From First Company to Lasting Tradition — In Memory of Bessie Vlahos

How Canton Ballet Learned to Stand — and Stay Standing (1965–1969)

Canton in the Mid-1960s

To understand why Canton Ballet has withstood time, one must first understand the city that shaped it.

Canton in the mid-1960s was an industrial city operating at full stride. Steel mills and factories anchored the economy. Manufacturing defined daily life. Canton was nationally recognized for the production of vacuum cleaners — precision-built machines exported into homes across America.

Work was physical. Exacting. Repetitive.
Pride came from reliability — showing up every day and doing the work well.

Major industrial employers such as Canton Drop Forge, Hercules, and The Timken Company thrived during the postwar and Vietnam-era expansion, fueled by defense contracts, heavy manufacturing, and military engine supply. Alongside them, smaller family-owned operations — including Canton Gear Manufacturing, which continues to operate today — established reputations for precision gearing and heavy-machinery production.

These businesses thrived not due to extravagance but because of consistency and dependability.

The workforce shaped the city’s character. Machinists, forge workers, welders, assemblers, and factory laborers understood work as commitment. You showed up. You repeated the process. You trusted that discipline would become durability.

Rocco Weida, Canton Gear Manufacturing

That same DNA lives in ballet.

At its core, ballet is labor — repetition, sweat, precision, and endurance. Like manufacturing, it requires private discipline in service of public excellence. Progress is incremental. Mastery is cumulative. The work resumes tomorrow.

In that sense, ballet was not foreign to Canton.
It was familiar.

At the same time, Canton was already investing in culture. The Canton Art Institute had established a strong visual-arts presence rooted in education and civic pride. The Canton Symphony Orchestra offered orchestral music to a city that valued artistic expression alongside industry.

What Canton did not yet have was ballet.

No professional school.
No performing company.
No pipeline for serious classical training.

By 1965, Canton had industry.
It had visual art.
It had music.

What it lacked was the final element of a complete cultural ecosystem.

Across global cultural centers, the formation of a civic ballet company has long marked a city’s artistic maturity—linking education, performance, and civic identity. Canton would soon join that landscape.

In 1965, Suanne Ferguson and Jane Bingham Fawcett recognized that absence — and chose to address it. They were not adding something decorative.

They were completing the picture.

The First Company

Building Something from Nothing (1965–1966)

By 1966, the Canton Civic Ballet was no longer just an idea. It was a working company—made real by the young dancers who agreed to build it from the inside.

They rehearsed at the Fulton Road studio, often with limited resources but unlimited responsibility.

“There were no departments,” founding company member Joe Gauthier later recalled.
 “You showed up, you worked, and you took responsibility for whatever needed doing.”

This was ballet constructed the same way Canton built its factories: through repetition, shared labor, and trust that consistency would eventually become permanence.

The dancers who formed the Ballet’s first performing company were:

Antonia Andriotto
Christine Clover
Cynthia DiGiantonio
Wayne Dolph
Joe Gauthier
Susan Oberlin
Sandy Scafate
Diane Watson
Julie Wolfarth
Bessie Vlahos

Bessie Vlahos

Since the completion of the first draft of this volume, Canton Ballet learned of the passing of founding company member Bessie Vlahos, who died on January 7, 2026, at the age of 93. As one of the dancers who helped establish Canton Civic Ballet’s first performing company, her contribution is inseparable from the institution’s earliest history. This edition is respectfully dedicated to her memory.

Like Bessie and her fellow fearless founding company dancers were the ones who stood onstage first, testing whether the idea of a civic ballet company could translate into lived experience and public presentation.

They are best understood as the Ballet’s pioneers. For young audiences reading this today, they might be thought of as the Ballet’s “OGs”—the originals who showed what was possible before there was a roadmap to follow.

The company’s first public performance took place in May 1966 at the MacDowell Club. This event marked the initial transition from internal rehearsal to public presentation and provided an early reference point for assessing the company’s emerging artistic standards.

Two members of this first company — Antonia Andriotto and Joe Gauthier — played particularly significant roles during this period. As part of the founding ensemble, they contributed to the stabilization of the early company and supported the expansion of its repertory and partnering capacity.

The first company did not inherit an institution.
They helped build one.

As the Ballet’s ambitions grew beyond short works toward evening-length productions, the groundwork laid by these dancers made it possible for guest choreographers with broader professional experience to enter the studio. Among them was John Begg, whose arrival from Cleveland would mark a decisive shift in the company’s artistic direction and standards.

