Virginia Tanner[1] began teaching children at the McCune School of Music and Art in Salt Lake City in 1941, where she was director of the dance program.
In 1960, Tanner was instrumental in gaining a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to bring great choreographers to Salt Lake City to set work on dancers at the University of Utah.
There isn't any place, and I include New York, London, Paris, Moscow, that has anyone who can touch her genius for teaching children the exciting purity of the dancing arts.
[2] In 2014, Tanner Dance relocated to new headquarters in the 110,000-square-foot Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts and Education Complex on the University of Utah campus.
[12] CDT's first formal concert, held in May 1949 at Kingsbury Hall, was attended by Doris Humphrey, whose reaction was effusive: "Your children have left an indelible impression with me of true creative dance...
Your children offer a wonderful proof of the power of the young artist, guided wisely, untarnished by dogma or routine, unstereotyped, and lovely.
Every spring, CDT showcases an original work at the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City with matinees for school-age children and special populations.