Five Remembrances of a Benefactor

The way Margaret Jenkins tells it, Dianne came to her dance company’s studios in 1973, asking to take class. Dianne was then living in a one-bedroom apartment near San Francisco’s Mission District with her scientist husband and three young kids. She had loved dance since her childhood in Massachusetts, attending Jacob’s Pillow. She took class with Margy for about a year, until her husband got a job at the University of Georgia. Dianne and Margy lost touch. Then in the early 90’s, Margy got a call from the dance department at the University of California at Santa Barbara, asking if she would come teach guest workshops there, and she knew such opportunities don’t fall from the sky. Margy asked the department how this had all come about. It turned out a woman named Dianne Vapnek had recently moved to Santa Barbara, and she had called the university and said that if they would bring Margy to teach, she would pay for it.

Dianne Vapnek. Photograph by Paul Wellman

The way Margy tells it, “Frankly, at that moment I barely remembered who Dianne was.” But then the memory came back. “And I thought, ‘God, I wonder how—when I knew her, she was so poor, right?’”

Soon, Margy learned the basic story over dinner with the Vapnek family: From the University of Georgia, Dianne’s husband Dan had been one of the first scientists to join a new biotech research firm. He had helped discover an extraordinary drug that helped people in chemotherapy. An initial public stock offering had reaped many millions.

Dianne and Margy stayed in touch, and a few years later Dianne said, “I love dance, and I really want to do something with it. What do you think the field needs?”

Margy’s advice: “The greatest gift an artist can get is free time to create work, unencumbered by expectations.” Dianne wanted to understand everything from the artist’s point of view: what kind of facilities would a choreographer need? How much should a choreographer be paid?

This is the story Margaret Jenkins told me after she texted to let me know Dianne had died.

As we spoke, I stared at a picture: Dianne on the stage of Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theater, rows of red velvet seats behind, her short hair that always seemed tousled by the force of her wild energy lightly greying. In this publicity photo, Dianne has her blue eyes closed and her big mouth wide open because the choreographer Brian Brooks has thrown himself into her arms, mugging for the camera. He’s pretending she’s his dance partner—a pose that could not be more metaphorically apt.

I looked at the photo and I told Margy, “I hear her laugh.” That’s what all the dance artists I talked with later said, too.

Later, other choreographers would send photos: Dianne with Doug Varone (the first choreographer Dianne brought to Santa Barbara and commissioned, back in 1997); Dianne with Aszure Barton, Doug Elkins, Mark Dendy, Larry Keigwin. For Summerdance, the festival she presented from 1997 until 2006, Dianne hosted Tamango and his Urban Tap company; later, for one of the DanceWorks residencies, a program she created in 2009, she brought out the venerated Canadian choreographer Margie Gillis. But Dianne’s passion was for a distinct flavor of American contemporary dance that fit her unmistakable taste: smart, lush, funny, sexy—at times raw or painful, but ultimately joyful.

She once told me she wanted Doug Varone’s achingly beautiful “Lux” danced at her memorial.

Nothing Dianne did ever involved an application process.

Mark Dendy performing “Rumsfeld.” Photograph by David Bazemore

Mark Dendy remembered:

“I had this one little solo that I had made called “The General,” and it was a pantomime to Donald Rumsfeld speaking, and it was really the last dance I made for myself. I showed it to her, and she loved it, and I said, I want to build a piece about war, and I want it to revolve around Elvis, because he was used as war propaganda. And after that meeting with Dianne, I got home, and I got this book in the mail about the kitsch of Elvis.”

That solo grew into a two-hour piece, “Dystopian Distractions!,” given its first performances in 2014 as the culmination of that year’s DanceWorks residency.

The residency Dianne created was not typical. Every artist received a full month of creative time onstage at the Lobero Theater with professional stage crew at the ready. Choreographers were encouraged to bring not just their dancers, but also composers, costumers, lighting designers, dramaturgs—whoever they wanted involved. The dancers stayed in a house near the ocean, with gardens and a swimming pool. Once, when a choreographer realized his dancers needed time apart from him at the end of each day, Dianne found the choreographer a separate house for the rest of the residency, no questions asked.

Mark’s “Dystopian Distractions!” generated so much material that seven future pieces grew from it. But the original creation process was not easy, and what Mark went through at that time was intensely personal.

“I shared things with Dianne I've never shared with anybody,” Mark told me. “In Buddhism—I’m a secular Buddhist—we have this meditation that you direct first towards yourself, then towards a really good friend, then towards a loved one, then towards a benefactor. That word, ‘benefactor’ means much more in Buddhism—it means a teacher, someone who is behind you with emotional support, who is always there. When I do that meditation, I can never think of anyone for that slot except Dianne.”

