Fourteen young women and two young men glide, leap, and twirl from one end of the ballet studio to the other, toes pointed, legs elongated and turned out, arms sweeping. As they turn, they keep their balance by spotting the far wall, their heads staying still until the last second, then whipping around, fast as lightning.

This is Ballet 5, the most advanced class offered at the Louis Nunnery School of Ballet in Hickory, and teacher Gretchen Wilson only has to explain a combination once for her students to understand and remember it.

Louis Nunnery received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for his contributions to the arts. Photography courtesy of Louis Nunnery School of Ballet

The young ladies sport identical hairdos: parted down the middle and pulled into low buns. It was a requirement that founder Louis Nunnery had while he owned the school, up until he died in 2013.

A decade after his death, Nunnery is still remembered and revered in Hickory, in the wider ballet community, and certainly among the countless students whom he taught during his more than 60-year career as a classical ballet instructor. He spent most of those years at his school in Hickory. Now, his former students are carrying on his legacy by teaching new generations how to dance.

• • •

Nunnery didn’t have any formal dance education until adulthood. Growing up in South Carolina in the 1920s and ’30s, he would dress up in old-fashioned clothes and dance along to classical music played on a phonograph that sat in the front parlor of his home. He even sewed bottle caps onto his socks so that he could tap-dance.

A brilliant young man, Nunnery finished high school at 15, graduated from the University of South Carolina at 18, and then studied art at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Some of the models who posed for the art students were dancers, and Nunnery began to go to their classes to watch. He was hooked.

Nunnery went on to join the Navy. While stationed in Illinois, he hitchhiked to evening ballet classes in Chicago. He soon began to perform, touring the United States and Europe, and spent a year in Paris studying under renowned ballet instructor Madame Egorova. But his career as a performer was soon derailed when he suffered a knee injury onstage in New York City.

He returned to South Carolina, and from there he began traveling to nearby towns to teach dance. One of those towns was Hickory, and in 1952, he purchased a local dance studio from the owner, who was retiring.

Nunnery (circa 1970s) always said that dancing on pointe enhances the lines of the ballerina. Photography courtesy of Louis Nunnery School of Ballet

Over the next six decades, Nunnery taught generations of Hickory residents classical ballet, and several of his students went on to perform professionally. Along the way, the Hickory community fell in love with his outgoing and quirky personality.

In addition to teaching at his school, Nunnery promoted dance across the Southeast. He founded the Charlotte Ballet, the Tarheel Ballet, and the New South Dance Theatre. He was one of the first members of the Executive Committee of the Southeast Ballet Festival Association, which began arranging regional ballet festivals in 1956.

Throughout his career, Nunnery continued to dance. He performed in his ballet school’s yearly production, often playing the role of king or emperor and being carried onto the stage on a throne or litter. For several years, he was lead dancer and choreographer for the outdoor drama Unto These Hills in Cherokee. Ever a student, in 1971 Nunnery spent two weeks studying at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in what was then the Soviet Union.

• • •

Nunnery often said that he planned to teach dance until he turned 100. He didn’t quite make it. He died at age 93, but he taught until the very end.

In the studio where he held classes for decades, five of his former students sit in a circle and reminisce about their instructor and dear friend. Four of them — Gretchen Wilson, Tina Taylor Miller, Tiffany Mullis Brittain, and Paige Levin — took ownership of the studio when Nunnery died. The fifth — Babbie Walker Bolick — took classes from Nunnery in 1952, during the first year of the school, and now teaches the adult morning class.

When asked what Nunnery was like as a teacher, the group bursts into laughter.

He was a disciplined, old-school teacher, they explain.

If you used the wrong foot, he’d hit it with a stick and say, “The foot that doesn’t hurt is the foot that goes in front!”

If someone fell, he’d say, “Pick that up!”

Louis Nunnery’s ballet school in Hickory trains dancers like 18-year-old Gretchen Heavner, who started dancing at age 3. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

In ballet, thumbs should be tucked inward toward the palm, and if he saw a thumb sticking out, he would take a baseball bat and swing it down toward the offending finger. Students would feel the air swooshing from the bat and tuck in their thumbs before they got whacked. “You’re not going to get away with that today,” Wilson says. But back then, “That was how it went.”

The group is quick to add that he loved his students and made classes fun. “You felt special,” Wilson says. “You felt like you were part of an elite group.”