Alumni Spotlight

Antonia Andriotto

Learning What It Means to Commit

When Antonia Andriotto auditioned for what was just beginning to take shape as the Canton Civic Ballet, she was twelve years old.

“I was the baby,” she recalls.

At that moment in the spring of 1965, Suanne Ferguson and Jane Bingham Fawcett were not building a school, but assembling an ensemble performance group — a civic ballet company intended to rehearse, perform, and represent the city publicly. The Ballet had been founded in March. By May, belief had to become responsibility.

The audition — Canton Civic Ballet’s first official selection process — was conducted by Marguerite Duncan of the Cleveland Civic Ballet. The decision was deliberate. Rather than rely on familiarity or goodwill, Ferguson and Fawcett brought in an external evaluator to establish standards from the outside. Twenty-five dancers auditioned. From them, a first company of seven dancers and a second, developmental company of twelve were selected.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Antonia reflects. “Everything was forming at the same time.”

Antonia became part of the Ballet’s first performing company, rehearsing regularly as the organization worked — often visibly — to establish itself. Classes and rehearsals took place at the Fulton Road location, and the demands were significant. Many dancers, Antonia included, gradually shifted away from their original studios as the Civic Ballet required more time, more presence, and more commitment.

“There was a lot of pushback,” she remembers. “Jane and Suanne were faced with much resistance in the early years, as the concept of a civic ballet group was unfamiliar. In an area like Canton, people questioned whether it would work. The idea of a pre-professional performing company with serious training was foreign to many people at the time.”

The Ballet’s earliest repertory required trust — especially between partners. Antonia vividly recalls dancing The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Joe Gauthier, repeatedly practicing a moment in which she had to land on his shoulder.

“We just kept trying over and over,” she says. “We wanted so badly to be good at what we were doing. As kids, we were focused on getting it right.”

That persistence mirrored the institution taking shape around them. The Ballet was young, resources were limited, and Ferguson faced resistance even as she worked to establish consistency and standards. For its dancers, rehearsal was not simply preparation for performance; it was participation in an institution still proving its viability.

Antonia danced with the Ballet through 1970. As she grew older, practical considerations began to assert themselves. She needed to think about college, and family circumstances became increasingly important. Her parents were older — her mother had her at forty-five — and after her family moved, the distance became difficult to manage, particularly with her parents already in their seventies.

“I was so sad to leave Canton Civic Ballet,” she says. “But looking back, my heart never left the Ballet.”

Like many dancers of that era, Antonia participated in summer stock theater. “Crate and Canvas and Artfare were popular cultural outlets in Canton,” she recalls. “It was the popular thing for kids to do at that time.” She also modeled at the Canton Art Institute, holding ballet positions for painting classes.

Antonia Andriotto Portrait — Canton Art Institute, 1970

Some of her fondest memories are of performing works including The Nutcracker, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Peter and the Wolf, where Joe Gauthier danced the Wolf and Antonia danced the Cat, alongside Sandy Scafate and Diane Watson.

Dance remained central as Antonia moved into higher education. She attended West Virginia University, dancing with the university’s dance troupe while earning a bachelor’s degree in English and Education, with a focus on special needs. She remained at the university for an additional year, teaching before returning to Ohio.

What followed was a distinguished career in education and public service. Antonia taught students with special needs, worked at local dance studios, and became deeply involved with programs serving individuals with developmental disabilities. She later returned to school to earn a master’s degree and moved into administration, serving as an assistant principal and eventually as Director of Special Services, overseeing both gifted and special education programs. She retired from Sandy Valley in 2012.

“The best years were always with the kids,” she reflects. “And later, as an administrator, helping teachers help those kids. That change in perspective mattered.”

Looking back, Antonia understands dance not as a chapter that ended, but as a foundation that shaped how she lived and worked.

“Dance is a universal language,” she says. “It teaches empathy. It teaches you how to connect with what people are feeling, even when they can’t say it.”

She now lives in Canal Fulton with her husband. She has two sons, now in their forties, and grandchildren approaching high school graduation.

Antonia has remained closely connected to Canton Ballet across decades. She attended the 25th Anniversary celebration, where founding company members were recognized on a plaque that still hangs in the Ballet’s lobby. She also attended the 40th and 50th anniversaries and plans to be present again for the 60th.

“It always stays with you,” she says. “The grace. The confidence. You don’t realize it when you’re young — but later, you understand what it gave you.”

