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GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS | 2021– 2022 61 A version of this article was published in the Sept. 12, 2019 edition of the News. REMEMBERING LOUISE SOELBERG By LAUREN “CHUCK” SHOWS W hen Louise Soelberg died in 1994 at the age of 90, it was enough to spark the interest of several national news outlets. Obituaries in the NY Times and Variety note her work as a pioneer of modern dance and the injury that ended her dancing career. That’s where the obituaries end — but Soelberg’s life was far from over when she stopped danc- ing. In 1959, when she was 56 years old, she established the Riding Centre, and more than 60 years later, it continues to fulfill the mission laid down by Soelberg: to connect people and horses. The Riding Centre, located at 1117 E. Hyde Road, is a nonprofit organization that provides riding lessons for students ages 8 and older, as well as horse boarding services, clinics and the Thera- peutic Riding Program. Trading the stage for a saddle After dancing and teach - ing across Europe and the United States, Soelberg came to Yellow Springs in the late 1940s after receiving a Wil - liam C. Whitney grant to teach dance at Antioch College. Her husband, the actor Basil Langton, worked with the Antioch Shakespeare Festival and Antioch Area Theatre, and Soelberg also choreographed some of the company’s pro- ductions. Though her marriage to Langton ended and he left the village, Soelberg remained in her position at Antioch College until she sustained a back injury in the 1950s. As she told the Dayton Journal Herald in 1976: “I sort of eased out of dancing rather than quit. A ruptured disc had a lot to do with it. I was one of those who couldn’t sit and teach, but had to move.” Soelberg’s daughter, Jessica Andrews, was entering elemen- tary school when her family moved to the village. Before establishing the Riding Centre, Andrews said that Soelberg would occasionally talk fondly of the time in her youth that she spent with horses. “She would tell me about how she and a friend in Seattle would go riding. They would tear down cliffs on horseback and horrify the drivers on the road,” Andrews said. In 1959, Soelberg petitioned Antioch College to lease 15 acres of unused farmland owned by Glen Helen to her in order to establish a horse riding school. The Riding Centre would provide riding lessons Longtime villager Jenny Cowperthwaite, right, and friend in 1965 at the Riding Centre, which was established in 1956 by modern dance pioneer Louise Soelberg. | PHOTO COURTESY OF JENNY COWPERTHWAI TE THE RIDING CENTRE Continued on page 63 Your EVERYDAY SOURCE for LOCAL FOODS 242 Xenia Ave., Yellow Springs Ph. 937-767-7349 Tom’s markeT is locally owned and operated and your everyday COmmUnitY DELi for breakfast, lunch and dinner LArge SeLeCtiOn of fresh organic fruits & vegetables roasted chickens BOAr’S HeAD products in the deli section FreSH cheeses, salads & sandwiches