Teachers at Ross dance school show resilience with cancer recoveries

By Harry Funk, TribLive news editor

As the owner of a dance school in Ross, combined with her day job at the time of elementary school principal, Cynthia Zurchin wanted to make sure she could see as clearly as possible.

“I had gone for an eye appointment, and I was fully expecting that I was going to need bifocals,” she recalled. “The first person who looked at my eye said, ‘Oh, I think I see something.’ I remember, too, that it was a day that I was kind of in a rush, so I needed to kind of like keep moving.”

But Zurchin was stunned to hear:

“We think we have a tumor in your eye, and you need to see a specialist.”

The diagnosis turned out to be ciliary body melanoma, a rare type of cancer that develops behind the iris.

Fast-forward 17 years, to 2022, and longtime Cynthia’s School of Dance and Music instructor Jenny Simon scheduled a doctor’s appointment after feeling something wasn’t quite right.

“I wouldn’t say it was a lump, but kind of like a hard spot in my abdomen,” she said. “They sent me for a couple of tests and found it to be a very large, 18-centimeter mass, which apparently had been growing for a long time.

“Kidney cancer is very slow-growing.”

With the support of one another and the entirety of the dance school community, Zurchin and Simon — both are Franklin Park residents — persevered through their surgeries, treatments and recoveries. And today, they report clean bills of health.

“Even though we’re both just in a maintenance and getting checked out every so often, we celebrate together,” Simon said. “When either one of us has a test or a scan, we let the other person know that, hey, I had a CT scan last week and it came back clean. Yay!”

They further celebrated during “Celebrating 35 Years Dancing Under the Mirror Ball,” the theme of a recital held June 30 at Ingomar Middle School in Franklin Park.

‘Help them become resilient’

Zurchin, who has taught dance since she was 16, opened the school in 1988 with a holistic emphasis on student development.

“If we can build confidence in little children and help them become resilient, they have a better chance that they’re going to be successful adults,” she said. “That’s our goal.”

Circumstances forced her to develop a particularly strong sense of inner strength when she was a Shaler Area High School senior.

“I unfortunately had a terrible automobile accident,” she recalled. “They gave me my last rites and said I’d never make it through the night. So that resilience has really had to kick in for me a lot of times. Aw, the eye cancer’s just small potatoes.”

Nevertheless, she had to travel to Philadelphia for surgery and was hospitalized for 10 days while she recovered, away from her two young sons. For her stay, she decided to buy ballet shoes, “because I’m going to get up every day and I’m going to use the bar of my hospital bed as my ballet bar.’”

The reaction at the hospital:

“What do you think you’re doing? You’re not even supposed to move. That is not an option.”

But if that’s what she wanted, staff members offered to help with what she needed.

“So they did. I got dressed every day, and I was able to do a few demi-pliés,” Zurchin said, referring to half-knee bends as opposed to something as strenuous as double pirouettes. “It was just kind of that mindset that I think you develop with being a dancer: The show goes on. You’re going to do this. We’re going to get through it.”

At the dance studio, Simon and fellow instructors took care of business in Zurchin’s absence, as did the lead teacher at her elementary school.

‘She came back’

When Simon received her cancer diagnosis, the fall session at Cynthia’s was about to begin.

“The studio was amazing. We have a wonderful group of faculty,” she said. “They all just rallied together to do whatever they needed to do to as a team to make sure that my classes were covered, at that point for an indefinite period of time.”

Following major surgery that left her with a lengthy scar, it was about three months before she returned to the school. In the meantime, the instructors took good care of her students.

“One teacher would do a couple of weeks, and another teacher would do a couple of weeks,” Simon said. “From a teaching perspective, they were just wonderful. I didn’t have to worry about anything. I could just focus on my health and getting better.”

Given Zurchin’s own experiences, she was able to provide Simon with plenty of practical guidance.

“She really helped educate me on what I should do for myself, in terms of being an advocate for myself and keeping notes on things, and the importance of sending handwritten thank-you notes to my doctors,” Simon recalled.

During her recovery, she told Zurchin to feel free to share information with the families of Simon’s students.

“I’m glad of that, for a couple of reasons,” she said. “It does speak to our resiliency and hoping that we can teach the kids, yeah, Jenny went through a tough time. But here she is, a couple of months later, and she came back.”

As for Zurchin, she came back from the nearly fatal auto accident and battle with eye cancer to lead a dual career as dance school owner and school administrator, eventually rising to the role of district superintendent. In 1997, she earned her doctor of education degree from Duquesne University, and she now is an assistant professor at Point Park University’s Graduate School of Education.

If her goal is to teach resilience, her own story would seem to be Exhibit A.

For more information, visit https://cynthiasschoolofdance.com/.

Harry Funk is a TribLive news editor, specifically serving as editor of the Hampton, North Allegheny, North Hills, Pine Creek and Bethel Park journals. A professional journalist since 1985, he joined TribLive in 2022. You can contact Harry at [email protected].