disco students hinted my dance classes would be just what this group needed.  I gasped when I saw how many people there were.  200...300...400... Who knows how many?  People stretched as far the eye could see. 

TGIS claimed to have several thousand members.  You wouldn't get any argument from me. This group was definitely a dance teacher's land of milk and honey.  I felt like an Indian who had just located a huge herd of buffalo.  Or perhaps a prospector finding a mother lode of gold.   I had found a potential gold mine here.

However there was something that baffled me.  I couldn't figure out why TGIS didn't already have a Western instructor.  Urban Cowboy had been creating a lot of interest in Western dancing in Houston for over a year now.  A year is a long time.  

I asked this exact question and found out there had indeed been classes fairly recently, but the instructor had been so bad the classes fell apart. This did not sound very encouraging, but I wasn't going to give up that easily. 

I asked who was in charge.  A woman named Linda Schuler was pointed out to me.  She was the acting president.  I approached her after the morning sermon was over.  I explained who I was and what I wanted to do.  Ms Schuler just looked at me for a moment.  Then she asked where I would hold the lessons and how much I would charge.  She must have liked my idea.  Ms Schuler said okay right on the spot. 

The Beginning of the End at Stevens of Hollywood

I knew I was crowding him, but I didn't feel guilty. I was hustling as hard as I could to expand my end of the business using permission he had given me.  This was my golden opportunity and I wasn't going to fumble it away.  

I was sensitive to the problem.  I understood his resentment at how badly the agreement had backfired. I wished there was a way to even the score and find a way to work together, but Mr. Stevens was never an easy person to approach.  He was far too gruff to sit down and iron things out with.  Nevertheless, I tried several times to clear the air.  It never worked.

No matter how much I bent over backwards to appease Mr. Stevens - offering to pay more rent, working more hours for him - there was nothing I could do to make such an awkward situation palatable to him. The damage to his ego was too great.

I knew I was living on borrowed time.  Roxanne, Stevens' wife, hated me.  Alicia Lopez, another instructor, hated me.  Stevens himself hated me.  I did not have one ally in the entire building other than the cash I put in his pocket. Mr. Stevens' pocketbook wasn't hurting, that's for sure.  Stevens of Hollywood experienced its greatest era of affluence during this time.  I may have hurt his feelings, but never his bottom line. 

How long would the money be enough to keep me here? If I had a brain, I would have been looking for space of my own. However,  like an idiot I clung to this shaky situation despite warning signs of danger everywhere I turned. 

Finally, in early September 1980, an incident occurred that proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back.  This was the point of no return.

I was on the main dance floor teaching yet another massive TGIS class. One class had led to another.  Thanks to word of mouth, this particular group was the third incarnation of the original mega class back in June. 

Without warning, Lance Stevens simply walked on the floor along with his ex-wife Roxanne and interrupted me right in the middle of class.

He told the students that he was the owner of the studio, that the place was named for him, that he was the "King of Whip" and that he would be starting a Whip class next week.  Now he was going to perform.

Incredulous at being shoved aside in my own class, quite frankly this was the same mean arrogance that had characterized much of our relationship.

Exodus

There was no loss of momentum.  I hit the ground running.  My program began to resemble an avalanche.  The next four years became the happiest times of my career.  

The headaches were small and the profits were big. The rent was fair and my responsibilities were limited.  I didn't have to pay light bills, liability insurance, worry about the fire marshal, the roofing people, the air conditioners, cleaning the studio, the broken floor tiles, the broken toilets, the broken mirrors, payroll taxes, corporate taxes, etc.  Personnel problems were non-existent.  My staff was usually one or two women who worked part-time.  What a dream life!!

All I had to do was show up and teach, then go out dancing afterwards, chase girls and have fun.   This is not to say I don't enjoy the modern era of the studio, but things were definitely less stressful in those days.

It really helped that my relationship with Glen was terrific. Although we both taught dance, I was so relieved to find that his interests and my interests did not compete.

I definitely didn't want a repeat of the tense situation at Stevens. As I had anticipated, our worlds were totally different.  Glen's main interest was teaching Jazz and building his dance company.  I taught mostly Western dancing.  This arrangement worked like a charm.  

Not once did we ever compete for the same students.  Neither of us was a threat to the other.  We both wished each other complete success under the same roof. We were able to be supportive of each other. 

Gone was all that stress.  I was free to develop.  And develop I did!!  Under Glen's protective umbrella, my program grew by leaps and bounds during these years.  I was happy.  My students were happy.

Utilizing Glen's training and his sponsorship,  my program developed into a two-ton monster.  And I owed this phase of my success to Glen.  

What a shame a snake would come along to force us out of this Eden.

Glen's star performer Connie Beth

Glen's passion was his dance company, the Glen Hunsucker Dancers.  Glen ran an extremely successful jazz dance program.  He had many talented young women and several young men as well who took his classes on a regular basis. 

At the time I first met Glen in 1978, Glen had just attained a major rung in his climb to stardom.  Earlier in the Seventies, the leading jazz instructor in Houston had been Patsy Swayze, mother of Patrick Swayze... yes, the Patrick Swayze of Dirty Dancing fame. 

