he Santa Barbara sun streams through the rectangular windows of PE room 113. The room is walled with mirrors and practice beams, and a peg board decorated with old newspaper clippings and photos. A comfy-clothed Kay Fulton is propping her jazz slipper clad feet up on the sole desk in the room, eating a carton of fresh sliced fruit. “Sometimes I just look at my feet and get tickled, because I know I came into this world to dance,” she said.
After 48 years of teaching–35 at City College–70-year-old Fulton is retiring. She is City College’s sole dance professor and teaches everything from jazz and modern to beginning ballroom and the ballet basics. Her dance expertise has not been her only contribution to the students at City College. In the early 1980s she campaigned for a new dance floor, the same one she teaches on today.
Fulton will not be hanging up her dance shoes in retirement. She continues to perfect her craft by taking Argentine tango lessons. “It’s tough for me because I am used to explaining and knowing the steps,” said Fulton as she stands ready to begin. “It’s more fun than a picnic.” From the sassy way she speaks and the graceful way she stretching her long legs as she talks, it seems so is she.
The Chicago native’s first ballet experience was at age 5 when her next-door neighbor showed her ballet’s first and second position. “Ballet was my love,” she remembered. “When I learned first and second it was like a light went on in my little head.” It has been 65 years and that childhood light still burns bright.
Fulton graduated from college with a degree in physical education and a minor in biology. She went on to get her Masters in theater and dance. “At age 15 I wanted to go to New York to study dance, but it wasn’t my path,” she said. Fulton was meant to sashay down a different path: teaching. “The thing I love most is watching my students grow and change,” she said. The role of teacher is not the only one Fulton has danced; she is a mother of one son and shares a birthday with her grandson.
Fulton enjoys teaching this age group because it keeps her up to date with the changing times. Fulton is from a time when men wore hats and big band music filled the ears of eager youngsters. “When you teach young people they keep you young in mind, body, and spirit,” she explained.
Her students seem to enjoy her as much as she does them. “She has lived the life of a professional,” said her student Fay Villanueva. “And her life experience comes through in the classroom.”
When asked what quality they liked most about their seasoned professor, Fulton’s students all said it was her honesty. “She teaches with tough love but in a constructive way,” said student Kyle Maish. “She makes you want to please her because her approval means you’re progressing.”
There is no question that Fulton is passionate about dance. Her bright brown eyes tell how eager she still gets when she attends a professional production. “My eyes get so big and I get as excited as a 5-year-old,” she described.
It’s hard to describe how Fulton is when teaching. The way she moves her body, no one would believe it belonged to a 70-year-old. The sound of her voice evokes feeling, she addresses her students lovingly as “children” and her classes are littered with clichés and anecdotes like “a watched pot never boils.” On occasion she will confess her love of square dancing and begin to call out commands.
“I like her candidness, the stories she shares the experiences she’s had and the wisdom she brings,” said Derrick Curtis who assists Kay in teaching her ballroom class.
“70-year-olds are supposed to be stoic but I am still like a little kid,” explained Fulton which is good since she has big plans for her retirement. “I’m gonna relax, stretch, dance cook, read, basically do whatever I want to do on any given day,” she happily stated. Her students are sad to see her go. “I’m glad to have had the opportunity to learn from her,” said student Alicia Cowern. “She will be missed.”
When asked what she will miss most about City College after teaching here for over three decades she said she will miss “the interaction with the students and routine of the day itself.” But she has little sadness upon her departure. “My father used to say, when you experience something fully then you never have any regrets.”