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dancing for the lord and for the love of it

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

And she danced. From the time she began lessons at 7, Toni Intravaia knew she wanted to dance. Now, at age 86, and close to five feet tall, after many performances, she continues to teach and to dance with her Motion Choir at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Carbondale.

Born Oct. 11, 1922 in Covington, Ky., Toni said the family moved many times.

Growing up during the Depression, the family experienced financial difficulties often. A 10-cent deposit on a milk bottle could be turned in at the store for a loaf of bread, she said, which was also 10 cents.

Her dancing lessons were carried on even though the family moved. “At a convent school, I learned my first dance — the minuet,” she said.

During the 1940s and the war, she worked in a law office and continued to dance with a group that toured the state of Kansas. Wanting to continue her education but unable to afford to go to a university, she took correspondence courses and eventually earned her bachelor’s degree in art from Witchita State University.

She continued to dance and study eventually earning a master’s degree in dance from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in music notation from New York University. With boundless energy, even now, Toni said she just wanted to learn and to teach.

She met her husband, Larry, a bassoonist in 1946. “A French horn player introduced us,” she said. They were married in June 1948, and they both continued to study, with Larry eventually earning a doctorate in music.

The couple came to Carbondale in 1964 to the university, he to teach the bassoon and graduate classes, and she to teach dance. “I took the last passenger train from the east to this area,” she said.

Surrounded by music and the arts all her life, Toni said she “never tired of it.”
The couple became involved at St. Francis, she said, with Larry the first lay person to lector at Mass there in 1965.
Never learning to, or needing to drive a car, Toni said she prays two rosaries as she walks to St. Francis. It takes one rosary to walk to the shopping center.

She has been the coordinator of religious education at the parish since 1965 and continues to enjoy it. “I just like working with the children,” she said.

With boundless energy, she said she only realizes her age when she looks “in the mirror and see that I’m older.”
No stranger to sorrow, Toni lost her husband to cancer in 1973. “To lose him at 53 was horrible,” she said.
The two were truly a couple. “He taught me how to copy music; he helped me make bat wings (for costumes). In other words, we helped each other.”

Toni continues to teach dance three hours a day, five days a week, and weekends are devoted to parish religious education programs.

She works with Teens in Spirit which involves sophomore, junior and senior high school students in their faith.
Where does she find the energy for such a schedule? “My energy comes from God. Where else would it come from? When I need something, I ask Him.”

She also relies on her son, Paul, a percussionist and paramedic. Four years ago, she broke her neck. “I fell on my head,” she said, when she was getting into a car. “If my son hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here.”
Confined to a St. Louis hospital for three weeks, she had to learn to walk again. “They put me together with wire and screws, part of a cadaver and my own hip,” she said.

Was she worried that she would not be able to dance? No. She somehow knew everything would be all right.
Also during this time, she dealt with breast cancer. A mastectomy in 1990 didn’t slow her down too much, nor did a cancerous lump on a suture line from that procedure that surfaced in 1994. A third cancerous lump in the same area was removed in 2007.

“God must have more work for me to do,” she said.

During her hospital stay for the broken neck, Toni told her sisters who had come to visit her that she couldn’t seem to pray. “The words wouldn’t come,” she said.

Her sister had an answer for her: “That’s why you pray ahead of time.”

At home recovering from the neck injury, Toni wore a 14-lb. “halo” to keep her neck immobile for three months. “It slowed me down at the computer,” she said, admitting it was “a little tedious.”

It took awhile for her to return to the dance studio in the basement, but she did, saying she was “not sure” she wanted to earn a real halo.

The students listen to her every word and follow her lead. No age gap exists between the two. They practice for upcoming performances and for their next opportunity to participate in a liturgy at St. Francis.

“It’s not like dance, it’s prayer, moving prayer,” Toni said.

Continuing to learn about her faith, she draws strength and energy from God. Her philosophy: “God takes care of you; you just have to let him do it.”