By chance, I had taken jazz lessons from Patsy in the mid Seventies and knew her very well.  We would go get some coffee. I would listen as Patsy told me about her talented son.  Patrick was appearing in Grease on Broadway during this period. 

As Patrick hit it big in Hollywood, Patsy began to lose interest in her own dance studio, the Houston Jazz Ballet Studio. Patsy got involved in Urban Cowboy, then moved to Hollywood herself. 

At this point, Patsy passed her mantle onto Glen. Glen Hunsucker was now the biggest name in town when it came to the performing arts. 

Many of Glen's jazz, tap, and ballet students were graduates of HSPVA, High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.  Dance Arts became the next step on the road for all the gifted dancers being turned out by HSPVA's talented dance director Mary Martha Lappe. 

I hired Glen's Dance company to perform at my infamous Halloween Party from Hell back in 1981.  I had no idea they were going to dance their African Frenzy dance routine.  That was a provocative performance to say the least.  The hot-blooded males in the audience went a little crazy to say the least.  Meanwhile the women stared angry darts at me for inviting these scantily clad dancers to the party and getting their guys all worked up. That was one wild night!

My biggest regret is that Glen did not personally dance in his own shows.  I could never get enough of his incredible talent; I thirsted to see him in action!  He preferred not to dance because he always ended up stealing the show with his incredible dance ability.

I was always an outsider with the dance company.  I had nowhere near the kind of dance ability these kids had and I was also 15 years older. My role was strictly that of an "onlooker".  Most of the dancers called me the "Western Guy", but at least they were nice about it.  With the exception of a woman named Hjortis who never missed a chance to be rude to me, the rest of the company members were unfailingly polite and friendly. 

Then came the Magic Moment when I miraculously found a way to hang with the group!!

1983: Star for a Night!

My single favorite memory of my years as a dance company groupie came in 1983.  Glen's dancers were hired to perform at a huge society bash at a private ranch in the hills outside of San Antonio.  The rock band Johnny D and the Rocket 88s would be performing two acts.  Glen's dancers would perform when the Band took their break. 

I begged Glen for permission to tag along.  He rolled his eyes and said okay.

I took my girlfriend Judy Price with me on the trip.  We rode up in the car with Glen and his boyfriend Tito, who was also a star dancer. I am not usually envious of rich people, but my eyes bulged when I saw the estate!!  This place was tucked way off the highway in a secluded valley with trees and natural foliage everywhere.  There were lovely rock cliffs above overlooking three sides and a stream ran through the property.  Most people have fences around their yards, but this ranch had beautiful rocky hills instead Judy and I spent the whole afternoon walking around exploring the lovely terrain.  Oh, what a beautiful place!!  Such a paradise!!

I had more fun at the party that night than I ever thought humanly possible.

First of all, I have to say Johnny D and his group were the greatest live band I have ever danced to!  They played great rocking oldies music like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis.  Their music was perfect for Swing and Jitterbug dancing. 

Second, I loved watching the dance company perform.

Third, I loved the open bar with its endless supply of beer, wine, and mixed drinks.

Fourth, I loved not having any responsibility.  That meant I didn't have to stay sober... so I didn't. 

Johnny D was awesome.  The guests loved the music. They were clapping and stomping and hollering.  But the dance floor in front of the stage was deserted.  The guests weren't drunk yet and didn't have the guts to get out there and dance.

So the guests people were treating it like a rock concert.  Despite this awesome dance music and the huge open air dance floor, there was no one dancing!!

Out of politeness, I waited for other people to get out there.  Finally I couldn't stand it any more.  The music was so good that Judy and I had to get out there and Jitterbug.   There we were, the only people on the floor.   Who cares?  We wanted to dance. 

Judy and I warmed up fast. Then we started to burn!

I threw Judy in the air, between my legs, over my back, around my waist, flipped her, dipped her and best of all didn't trip her. It may have been impromptu, but that was some of the best dancing of my life. I was loose and having a great time out there. The crowd started to clap for us!  We were smokin'!  What a blast! That's when we realized that we had become part of the show.  We had inspired the crowd.  Now people were clapping for us too!   Too much fun. After our big solo, the guests started to join us on the floor for the next song.  We had broken the ice.  Judy and I continued to dance and dance and dance until finally the band had to take a break.  That was when Glen's dance company came on and performed wonderfully.  This was one great party!! As the evening continued, several of the guests at the party came over to Judy and me to compliment us on our dancing.  They said they were so glad that we were part of the dance group hired to entertain them that night!   Then a very nice thing happened.  Then this incredibly nice woman came up to me and introduced herself as the hostess of the party. She wanted to personally thank the two of us for getting the dancing started.  She said she was aghast when the music began and no one responded.

At the time she worried about what she could do.  Right about this time, Judy and I got out and performed.  That solved the problem perfectly.  She was so glad Glen had brought us along to help!  

