Shirley Brosius

Sandra Carlino loves dance and loves the outdoors, so her support of the NSCNA comes as no surprise. With the sound of a koi pond waterfall in the background and the scent of honeysuckle wafting through a screened-in porch at her Middle Paxton Twp. home, Carlino discussed her family and her work as artistic director of Pennsylvania Regional Ballet. The school was recently invited to become the resident dance company at NSCNA.

According to Carlino, the mission of the school is far more than to advance the art of ballet and provide a center for professional training and education for its 150 students.

“We teach life skills too and just how to be good people,” she said.

Since some students begin training at Bridger Studio in Enola as young as age 3 and continue through age 18, Carlino gets to know them well as they study ballet, modern, tap and jazz relative to musical theater.
Students and former students visit her home, and she receives great joy from seeing them succeed in professional companies or continuing as patrons of the arts.

“I could cut down 80 percent of my phone calls if they would lose my number,” she says laughing. “There are kids here all the time. There are dogs and cats; there are birds and turtles; there are fish. This house is lived in.”

Residents include Carlino’s husband Rick, a vintage car collector and racer, and their daughter Heather, 15, a ballet dancer like her mother. Carlino credits Heather’s arrival with changing her way of teaching students.

“I became more sensitive to them,” Carlino said. “I saw what hurt Heather’s feelings . . . and it just made me better able to deal with the kids.”

Carlino has joined Rick in racing and, in April, debuted in Savannah, Georgia.

“I was so nervous,” she said. “But the guys out racing with me, they were very nice. They knew I was a rookie.”
The Lee Chapman Racing web site includes a photo of Carlino in her racing car, which can reach speeds of 140 miles per hour on the track.

Carlino’s entrance to the world of dance was more tentative. When her brother dropped her off at a dance studio in Norfolk, Virginia, at age 9, she walked out the back door and hid until it was time to be picked up. But she soon came to love dance.

“The teacher I had was always challenging me,” Carlino said. “I was very competitive.”

She studied with Norfolk Civic Ballet for nine years until offered a position with Joffrey Ballet School in New York, and then moved to Harrisburg in 1987 after a Norfolk teacher recommended her for a position with what later became Pennsylvania Regional Ballet.

There she teaches older students and leads rehearsals, working with costuming, lighting and music. As a master teacher, she also lends her expertise to direct rehearsals for companies across the nation.

Carlino sees the partnership between PRB and NSCNA as benefitting both.

“Those involved in dance will get involved in nature,” she said, “and those who visit the nature center will have the opportunity to see ballet.”

(This article appeared in Summer, 2008, Drumming Log, published by the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art.)