Micky Powell has a love for dance, children and a profound respect for her deceased mother,Ruth Berdje Jevarian.

Although barely five feet tall,Ruth was a professional dancer before she married Micky’s father, Sam. Sam followed the Armenian dance troupe from venue to venue, city to city, state to state. Sam pursued Ruth as did many other suitors. Ruth was adamant that she did not want short children. Micky’s father was 6 feet tall. Micky is 5’9 and even as a young girl was quite tall for her age and ethnicity.

“Armenians are typically short. I sat down at a lot of our cultural functions. Whenever I stood up, people would start whispering because I was even taller than the men.”

She reflects,

“Sometimes adults just don’t realize how much their words can hurt children.”

I wonder why she followed in her mother’s dancing shoes.

“I was born to dance. My mother told me I was dancing in the womb, and came out pirouetting.”

Micky’s grandmother was originally from Turkey and her husband was dying. He urged his wife and three daughters to flee the country as the violence and massacre between the Turks and Armenians became their backdrop. They fled to France.

After time, they left Marseille and headed to America, for a chance at the American Dream. They arrived at Ellis Island and mother and three daughters settled in New York City.Ruth was twelve years of age and lied about that, in order to get a job. She then began ballet lessons for $5.00 a class, extraordinarily expensive for the time.

She excelled at dance. As she got older;Ruth started an Armenian dance group and began touring. Armenian dance has been an integral part of the Armenian culture since B.C. The origin began when priestesses would tend to the sick by performing circle dances as well as administering medicinal potions. Over the centuries, the form developed into ethnic folk dances, and today, Armenian dance is very much alive. The music and the movements exude a proud and vital passion.

There were a lot of Armenians in both Fresno and San Francisco and Ruth gravitated to San Francisco, while Sam, also Armenian pursued her. They married and made San Francisco their home.

Micky remembers her mother fondly,

“My mother was a special lady. She had a lot of soul, a lot of love and warmth. She treated people beautifully, it came out, and people understood that.”

Initially, Micky’s father, Sam Jevarian was a truck driver, but in time would open a Mom and Pop grocery store on Page Street in the Haight. There was an Armenian Hall above the store.

“That’s where Armenians would gather. There were dances, dinners, it was a lot of fun, but that’s where I realized how tall I was. I was skinny and looked even taller than I was.”

Customers would come into their grocery store, conversation would ensue, and one mother asked Ruth if she could teach her daughter to dance.

She didn’t have a dance school, but the Armenian Hall was just upstairs and available. She rented the hall and one mother told another mother and so on and so on.

At this point, Micky’s parent's bought their home on 10^th Avenue and Sam designed the lower level for Ruth's dance school and for forty years, this was the home of Star Dance Studio.

When Micky was sixteen, she taught her first class for her mother at Star Dance Studio and she has been teaching ever since.

In 1996, the same year Ruth Berdje Jevarian passed away, Star Dance Studio re-located to its present address at 300 Moraga Street.

And now, below this studio space, five and six year old girls scurry into the studio clad in their pale pink tutus, slippers secured. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star can be heard in the background as the young ballerinas approach the bar and begin their ballet class.

Though she's adept at Jazz, and Ballet,Micky's forte is tap dancing and believes for a non-dancer or a dance challenged person it is the easiest form to learn.

“All you have to think about are your feet.”

Which I consider to be huge.

She smiles and says,

“All forms of dance are beautiful.”

She wants to know if I can dance. I tell her no. She wonders if I have rhythm. Negative.I tell her I can't clap, but aspire to. I explain my attempt at Salsa. The instructors really wanted me to get the count. I no longer wanted to disappoint them and quit.

Micky knows discipline is an integral part of any art form and she wants to instill this in her young dancers, but also that dancing is fun.

“The delightful thing about having a children’s business, it that it’s primarily word of mouth. People with dogs and children, they talk to one another.”

Dancers Micky taught as children twenty or thirty years ago, have now returned to enroll their children in Star Dance Studio.

“Children bring the greatest joy.”

She explains the beauty of the discipline.

“There is team work. They learn to take turns and that they can’t always come first.”

Her favorite dancers?

Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire,

Fred Astaire said, “That Cyd! When you danced with her you stayed danced.”

Micky also loved Gene Kelly, and Ballet dancers Rudolph Nureyev and Maria Tallchief.

“Maria was Native American. She was a beautiful ballerina, and I always related to her because of her last name.”

Micky loves this neighborhood.

“I was raised in this neighborhood since I was eight years old, I like the atmosphere.”

She and her husband raised their two children here and now as a grandmother, she welcomes young dancers into her studio and her heart.

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star..."

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