I didn't tell her that Glen never had our performing in mind when he gave me permission to come along.  That said, I was certainly glad to make a contribution.  After all the years of feeling inferior to Glen's dancers, I think you can imagine what an elixir this kind woman's words were for my fragile ego. 

Plus there was still more fun to come!  When Johnny D came back on for Act Two, I got the surprise of my life when several of Glen's beautiful dancers came over and begged me to dance with them.  Now this was new! 

Whoa, be still my beating heart. I had crushes on several of these beautiful young ladies.  However, despite all the times I had come to watch them perform, these girls had barely acknowledged my existence.  I was always the Country Dude or something to that extent.

But Swing Dancing was my turf - I was the only boy around who knew how to Jitterbug! So with Judy's permission, I danced with one gorgeous jazz dancer after another.  With their own performance over, these girls were ready to let loose!  Pretty soon they were drunk too!   They went nuts out there dancing with me. They barely knew a thing about partner dancing, but these girls were dancers!  Thanks to a good lead and some whispered advice, they picked up Swing Dancing fast. I didn't sit out one song the whole night.  Can you imagine that kind of fun?  To be the most popular boy with all these pretty girls?

Even Johnny D himself complimented me on my dancing over the microphone.  I had become the Star of the Evening.  My ego was swelling to Dirigible-size proportions.  I had the best damn night of dancing in my whole entire life. 

Too bad it had to end.  The music was over.  Suddenly I realized I was so tired I couldn't lift a finger or an eyelash. Judy and I crawled into the back seat and collapsed.  And you know what?  Glen drove the entire way home for three hours nonstop. I couldn't move and here he was with the energy of a Titan. The man never ceased to amaze me.

Looking at him through my puppy dog eyes, it never dawned on me there may have been another explanation for Glen's prodigious energy...

1984:  The Year it Fell Apart

Something went wrong with Glen in 1984.  He seemed to be angry at everyone, me included.  Things deteriorated quickly.  By the latter part of the year, Glen had stopped talking to me. 

From that point on, Glen communicated with me through his three assistants: Hjortis, his arrogant right hand man, Karen, his accountant, and Tito, his boyfriend, star dancer, and assistant.

Since no one was willing to talk to me, I ended up writing a lot of letters.  I also filed away copies for future reference.  For the purposes of this story, I reviewed 16 letters in all.  Therefore I am very clear on the details regarding our problems.

Something happened in 1983 between Bill and Glen.  I think 1983 had to be the year they called it quits in their personal life because that is when Tito entered the picture.  Bill and Glen tried to continue as business partners. Then sometime in 1984 Bill disappeared altogether.  Don't ask me what happened to Bill or when; no one ever told me anything since I was always the "outsider".  All I know is that in Bill's absence, there were really dark vibes around the place. 

Here is a telling passage from a letter I wrote to Judy Price on August 29, 1984:

I am so disgusted at Glen - he is a good teacher, but seems to be turning meaner.  I have pointed out to you how he treats people like a tyrant.  Recently 2 or 3 part-time staffers at the Dancing Duds clothing store were fired.  One of them was Hjortis, although it looks like she got her job back.  Diana was threatened with being fired and replaced by Glen's boyfriend Tito as manager.  If you look, you will see neither Hjortis or Diana is saying much these days.  They are walking around with their tail between their legs.  Bill Tucker is gone on some sort of 'emotional illness' leave.  Too bad.  He used to look out for me. The point is, I don't have a lease.  And I don't feel safe here any more.

Here is a paragraph from an apology letter to my students Ed and Dee written on September 7, 1984.

I am writing to apologize. I am aware that you get aggravated with people constantly interrupting our private lessons. In regards to being pushed around with people walking the room during our lessons, I swear I have no control over that.  You may not realize this, but I have no lease at Dance Arts.  The two owners know that they can intimidate me with this fact.  They have constantly used their control over my program to treat me, my staff, and my students like illegal aliens. Since dance studios are not the easiest things to pick up and move, I am forced to put up with their BS until I am established enough to leave on my own terms. I think much of the rudeness is directed at me.  But my students are affected too.  This means for now we all have to put up with being treated like second class citizens.

Grumpy gruff Bill Tucker had been gone a long time before I even knew he was gone.  My first clue came in 1983 when Glen became open about his relationship with Tito.  I think Glen definitely missed Bill on the business end.  Without Bill's astute business acumen and perhaps his ability to keep Glen focused, the jazz classes and Glen's dance company began to go downhill.  Glen started losing students and some of his best dancers as early as 1984.  A downturn in Houston's economy didn't help much either.

Perhaps Glen simply did not have the ability to be a creative artist, a teacher, and a businessman too.  That would be too much talent in one human being.  It just seemed that in Bill's absence, Glen became incredibly neglectful of details and responsibilities.  Often things such as the air conditioner or the plumbing got fixed only after they had been run badly into the ground.  Finally these devices completely shattered and there was no choice but to get them fixed.  

My hunch is that Glen intimidated his assistants so much that none of them had the guts to tell him what he needed to hear.

Throughout 1984, I felt a lot of tension between Glen and me.  But he never spoke his mind.  I was constantly in the dark as to what caused his foul mood. He just went around frowning all the time. 