Nunnery was a thoughtful and generous teacher. He would go to sleep at night praying for every person in his school. He even allowed students to dance on scholarship if they couldn’t afford to pay tuition, and all boys were given scholarships to encourage them to take classes — a practice that the owners continue today. That’s why, when other schools rarely had male students, Nunnery always had boys in his classes. In the 1970s, he even taught the football players at Lenoir-Rhyne College, at the behest of their coach. Ballet teaches balance, core strength, how to land correctly — all things that athletes can benefit from learning.

From left: Babbie Walker Bolick, Paige Levin, Tina Taylor Miller, Gretchen Wilson, and Tiffany Mullis Brittain continue the Louis Nunnery ballet tradition in Hickory. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

Nunnery was very complimentary of his students and ended every class by saying, “Applaud yourself!” Today, the students applaud after special efforts or when a dancer masters a skill.

On and off the dance floor, Nunnery had a larger-than-life presence. “He was very grand,” Wilson says.

“Flamboyant,” “flair,” and “finesse” are used frequently to describe him. He dressed on the edge of fashion, wearing velvet blazers for finer occasions, plaid suits with ruffled blouses in the ’70s. In the studio, he wore Birkenstocks and cardigans. “Men didn’t wear cardigan sweaters then,” Brittain says. “He was very cosmopolitan.”

He had expensive taste and collected luxury cars: Rolls-Royces, Jaguars, even a hearse at one time. “I think it was all about the regalness,” Brittain says. “It was all a part of the presentation, the elegance.” When folks saw a Rolls-Royce rolling down the streets of Hickory, everyone knew that it was Nunnery, and he loved the recognition.

Students learn pointe — dancing on the tips of their toes — only after demonstrating the proper strength and technique. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

He owned Russian wolfhounds — designer dogs — and would often bring one to the studio with him. He even included them in the school’s productions. His house was full of antiques and decked out in red velvet. And in his bathroom, placed over his toilet was a 1970s wicker chair with a big fan-back and a hole cut out of the seat; after all, he proclaimed, “everybody needs a throne.”

That big personality brought Nunnery big experiences. He acted in a spaghetti Western and once escorted actress Gloria Swanson when she visited Cherokee.

Nunnery was also very disciplined. He ate a vegetarian diet and never had a sip of alcohol in his life. If ever offered a drink, he would say, “My mother would roll over in her grave!”

And he adored his mother. “I think he appreciated women [at a time] when men didn’t really appreciate women,” Brittain says, “because he grew up with a strong woman.”

Everyone in the community, men and women alike, considered themselves to be his dear friend, and everyone in his classes thought they were his favorite student, because that’s how he made people feel.

• • •

Nunnery was an animated dancer, and as a choreographer he liked a lot of big movements like tour jetés — a combination requiring grand battements, or controlled high kicks, combined with a turning jump. Because he always had male dancers, he could do partnered choreography, with male dancers lifting female dancers. “When you were young, that was the coolest thing to get to do,” Brittain says. “In other studios, nobody was doing lifts because they didn’t have any males.”

The school still teaches some of Nunnery’s combinations, like “Mr. Nunnery’s Grand Battement.” The owners want his legacy to live on. “If we [were to] deviate from how he did things, that’s not something I’m interested in being a part of,” Miller says.

Nunnery often had custom costumes made, or embellished ones from a catalog. Still today, a lot of time goes into finding costumes that reflect what a dancer is performing. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

“The spirit he instilled in us and the love of dancing that he instilled in us, that gets to carry on,” Brittain adds. “When you’d come into class, you thought you were taking [lessons] from this ballet —” she interrupts herself. “Well, you were. You were taking [lessons] from a legend.”

“How did we get so lucky?” Wilson asks of Nunnery teaching in Hickory.

When Nunnery died, no one could believe it. “I thought he would live forever,” Miller says as Levin wipes away tears. “I would love to hear what he thinks of Heaven. I’m sure he’s probably redecorated it.”

The others howl with laughter.

“He’s costuming everybody!” Brittain adds.

If he’s up there, it’s safe to assume that he’s got his leg on a barre, getting the angels ready for a big production. And you can bet that production will be put on with style, with flair, with grace.

Louis Nunnery School of Ballet
254 First Avenue Northwest
Hickory, NC 28601
(828) 896-7163
louisnunneryschoolofballet.com