Years after “Dystopian Distractions!,” Mark was admitted to the hospital for encephalitis. “They were draining my spinal fluid,” he told me. “And this rumor got around that I had relapsed, you know, from recovery.” When Dianne heard, she headed to the hospital. She gave Mark a substantial financial gift. She told him, “Don’t worry about work, don’t think about anything, this is for you.”

Larry Keigwin performing at the tenth anniversary of tDanceWorks. Photograph courtesy of DanceWorks

As Larry Keigwin told me:

“You know, Dianne was never shy about developing new dance crushes and falling in love with all the dancers that came under her wing. And you know, it wasn't just dance and choreography, but it was dancers and people and artists.”

Dianne fell in love with Larry in the late ’90s. Larry was a member of Mark’s company when Dendy Dance first headlined Dianne’s Summerdance festival, and Mark let Larry show his first work, a cheeky solo to the Bill Withers’s blues classic “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

Dianne adored Larry’s dance—and so did her daughters and her husband. “It was a full Vapnek family thing, you know?” Larry remembered. “Everyone was supportive, and Dianne led the charge. She said, ‘Why don't you come back for a residency for a longer stay and develop work?’ And at that moment in my career, that piece was all I had. I had that solo, and then I met Nicole Wolcott, and we made a duet, which became ‘Mattress Suite’.”

Dianne had Larry and Nicole lug a Sealy Posturepedic all around Santa Barbara, dancing on the lawn between the Santa Barbara Mission and the rose garden. “We still laugh at the fact that Nicole and I were performing in our underwear on a mattress, and literally people passing by were yelling out of their cars, ‘Get a hotel room!’”

Then there was the fundraising party with the actor Jeff Bridges as DJ, and Nicole in a wedding dress and Larry in a tux, dancing in a pool. “All of which is to say,” Larry adds, “that while Dianne was encouraging artistic growth, she was also expanding my mind site specifically—that dance didn't just belong into a proscenium stage, but it belonged in the rose garden, in a pool, on the beach, wherever we wanted.”

It was because of Dianne that Larry started Keigwin + Company and debuted in New York. He came back to Santa Barbara under Dianne’s auspices more than anyone else. There were Thanksgiving dinners together. Kids’ weddings. And of course, dances. In 2010, for the second season of DanceWorks, Larry and his company began experimenting with the brick back wall of the theater, creating a nightclub atmosphere. The evening-length dance, “Exit,” went on to a national tour.

For the first DanceWorks residency in 2009, Dianne had brought out Aszure Barton. The work Barton started that year, “Busk,” went on to win a Bessie Award and enter the repertory at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. As of 2026, it’s scheduled to be danced by the Paris Opera Ballet.

Adam Barruch performing “Sweeney Todd” at the tenth anniversary of DanceWorks. Photograph courtesy of DanceWorks

The obituary that ran in the Santa Barbara Independent will tell you that Dianne was born in 1941, and died on June 26, 2026. It will tell you that she earned an MA in recreational therapy with a focus on dance from the University of Georgia. It will tell you that Dianne and Dan bought a home across from the Mission rose garden in 1995, and moved a few blocks to a house designed by the architect Thorton Ladd in the early 2000s. (Dianne once confided to me how much it bothered her that magazines wanted to come photograph her house, more than they wanted to interview her about dance.)

The obituary will not tell you about how Dianne called Larry’s former dance partner Nicole Wolcott out of the blue after Nicole had a baby, and said she was concerned becoming a mother was preventing Nicole from choreographing. It won’t tell you that Dianne paid for child care and rehearsal space and dancer compensation so that Nicole could make her best-received work, “Paper Pieces.” It won’t tell you about how Dianne and Nicole laughed till they cried.

The obituary won’t tell you anything about the last DanceWorks residency Dianne made happen, with the choreographer Adam Barruch. Adam was making a dance suite to music from the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeny Todd.” At that time, Sondheim personally gave his permission for the use of his music. Dianne advertised for, interviewed, and hired a music director who could work with Adam on stage every day, shaping the score. Later, after Sondheim died, the Sondheim estate told Adam he could no longer use the music. The work he began at DanceWorks was never completed. After the pandemic, Adam went back to school in acupuncture. Now he’s back to making dances again. In the fall, he’s presenting a solo show at Joe’s Pub.

A few years ago, Adam was walking through the West Village when he spotted those blue eyes and heard that laugh. “It was just this happy reunion with Dan and her, and I got to introduce her to my husband, and I was like, ‘My god, this is amazing!’ She said, ‘I want to know what's going on with you, and let me know if you're making anything.’ And then after that, we tried to stay in touch a little bit, but the messaging was getting a little bit erratic . . . I think the illness was setting in.”

The obituary won’t tell you what Adam told me: “She didn’t just support me financially. It was artistically, spiritually.”