Glen's program and mine were doing a seesaw.  As his program eroded, mine just kept growing. The previous 4 years had been so tranquil I was able to build my dance program to an incredible size.  But at the same time the growing number of students in my program became a source of friction. A situation eerily reminiscent of the Stevens days began to develop as my students seemed to be everywhere during the evening.   My program now had far more students than Glen's did.  Even though we taught completely different types of dance classes, it did seem odd that the pupil's program outnumbered the mentor.  However, at least this time it could not have been an ego thing.  Glen and I did not compete in the slightest.  There was friction though.  Glen did not like having my students get in his way.  He had been flexible in the past, but now the slightest frustrations seem to set him off.  With memories of my eviction at Stevens of Hollywood haunting me, I worried the same thing was about to happen again.

As his marginal Tap classes and Ballet classes were dropped off the schedule due to poor attendance, rooms would come available in the evening.  I would pressure Glen to rent me any rooms that weren't being used, but he resisted because he wanted to save the empty rooms for future use.  He knew once he rented to me, that room would be mine forever.  Frustrated, I would have to back down. I fumed inwardly as I walked past empty rooms at night while my own rooms were crammed with students.  It wasn't my studio. What was I supposed to do? 

Then there was "The Artist Thing".  Glen began to act as if the world owed him a living.  It was my impression Glen treated me and my students as a sort of irritating but necessary evil.  He acted like an  irresponsible, inconsiderate Diva with constant his lack of respect for anyone's needs but his own.  It was kind of the world revolves around me attitude. A favorite trick of his was to run the AC at 80 degrees, especially whenever he was mad at me.  He liked to keep his leotard-clad jazz dancers hot, fearing muscle pulls at colder temperatures. Plus he personally never perspired anyway.  Unfortunately, at this temperature, my dancers complained bitterly about the heat.  They had clothes on and they were miserable.  I begged Glen to simply put in a baffle up in the main vent to block air to Room 1 to allow the AC to cool the rest of the studio while keeping his room hot.  He refused. Increasingly his attitude seemed to indicate that he could care less about my students.  In fact, at this point I honestly believe Glen resented us being there.

Finally Bill Tucker stepped in and did exactly as I requested - put in the baffle.  It took a couple hours.  It was that simple! Problem solved.  I agreed to pay $100, half the expense.  Bill always called me "The Asset".  That was his nickname for me which I took as a compliment. I guess in a lot of ways Bill and I had more in common than Glen and I did.  Bill and I were businessmen; Glen was the Artist.

The petty stuff was rampant.  Each incident was small, but added up the damage was devastating. 

Looking back on my letters from 1984, there is one stupid story after.  One night Judy Price discovered a couch in the room she was about to teach in.  So she had a couple students move it back into the hallway where it came from.  When Glen discovered the couch had been moved, he chewed me out.  That couch was there for a reason!  Lord only knows what the reason was, but I was not to move furniture again without consulting him first.   Oh great, we were crowded to begin with.  Now we get to dance around a couch in the middle of the dance floor because it is inconvenient to Glen to let us move it out.  How weird is that story?

One of my dance rooms - today's Room 3 - connected the dance studio to the Dancing Duds clothing store. Although there was another way around, Glen's staff would constantly walk back and forth through this room while my classes were being held.  Hjortis, Glen's assistant and a member of the dance company, was something of a petty tyrant.  She delighted in walking through the room.  Hjordis was clearly the main offender.  Her arrogance was hard to take.  She knew exactly how I felt about her constant needless interruptions, but she did it anyway.  It was too much for her to take the long way.  In fact she smiled at me sometimes as she took her sweet time walking through my room.  My students didn't like it either.  Too bad I never called her on it.  If I had to guess, Hjortis overestimated her own importance to Glen.  If push came to shove, I have a hunch I was more valuable.  But that was too big a chance to take given Glen's mysterious moods.  So Hjortis had her way with me while I seethed at the disrespect. 

Some idiot friend of Glen's tried to use my Caliphone record player as an amp for his clogging class.  He played his music too loud and blew it up.  When I spoke up, Glen said tough.  Glen never reimbursed me the $200 to replace it.

Then there was yet another one of the endless Kotex/Tampon incidents. I have many mysteries about women.  One mystery is my perpetual amazement that this same problem shows up once every two months.  Women get mad at men for not putting down the lid, but then they turn around and show total disregard on this issue.  Don't women know those things expand in water?  Why won't they use those containers on the floor?  The number of times the toilet would get stopped up for this same problem drove me to despair.  

One night someone just kept flushing the damn toilet thinking that would solve the clogging problem. That did not work.  Then something broke.  I personally spent four hours mopping up the mess.  Furthermore I paid the emergency plumber out of my own pocket.  Although I was not responsible for repairs, I didn't let that stop me from handling an emergency.  There was no thanks and no reimbursement offered.

Several times I scheduled private lessons in the rooms that were owed to me as part of my rent only to find one of Glen's dancers was using the room for some reason.  When I protested, I was told I would have to wait until the dancer was finished.  I did not appreciate being treated like a second-class citizen nor did my students.