Her story illustrates a central truth of Canton Ballet’s early years: that institutions are often built by very young people asked to rise early to responsibility—and who carry those lessons forward for a lifetime.

Alumni Spotlight

Joe Gauthier

Strength, Service, and Staying Power

Like many boys, Joe Gauthier first entered the dance studio because his sisters were enrolled in classes.

When Joe Gauthier joined Canton Civic Ballet in 1966, he became its second male dancer — a role that carried immediate practical importance in a young company still finding its footing.

“All female dancers need someone to pick them up,” Joe later said.
“I happened to be that guy.”

Joe was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, into a family shaped by work ethic and service. His father, George, a World War II veteran, helped establish the Erie Fire Department while supporting his family through various side jobs. George famously transformed a used vehicle into Erie’s first fire truck, which served as a combination pumper and tanker. Today, Erie’s fire training grounds are named in his honor — a fact Joe shares with great pride.

Joe’s mother, raised on a farm, once traveled by horseback from Erie to Pasadena—a 180-day journey that became family legend.

“Those stories stayed with me,” Joe reflected. “It wasn’t about adventure. It was about not stopping.”

As a child, Joe contracted polio. Dance — paired with chiropractic care, discipline, and persistence — helped restore his strength.

“Me and dance kept me going,” he said. “It gave me something to work toward every day.”

Before Canton Civic Ballet existed, Joe was already performing professionally with the JiMar Trio, touring nationally with an adagio acrobatic act rooted in vaudeville and circus traditions. Female partners were routinely lifted and thrown into the air — work that required absolute trust, strength, and precision.

“I could throw girls ten to fifteen feet in the air,” Joe says with confidence.

Brenda Stoudt, Sue Hanson (in the arms of Joe Gauthier), and Marylou Hume

That background proved essential in Canton’s early years, when classical partnering was still developing. Joe’s fearlessness and physical confidence expanded what the company could attempt onstage, bridging civic beginnings with emerging classical technique.

Joe entered the United States Air Force during the Vietnam era, serving five years. His service included a station in Greenland, where winter temperatures dropped to minus fifty degrees, and temporary duty in the Florida panhandle. Even there, dance followed him.

He entered Air Force talent competitions twice, placing second both times while tap dancing to Fred Astaire’s Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails.

“Dance was my identity,” he recalled. “No matter where I was, I found a way to do it.”

While Joe was still serving, the JiMar Trio received an invitation to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Joe Gauthier and Marylou Hume

“My partners were crushed,” Joe said. “But service came first.”

Joe returned to Canton in December 1965 and, in the new year, walked directly into Suanne Ferguson’s studio asking to dance.

“All I remember,” he recalled, “is knocking on the door and saying, ‘My name is Joe. I can dance, and I want to dance.”

Joe was long known within the company as the primary partner of Marylou Hume, forming one of the Ballet’s most dependable early pairings. When Donny Miller-Steffy later joined the young company, Joe joked that he had been “good enough until Donny came along,” noting with characteristic humor that today Don and Marylou are married.

While dancing with the company, Joe worked for IBM. In 1967, he married his wife, Neila, and welcomed their first child, Patrice. While balancing family life, Joe remained with the company through the mid-1970s.

Joe and Neila later recalled that some of their fondest memories included enrolling Patrice in Canton Civic Ballet’s creative movement classes while Joe rehearsed with the company.

He later returned as a guest artist, including appearances as the father of the Ugly Stepsisters in Cinderella. Joe also noted — without hesitation — that he was Canton Ballet’s very first Wolf in Peter and the Wolf.

“Once you’re part of it,” Joe says, “you don’t really leave.”

Reflecting on the organization’s longer arc, Joe has often pointed to the Ballet’s move to the Cultural Center for the Arts as a pivotal moment.

“The facilities gave the Ballet what it needed,” he said. “They finally had the space.”

He contrasted that moment with the Ballet’s earliest years, recalling their resourcefulness with a laugh.

“In the beginning, we had nothing,” he said. “We carried our own costumes. We made our own sets. We sewed our own costumes. It was humble beginnings.”

After leaving Canton Ballet and concluding his career at IBM, Joe founded his own business, Gauthier Office Equipment Service.

When asked to describe himself today, Joe says simply, “I am a U.S. Air Force veteran and a proud lifetime member of the Canton Ballet Company.”

Canton Ballet’s 50th Anniversary. Pictured far left Joe Gauthier.