Santa Barbara isn’t exactly the center of the dance world if you’re a college student with the ridiculous idea of becoming a dance critic. But just before my senior year at UC Santa Barbara, while interning at the Santa Barbara Independent, I received a packet of press releases and photos. (Back in 1997, physical photos had to be mailed in, on glossy Kodak paper). I wrote a short article on how a woman named Dianne Vapnek was starting a summer festival, and bringing out a New York choreographer named Doug Varone.

The next year, freshly returned from a senior year abroad in London, I wrote a much longer article on the second-ever Summerdance festival: a cover story. I have that cover, yellowed around the edges, dated July 9-16, 1998. Doug Varone stares out, the expression on his face both sweet and urgent, one leg flung behind him in attitude. Doug Elkins’s company came that year, too: The Doug and Doug Show, reads the story’s subhed. I have the cover, but I no longer have the actual article inside. I remember that, at 21 years old, I was fascinated by Dianne’s energetic blue eyes and by her laugh—by how genuine she seemed, considering she was a person with so much money to spend. I remember I started the newspaper story by contemplating the meaning of altruism—how Dianne seemed to be giving this festival to the artists, to the community, without desiring any personal return. Or could giving itself be the return?

That year, Dianne invited me to the festival after-party in her home across from the rose garden, riotous dancing and loud karaoke spilling into the bougainvillea-lined courtyard. When I asked Doug Elkins what dance reviews were good for, he told me a bad review was good only for wrapping fish.

But for decades, Dianne continued wanting to know what I was writing—and not just about dance. As a journalist, I’ve always been scrupulous about conflicts of interest. Dianne became the exception. She gave me a key to her magnificent home, to stay while she was traveling; I listened to Dan’s vintage Ahmad Jamal records on their turntable. After I moved to San Francisco, and then got divorced, she had me over for dinner, and the relief of feeling like part of her family made me cry. When I married again, she sent two beautiful Le Creuset pots. When I moved to North Carolina for a teaching job, she flew me to New York to be her viewing companion for all the dance shows at the APAP conference. I watched her meet up for coffee with choreographers whose work she liked—choreographers who didn’t quite make her cut for a residency. I watched them tell her about the dances they were making, how the funding was falling short, heard her say without hesitation or condition, “Of course I’ll help you.”

And yet, all through those thirty years of knowing Dianne, I kept myself slightly distant. The reason wasn’t really journalistic ethics. I grew up in a dry, ugly town with a single mother who put herself through nursing school on food stamps. Wealthy people still make me nervous, wary. Through all my years of knowing Dianne, I didn’t know Margy’s story of Dianne raising three kids in a one-bedroom apartment. I couldn’t fathom Dianne as a person who had lived month-to-month, like me, who had to navigate suddenly having money, suddenly spending money, while still keeping genuine relationships. All the same, when I met up with Dianne for lunch, when I introduced her to a man I was dating and heard her tell me, with gentle honesty, that I should keep looking—it became only natural to kiss her, to say, “I love you.” The way Dianne supported her youngest daughter’s dreams influenced how I raised my own daughter; the way she kept dancing, once throwing a Zumba class as a fundraiser, made me keep dancing, too.

A few months ago, after Margy emailed to say Dianne was declining, it so happened that I passed through Santa Barbara. I reached out to Dan; I said I didn’t want to be an imposition but I’d love to visit, and I’d leave the moment he gave me the signal that Dianne was too tired. That afternoon, Dianne sat in a beautiful mid-century chair, covered in blankets. The living room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the garden, was as I remembered: vast, floating, and yet comfortable. Dan was the same, too: tall but childlike, his voice shy and soft.

Dianne looked startled. She stared at me, wide-eyed; she had no language. But as I shared a few memories of dances she had helped bring into the world, dances we had watched together, she took my hand. When I said she was probably tired, I should probably be leaving, she held my hand tighter. When I told her that what she had done for art and for artists wouldn’t end, that it keeps rippling out into the world, her eyes watered, and she offered a smile that was not without pain. When I told her that, after some extreme challenges, my family life was stable, she whispered the only words I heard from her that day: “You deserve it.”

Nearly an hour had passed. Most of the time I had been talking with Dianne, I had wondered: Does she remember what I’m sharing? Is she the same Dianne? Then I thought of what I ought to share. I said, “Oh, and I’m still singing! Remember how I started doing jazz standards? At the piano bar? I’m still there singing, every week.”

All the anxiety left her face. The look in her eyes was sheer joy. And I knew then that she was unchanged inside, because that’s what she had always wanted for others: to be their wildest, most outrageous, freest selves. We held each other. I said, “I love you, Dianne.” And we said goodbye.

Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard is the former lead dance critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Her dance writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Hudson Review, Ballet Review, San Francisco Magazine and Dance Magazine.

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Five Remembrances of a Benefactor

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