One night Judy Price lost her voice. She was teaching a class in Room C.  Next door in another room beside hers, a group of ten men known as "The Dianas" were practicing their singing for a Gay Pride Day performance.  Judy had no choice but scream to be heard over them for the entire hour.

 Increasingly, we were made to feel like unwelcome guests in our own home.

Early in our relationship Glen had been so wonderful to me in so many ways. He was warm, helpful, and enthusiastic about improving my often limited dance skills.  But now something had changed in the man.  Glen was always short with me, irritable, and sometimes downright rude. He would forget things that he promised to do (like get things fixed when they broke!!) 

Few things bothered me more than his perpetual lateness for our lessons.  I would show up for a lesson only to see him Waltz in twenty minutes late.  That irritated me no end.  Once in a while is not a problem, but this happened continually.  Why was his time more important than mine?   Then suddenly the problem got worse - he stopped showing up altogether!  Imagine how angry I felt about his new trick - skipping the lesson altogether!

Something was wrong.  Over the past several months I would show up for our regular private lesson on Tuesday or Thursday at 11 am only to realize Glen had stood me up completely.   This happened about one in every four lessons.  I would wait for an hour or half an hour, then finally give up in disgust and drive back home.  My entire morning was wasted.  When he finally did appear for evening classes he always had an excuse, but I fumed at the disrespect.  

Over the ten years of our relationship, I paid Glen in the neighborhood of $20,000 for private lessons and $100,000 in rent.  I had never missed a lesson in my life.  But recently I was driving across the city in the middle of the day just to get stood up when all he had to do was call.  Lift a finger and dial. Or ask an assistant to do it.

What the hell made him think his time was any more valuable than mine?

I am certain that Glen had legitimate beefs towards me, but he always kept things bottled inside.

One night Glen was furious when I ran my class over my allotted 9 pm time slot in Room 1. Unbeknownst to me, Glen had scheduled a special 9 pm rehearsal.  He was waiting with 20 members of his company out in the hallway for me to get out of there.  The door was closed.  I had no idea they were out there.  All he had to do was send someone in to say something! 

That would been the graceful way to handle it, but no such luck. Instead at 9:05 pm 20 of his dancers simply walked into the room and started their warm-ups while my students stared at them in confusion. Glen walked right past me but avoided eye contact. He looked furious. 

I told my students it was time to go. I was embarrassed, but didn't see the point of making a scene.  Glen had a right to the room. One of the dancers said Glen assumed I was running my class over to deliberately spite him. This was not true, but as usual there was no communication.  I was so busy teaching I was unaware of his presence.  

Most of the time Glen preferred to hold his anger in and avoid confrontation. As anyone knows, this leads to Cold War. 

The fact was that Glen felt increasingly frustrated that my students and my classes always seemed to be in his way.  He resented the inconvenience of working around us and preferred to just have it his way most of the time.  He resented it when we complained about his friends singing or his staff walking through our room. Rather than fix the problem, he avoided it with angry silence.

I have no doubt there were other things that bothered him.  But how could I correct them if he never talked to me?? 

For example, one time my students carelessly stacked chairs in front of his office door, forcing him to move them the next day to get in to his own office.  This time Glen did say something and I promptly had them moved.  Just tell me what's bugging you!!

On the other hand, Glen's instructors would always leave their moveable ballet dance barres in the middle of our rooms, forcing us to move them out of our way to start class.  Stuff like this should have been easy to solve.  Dance Arts was like a big home with a lot of people who often got in each other's way.  But with manners and courtesy, most problems could have been solved easily.  All Glen had to do was say something.  In a family, that's how you get the small things ironed out.  But that was not Glen's style.

Glen set the tone.  If he acted rudely towards me, then his assistants felt entitled to behave the same way.  Instead of getting his problems off his chest, Glen chose to treat me, my staff, and my students like inferiors.  I should have stood up to him, but I depended on the use of his studio which meant I had little choice but to swallow my anger and carry on.  The truth is I lived in constant fear of making the man angry.  But as the year went on, even the smallest indiscretions seemed to make Glen angry.

Looking back, there were three explanations for Glen's anger.

He had lost Bill Tucker, the man who kept things glued together.  Either Glen did not have the ability to run his studio himself or he didn't have the inclination.  Whatever the reason, the place was falling apart and Glen ignored it.

Second, Glen had bills coming out of his ears.  The money pressure on him was probably intense.

Third, Glen was using drugs.  I was totally ignorant of this, but in retrospect it explained EVERYTHING that made no sense this year.  The drug use explained his lack of attention to details.  The drug use explained why he didn't have any money.  And the drug use explained his constant missed appointments and all the times he lost his temper for seemingly no reason.  Glen was falling apart.

Saturday, August 25th, 1984, is a day which will live in infamy.  On this day, a very curious incident occurred that changed the nature of my relationship with Glen permanently.  Things would never be the same again. 

