Ann Arbor Observed: Selections from Then and Now

The Roy Hoyer Dance Studio

The Roy Hoyer Dance Studio A taste of Broadway in Ann Arbor Performers tap dancing on drums or flying out over the audience on swings, women in fancy gowns and plumes floating onto the stage to the strains of “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” A Busby Berkeley musical on Broadway? No, it was right here in Ann Arbor at the Lydia Mendelssohn theater: Juniors on Parade, a Ziegfeld-style production created by Broadway veteran Roy Hoyer to showcase the talents of his dance students and to raise money for worthy causes. Hoyer came to Ann Arbor in 1930, at age forty-one. With his wraparound camel hair coat, starched and pleated white duck trousers, opennecked shirts, and even a light touch of makeup, he cut a cosmopolitan figure in the Depression-era town. For almost twenty years, his Hoyer Studio initiated Ann Arbor students into the thrills of performance dancing as well as the more sedate steps and social graces of ballroom dancing. Born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Hoyer appeared in many hometown productions before a role as Aladdin in a musical called Chin Chin led him to a contract with New York’s Ziegfeld organization. His fifteenyear Broadway career included leading roles in Tip-Top, Stepping Stones, Criss Cross, The Royal Family, and Pleasure Bound. Movie musical star Jeanette MacDonald was discovered while playing opposite Hoyer in Angela. But Hoyer himself by the end of the 1920s was getting too old to play juvenile leads. When the Depression devastated Broadway—in 1930, fifty fewer plays were produced than in 1929—Hoyer, like many other actor-dancers, was forced to seek his fortune elsewhere. Hoyer came to Ann Arbor because he already had contacts here. In the 1920s he had choreographed the Michigan Union Opera, a very popular annual all-male show with script and score by students. His Roy Hoyer Studio taught every kind of dancing, even ballet (although the more advanced toe dancers usually transferred to Sylvia Hamer). On the strength of his stage career, he also taught acrobatics, body building, weight reducing classes, musical comedy, and acting. 161 His sales pitch played up his Broadway background: “There are many so-called dance instructors, but only a few who have ever distinguished themselves in the art they profess to teach,” he wrote in his program notes for Juniors on Parade. “Mr. Hoyer’s stage work and association with some of the most famous and highest paid artists in America reflects the type of training given in the Roy Hoyer School.” Pictures of Hoyer on the Broadway stage lined his waiting room, and former students remember that he casually dropped names like Fred and Adele, referring to the Astaire siblings. (Fred Astaire did know Hoyer but evidently not well. When Hoyer dressed up his 1938 Juniors on Parade program with quotes from letters he’d received from friends and former students, the best he could come up with from Astaire was, “Nice to have heard from you.”) Hoyer’s first Ann Arbor studio was in an abandoned fraternity house at 919 Oakland. He lived upstairs. Pat Bird Allen remembers taking lessons in the sparsely furnished first-floor living room. In 1933 the Hoyer Studio moved to 3 Nickels Arcade, above the then–post office. Students would climb the stairs, turn right, and pass through a small reception area into a studio that ran all the way to Maynard. Joan Reilly Burke remembers that there were no chairs in the studio, making it hard for 162 Ann Arbor Observed The Floradora Sextette takes a bow. Left to right: Nancy Cory, Tommy Moore, Jean Reynolds, Douglas Wilson, Barbara Barr, Freddie Nickels, Beverly Tupper, Bobby Kuhn, Dolly Vlesides, Lauren Wolf, Patricia Riley, and Dickie Gauss. (Courtesy of Bob Kuhn.) people taking social dancing not to participate. Across the hall was a practice room used for private lessons and smaller classes. Back then, young people needed to know at least basic ballroom steps if they wanted to have any kind of social life. John McHale, who took lessons from Hoyer as a student at University High, says that for years afterward he could execute a fox trot or a waltz when the occasion demanded . Dick DeLong remembers that Hoyer kept up with the latest dances, for instance, teaching the Lambeth Walk, an English import popular in the early years of World War II. (DeLong recalls Hoyer taking the...