Today, Joe Gauthier is 85 years old. He attended Canton Ballet’s 50th Anniversary celebration and plans to be present again for the 60th — he asked that this be noted to our readers, not for recognition, but for continuity.

When the Work Had to Be Measured

John Begg and the Manufacturing of Standards (1968–1976)

John Begg did not arrive in Canton with fanfare. He arrived by Greyhound bus.

In the late 1960s, before holding a formal title with the Canton Civic Ballet. Begg traveled regularly from Cleveland to Canton as a commissioned choreographer. He carried his music, taught class, staged ballets, stayed the weekends with Suanne Ferguson’s family, and returned north the next day.

Begg understood something that Canton, with its long history as an industrial hub, understood instinctively: Institutions are built the same way machines are built—part by part, piece by piece, to exacting standards.

John Begg

Born in Canada, Begg travelled to New York City as a teen to pursue a career in dance. He studied with many former dancers with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and studied at the School of American Ballet. Begg danced professionally with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and performed in many Broadway shows including, among others, Oklahoma, Billion Dollar Baby, Pajama Game, The Seven Lively Arts, and Annie Get Your Gun. He worked with legendary choreographers Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Agnes de Mille, Helen Tamiris, and he choreographed for the Mia Slavenska Ballet.

Tragedy struck when a detached retina resulted in the loss of the vision in his right eye, ending his dancing career. (Later in life, a cataract in his other eye became a further obstacle. He often wore dark glasses, leading to some misinterpretations; the glasses were not a fashion statement but a way to reduce the glare caused by the cataract.)

Begg decided that it was time to pursue his interest in choreography and company building. He founded John Begg’s Ballet Carnival. The touring company was designed for mobility, accessibility, and the specific goal of introducing children to the world of classical ballet and character dance. The small company performed in high school auditoriums and civic theaters on the East Coast and across the Midwest. Today, Ballet Carnival is remembered as a pioneer in arts in education.

In 1959, an invitation from Cleveland dance pioneer Ruth Pryor to teach ballet brought Begg to Cleveland. Later, he taught and choreographed at the Ballet Guild of Cleveland with Alex Martin and at other schools and theater groups including Karamu House, the Cleveland Music School Settlement (now known as the Music Settlement), Cain Park Summer Theater, and Case Western Reserve University. He was admired as a teacher by serious students and adult beginners, and he developed an enviable reputation as a choreographer of musicals from the level of high school to fully professional productions.

Having begun his weekly Canton commute in the late sixties, Begg was formally appointed Artistic Director in 1971, when school enrollment reached 271 students. At the same time, he established the school’s first apprentice company. Before long, he moved permanently to Canton and said good-bye to Greyhound.

In Canton, Begg created the company’s first full-length Nutcracker in 1969 and went on to create story ballets such as Cinderella, Peter and the Wolf, Hansel and Gretel, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and an original version of A Christmas Carol. And he created plotless dances that emphasized his lyrical talent and compositional invention.

Under his leadership, Canton Civic Ballet became a founding member of the Midwest region of the National Association of Regional Ballet. The company gained national recognition as the dancers flourished under his demanding standards.

One dancer recalled, “If you drifted to the back of the classroom, he’d stop the music and say, ‘Step up.’ He always knew.”

John Begg succumbed to cancer in 1980 in his apartment on Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. Former Canton Ballet dancer Bill Anthony visited him earlier that day, stopping by on his way to class.

“By the time I arrived at the Dance Center, the phone was ringing to inform me that he had passed away,” Anthony later recalled. “I rushed back to his apartment only to arrive as the undertakers were bearing him away.” The moment was not dramatic; it was final and reflective of the quiet loyalty that Begg inspired. His former students, including Dr. Margaret Carlson, now Producing Artistic Director of Ohio Contemporary Ballet, and Susan McGuire, formerly a dancer with the companies of Martha Graham and Paul Taylor, remained present, attentive, and respectful until the very end.

He left behind a legacy that would shape the Canton Civic Ballet: a standard.

Why Volume II Matters

By the early 1970s, Canton Civic Ballet had done more than survive.

It had established standards.
It had cultivated continuity.
It had built capacity.

Greatness was not declared.
It accumulated.

That understanding frames Canton Ballet’s 60th Anniversary theme: The Greatest of All Time.

Greatness is earned over time.

And it begins, as it did here, with people willing to do the work before anyone knew how long it would last.