Glen had a piano on wheels that he moved back and forth depending on where he needed it.  One afternoon he sent Tito, one of his assistants, to come get the piano from a room where I was teaching a private lesson. I offered to help Tito push it, but Tito said no, he could handle it.  Well, I didn't think Tito could handle it because it usually took at least two people to move this big piano, but I held my tongue and went back to my student.

So Tito rolled the piano into the hallway.  I heard a huge crash.  He had accidentally hit a table with the unwieldy piano.  In the process, a valuable picture frame of mine being displayed on the table fell to the floor.  The glass frame was shattered.

I ran out to see what happened and make sure no one was hurt. The first thing I saw was that broken glass was scattered everywhere. Then I saw my pictures were in ruins.  Upset,  I said, "Jesus Christ, Tito, what happened!?" 

Tito was a friend of mine, but at the moment I was pretty mad at him for such a careless mistake.  I was just letting off steam.  I was already over my anger.  It wasn't that big a deal.

Down the hall from another direction, Glen had also heard the crash.  Glen was coming up from behind me to investigate. Hearing me raise my voice with his 19 year old protégé/boyfriend, Glen exploded in rage!  I can only guess his protective instinct plus the built-up resentment he had been carrying towards me kicked in all at once.  

To my utter shock, from my blind side Glen shoved me away from Tito.  Mind you I hadn't even remotely threatened the young man.  It wasn't like the kid was in any danger.  But that wasn't how Glen saw it.  He put both hands on me and pushed hard.

Hit from behind, I lost my balance and fell against the wall among the broken glass.  I ended up sprawled on the floor.  It was ugly.

I wasn't hurt but I was stunned.  Now that he had me laying helplessly on the floor, Glen towered over me and screamed down at me.  At the top of his lungs he said I had no business talking to Tito that way.  He said if I had a problem, I should bring it to him directly.  The man was crimson with anger way beyond proportion to the severity of the incident.  It made no sense for him to lose it like this over something so silly.

I stared at Glen in shock. Then I noticed my dance student staring fearfully at Glen, Tito and me.  She had her hand covering her wide open mouth and her eyes were bulging in horror.  She got her purse and ran out.  Glen couldn't have cared less.  He was too busy screaming and fuming. I had never seen Glen behave like this before. I had seen him lose his temper once or twice, but nothing like this.  Mount Vesuvius was blowing its top.  Glen had been angry with me a couple times in the past, but he had never raised his voice like this before and he had certainly never been physical with me. Why had our relationship deteriorated to this point?  I was totally clueless.  I had known this man for six years. For most of this time I had worshipped him like a rock star groupie.  Even despite our recent troubles, I still felt so much gratitude towards him.  Glen was the single most important authority figure in my life.  I owed my dance career to him!  But now I felt exactly like a dog who had been kicked by its master.

I was seething inside.  Had it been anyone else, I would have gotten right up in his face. 

But something warned to show restraint.  In my mind I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, but Glen was too out of control to confront.  At this point, I saw him as an irrational landlord who might be mad enough to tell me to pack my bags.

Remembering my mistake with Lance Stevens that got me thrown out of his studio 4 years ago, I decided it was better to appease Glen with a slapstick "sorry, masta" routine than say what I really thought.  I got up and apologized first to Tito, then to Glen for my mistake.  Then I slunk off to lick my wounds. 

Did you notice that for the first time in my life I bit my tongue?  Maybe I was growing up.

Four days after the Piano Incident, I was handed a letter raising my rent immediately to $1800 a month, a $750 increase from my current $1050.  By comparison in 1980 my rent had started at $600. 

Glen was demanding a 70% increase in my rent. 

Feeling keenly that this increase was mostly about revenge, I made an appointment with Karen Pons, Glen's accountant.   As far as I was concerned, this amount of this increase was uncalled for.  We went over the bills, figured out what percentage of the studio I was using, how much I was making, etc.  

During our negotiations, Karen spoke openly that Glen's diminishing enrollments were a real problem.  During our negotiations, Karen excused herself to use the restroom.  She had been quoting figures from several documents to explain the rent increase.  So I took a look myself.  From what I saw laying around on Karen's desk, money was pretty tight for Glen.  

Ultimately Karen and I decided to split the difference.  We settled on a $450 increase to round it off at $1500 a month. 

Even this amount stung. I was seething at the 50% increase, especially because I had still not forgiven Glen for the piano incident.  Judging by the way he stuck it to me, Glen was still angry with me.  Too bad I didn't have a clue what it was. 

I needed to be respected.  Glen had humiliated me for no reason.  I decided to retaliate.  I wanted to fight back.  Now that I knew money was his weakness, I knew right where to hit.  I canceled my 2 private dance lessons a week with Glen.  This move that would save me $225 a month.  

I didn't feel the slightest guilt.  After being shoved to the floor, what was the point of continuing lessons the way I felt now?  

The magic was definitely gone.  There is a right way to handle things and a wrong way.  Although obviously the drug use was the real reason, I had no way of knowing what the truth was.  All I knew was things were being handled poorly around here. 

