By THERESA REYNOLDS

By THERESA REYNOLDS

Rappahannock News Special Writer

In a cabin by the Shenandoah River, Betty Kerr lives a simple life,

teaching a variety of far-flung classes to rural children and adults from Warren and Rappahannock County. She’s studied in New York and San Francisco and worked with masters as famous as Martha Graham and Alwin Nicolaif and as exotic as the South Indian temple Devadasi.

Ms. Kerr’s choice of a place to live was made partly by desire, partly family obligations. But she hasn’t regretted it.

“Of course, I sometimes miss the cultural opportunities of the city," she said. “But not enough that I want to live there. I’ve managed to meet and work with people interested in dance. And I love rural life.”

Ms. Kerr begins this week with classes at the Child Care and Learning Center near Washington, teaching classes every Thursday for preschool, school age and older schoolage children.

Teaching comes as naturally to the soft-spoken dancer as does dancing. And she feels that dance is something that should be natural for everyone.

“Dance is something that children should love. It should take advantage of their spontaneity. Walking, running, rolling, jumping: these are all movements that children should come to think of as dance. Instead, they’re taught that only some people can dance, that it’s a discipline that requires artificial movements. That’s such a shame, since it should provide a welcome relief to all those endless hours that children spend seated at a desk, not permitted to move.”

A very restrained and stylized idea of dance, said Ms. Kerr, ties in with other Western notions about this ancient art form. “Other cultures use dance in religious observances,” she said.

. In fact, said Ms. Kerr, dance has carried the shading of a slight decadence, except in the very formal and rigorous training of ballet.

“So much of Western religion ( consider^ physical expression an 'evil,0 she"said. “Just the reverse is true in Eastern cultures, where dancing is done as part of a religious ritual.”

This conflict was made very evident to Ms. Kerr when she learned some of the history of South Indian dance. Her teacher in San Francisco was the descendant of one of the Devadasi caste, the women who maintained the temple and danced at the religious ceremonies. The proper British outlawed the Devadasis, thinking them erotic rather than devout.

Ms. Kerr was fascinated by the dance the British outlawed. “The dancers do most of their performance in a plie position,” she said. “Like a lot of religious dances, the emphasis is on rhythymic precision and the footwork follows the rhythym. The arms, the upper torso, the faces and hands tell a story. To help with the story, there are symbolic gestures that everyone understands.”

Her interest in this kind of religious dance led her to another kind. She studied some of the ritual dances of the Ypik Eskimoes. “I’ve learned one of their hunting dances, and one called the Mother of the Mukluk Seals,” she said.

With the Eskimo dances, she became interested in masks and she has an intriguing collection of masks