Glen had already stood me up six times that year for private lessons.  Now the respect I had felt for Glen had been shattered by the shoving incident.  The threat to increase my rent by $750 was absolutely the last straw.  

I didn't grieve too much over the loss of my once beloved private lessons.  They had long ceased being productive.  For some time now, we had just been going through the motions.  Glen's concentration was simply not there.  He didn't seem interested in my development as a dancer any more.  Or perhaps his built-up resentment prevented him from effectively teaching me at this point.   In hindsight, my guess is the drug use had ruined him as a person who cared about people anymore.

Glen never replied to my decision to drop the private lessons.  I imagine if he had spoken with me, I was more than willing to patch things up.  A compromise could have been reached like one lesson a week instead of two. 

But on the other hand, maybe he agreed it was time the lessons ended.  Who knows?
 

It quickly became was obvious Glen wasn't happy about the loss of his private lesson income.

One month later Glen fired another salvo.  On October 11th, just one month after completing the rent negotiations, Glen had Karen Pons write me a letter demanding a special payment of $300 due to an "unusually high electric bill".  

This move rankled me no end.  I saw this AC demand as personal, not business. I was so frustrated I was ready to leave and told him so in a letter. Why a letter?  Because Glen wouldn't speak to me. After a month to cool off from the piano and the rent incidents, I was ready to see if Glen and I could clear the air and maybe even resume the private lessons.  What could possibly be eating at him so much?  This guy could really carry a grudge! First I wrote Glen a letter asking to speak with him and left it on his desk. No phone call, no letter, no conversation, no response period.  Next I asked Karen and Tito to intercede in the matter.  PLEASE tell Glen I wanted to speak with him. No reply.  Not one response to any of them. This was ridiculous. There wasn't going to be any powwow.  Glen made it clear with his body language that I was NOT to approach.  His scowl towards me could have frozen Medusa herself. This was not how people were supposed to run a business.

Did I pay the $300?  

No.

First, technically I didn't owe the money.  Karen Pons had specifically said my rent increase included all utilities. I had it in writing. 

Second, the excessive light bill wasn't my fault to begin with. In August, Glen had let some friend of his use the studio all month long during the weekends to prepare for a dance performance.  This guy, the Bum as I referred to him, acted like he owned the place. This guy wrote the book. Talk about Attitude!   I don't dislike a lot of people, but I really disliked this man.

Glen's buddy definitely didn't share Glen's love for heat.  Glen and his dancers weren't around on Saturdays and Sundays this month.  Since no one was looking, the Bum would turn the AC down to 70 degrees.  That meant the Bum was at the studio every Saturday and Sunday for a month running the AC at 70 degrees all day long.  Normally the AC either stayed off at these times or was set to 75.  There's your electricity increase right there. 

But there was actually an even more compelling reason for the "unusually high electric bill".

One Saturday night The Bum got drunk. I came in the next day on a Sunday afternoon for my regular classes. The moment I opened the door to the studio, I realized the AC was already running.  The whole place was really cold.  As I walked by AC thermostat, I saw that it was set to 70 degrees, a huge No-No. 

Curious as to who might be there ahead of me, I looked around.  That's when I found The Bum passed out face down on the couch in Glen's office.  One arm and one foot hung over the couch.  The guy reeked from dried vomit. There on the floor beside him lay two empty bottles plus perhaps a million cigarette butts scattered everywhere.  It's a wonder he didn't burn the place down. The air conditioner had likely been running ALL NIGHT LONG.  And I told Glen this.  Well, let's put it another way.  Since I never spoke to him, I put the details in a letter.  I was damned if Glen expected me to pay for a bill caused by the Bum.

Third, I was angry that Glen did not have the decency to speak to me.  I was feeling very defiant.  I didn't want to pay!  
 

But the real reason I didn't pay the $300 surcharge was that I no longer feared getting thrown out. 

During the recent rent negotiations, Karen Pons had accidentally tipped her hand when she revealed just how shaky the Dance Arts finances were.  Houston's economy was in the midst of a sharp downturn due to problems in the Oil and Gas industry.  Money was very tight.

I smiled at the irony of it.  $1,500 a month was a lot of money in those days.  Glen needed my money so much he probably couldn't afford to get rid of me.  No matter how much Glen hated me, he was stuck with me.  

So I decided to call their bluff.  I stood my ground and didn't pay the Air Conditioner surcharge. 

After a week of nothing happening and no further communication, I knew I had won this round.  The balance of power had shifted permanently. Although Glen still had some leverage as my landlord, we were now basically Even Steven.

I am sorry to say that after the Piano/Rent/AC episodes, Glen hardly ever spoke directly to me again. If there was some reason to contact me, he used Karen, Tito, or Hjortis as intermediaries.  Tito was the only one who was ever civil to me, but he landed a job performing in Vegas.  Now that he was gone, things were always tense from this point on. 

To me, the unforgivable thing was when Glen refused to even sit down and talk it out.  We had known each other for six years.  I was not the enemy.  How could we ever iron out out our differences without talking?  

It took a while, but I finally got the message.  Glen didn't want to talk.  Fine.  I can play cold shoulder too.  From this point on, Glen and I had an unspoken agreement to avoid each other like the plague.  For the next 4 years this plan worked for him and it worked for me.  Glen's unwillingness to even speak to me caused my final loss of innocence where he was concerned.  It was time to drop the rose-colored glasses and grow up.  Glen had become a first-class jerk.  Something was wrong here, but I didn't have a clue what the real problem was. Fortunately for me, the balance of power had shifted.  If he wanted to get rid of me, he would have done it by now.  Glen and I stood on equal footing from here on out.  Having weathered the crisis of the rent increase and the AC extortion, I was pretty sure he needed me just as much as I needed him.

Something had snapped inside.  Glen was no longer this towering authority figure that I worshipped.   After the way he behaved during this tug of war, I had lost a lot of respect for him.   This was the end of my Puppy Dog Eyes.   This man had once been my friend.  As far as I could tell, the only thing I had done to offend Glen was to discontinue the private lessons.  If he was upset about that, the right thing to do was to talk to me, not slap me around with his air conditioner bill. I wasn't going to follow him around any more looking for approval and a stray smile. The days of Hero Worship were over. Having seen a side of Glen that I definitely didn't care for, his fall from the pedestal was now complete. Interestingly, in the next four years I was never again asked for more money or rent increases.  My rent did go up, but only because I kept renting more rooms as they came available.  Every time Glen lost another class, I gained another room. Things would never be the same between us.

The Cold War had begun. A sullen peace developed between the two of us. 

On the bright side Glen and I never again exchanged harsh words.  On the dark side we never exchanged anything but uneasy glances from afar.  We co-existed in separate rooms.

Dance Arts was a big place. It had two entrances and two doors to each room. This made it easy for me to avoid Glen and vice versa. For the next four years Glen and I taught in rooms right next door to one another.  I could hear him teaching.  But we never spoke and rarely saw each other.  Personally I liked it this way just fine.  My bitterness ran pretty deep. I found the further I stayed away from him the better we got along. 

My personal life wasn't all that great.  Parallel to my Cold War period with Glen, I was in a very unhappy marriage.  Believe me when I say I had more than I could handle.  My wife and I divorced early in 1986. If you are curious, a good account can be found in Spin. 

As a way of coping with my divorce, 1986 became the year I went Whip Dancing 201 nights in a row. Affectionately known as The Streak, I left the studio every night at 9 sharp to go out dancing.  I discovered it was an effective way to stay as far away from Dance Arts as I could.

I was miserable at Dance Arts. Although I was not longer afraid of getting evicted, this didn't stop Glen or his two assistants Karen Pons and Hjortis from treating me like the village leper.  It was like Chinese Water Torture, one little drip at a time, one little petty incident after another. 

Something else was going on that I couldn't put my finger on.  One reason Glen and I never fought any more is that he just didn't seem to care enough anymore to even want to fight.  He looked worn out.  Not only did he leave me alone, signs of his apathy were tangible. The place had deteriorated into a dirty, run-down dump. The dance floors had been ripped up so badly from the metal tips of clogging and tap shoes that splinters were becoming a real problem.  Tripping in the ruts while dancing was another!  Nothing ever got fixed.  My students were constantly treated like second-class citizens.  I was sick and tired of these prima donnas who made my life miserable at Dance Arts.  

At the end of 1986, I went skiing over Christmas with a group.  I kept to myself most of the time.  After my 1986 Dance Streak ended on New Year's Eve, I spent the following day holed up in my hotel room for a day of reflection.  I decided it was time to go. I did not want to allow myself to be treated like this any longer.  I was worried that finding an affordable escape route wouldn't be easy.  My dance program had grown so large that only a very large facility would do.  I wanted a building to call my own.

Without telling Glen I asked a real estate agent to look at commercial properties.  I needed a good location, I needed a lot of space, and I needed a lot of parking. I could only afford a building of $300,000.  You would think at that price I could have come up with something, but it was not to be. Often it was the parking issue that did me in.

I spent the entire year of 1987 trying to buy one building after another.  I wanted out of Dance Arts so badly!!  What a preposterous waste of time this turned out to be.  I put contracts down on nine different buildings including one bizarre deal on The Castle at Greenridge that nearly cost me my entire life savings.

The fact that I even entered into such an incredibly risky deal shows how desperate I was to escape Dance Arts. But there must have been something in the cards because one business deal after another fell through.

Besides the nine places I put contracts down on, I looked seriously at a dozen other buildings.  I even toyed with taking over Al Marks' lease at Melody Lane Ballroom.  I had $100,000 saved up for a down payment, which should have been more than enough seed money.  Furthermore a terrible economy was depressing the price of buildings.  But no matter how hard I looked, I could not find one place to move to!

I hated being at Dance Arts, but I didn't want to move out just to rent some place. Wherever I moved to, I wanted it to be my studio's permanent home.  I had so many ideas and dreams!  

1984 was one of the worst years of my life.

1985 was one of the worst years of my life

1987 was definitely one of the worst years of my life. 

1988 would deliver the biggest shock of my life.