Teaching dance in community, recreation, and daycare centers

By Lisa Traiger

Being a great dance teacher or studio owner requires stamina, know-how, and, most important, plenty of flexibility. Sometimes the traditional methods don’t work and teachers must find new images to perfect an arabesque or fine-tune a student’s clunky time step. And seeking out the non-traditional can also apply to where classes are taught. Particularly in trying economic times, leasing and refurbishing studio space may be too risky, making a location with no overhead an appealing alternative. But some dance teachers choose the freedom of teaching for umbrella organizations such as community centers, health clubs, daycare centers, and after-school programs because they find the work satisfying and lucrative.

Swim & Tennis—and dance
In 1997 Jeri Sutter called her friend Sioux Duddy, mom of two of her dance students, on hearing that a dance studio outside of San Diego was on the market. The 21-year-old business, once successful, had lost students as its founder aged. Sutter, a former teacher there, believed that she and Duddy could turn it around.

Sioux Duddy leads a dance class at the Ranch Bernardo Swim & Tennis Club in Southern California. (Photo by Kelly Alwan, LotoFoto Photography)

What they bought wasn’t a traditional building or studio dedicated to dance, but a business based at the Rancho Bernardo Swim & Tennis Club. They got a roster of 50 to 70 students, some stereo equipment, tapes, props, and several boxes of old costumes. Sutter adds they had merely the good word of the exiting director that they would be allowed to continue using the two spacious rooms at the club to run dance classes.

In short order Duddy, a mother of five who is active in the PTA, and Sutter, an elementary school teacher with a then-newborn son, renamed the studio Step by Step Dance and titled its first recital “Brand New Day.” They now teach 320 students, employ eight part-time teachers, and offer jazz, tap, and ballet classes for a revitalizing suburban San Diego community that once attracted retirees.

Membership in the swim and tennis club is open only to residents of certain zip codes of Rancho Bernardo, whose homeowner fees cover membership. But the club hosts a variety of classes open to members and non-members alike. Along with karate and tennis lessons, Step by Step offers more than 50 dance classes a week for tots to teens.

Sutter and Duddy pay a monthly rental fee and yearly they negotiate dates and times for classes, rehearsals, and special events. The facility features two 450-square-foot studios with a retractable wall. Sutter and Duddy installed full-length mirrors and a sound system, but the club takes care of maintenance, cleaning, and renovations, and even installed a sprung wood floor when the worn tile needed replacing. Occasionally, Sutter says, they need to relinquish weekend rehearsals for a club function, but since they don’t offer regular classes on Saturdays, space conflicts haven’t been a big problem.

“We feel like we have such a gem of a situation,” says Duddy, even though she sometimes misses having an onsite office to catch up on paperwork and meet with students or parents. The club allows parents and siblings of Step by Step students to use the outdoor playground or indoor play area while waiting.

The pair works hard to maintain a collegial relationship with the club administration: “We appreciate the club staff so much, and they appreciate us. We help each other out,” says Sutter.

One of the negatives in not operating in a traditional studio space is the perception that their teaching is not professional. “We have faced that,” Sutter says. “That’s what led us to investigate getting our own space. But just because people perceive that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

The partners decided to remain at the club, even after a local boys and girls club invited them to move their entire program to a brand-new facility. “We’ve put our time and energy into Step by Step and we have a wonderful staff,” Sutter says. “We take our dancing seriously but we are not a competition school. We do take our more serious dancers to two to four conferences a year, and I see that our students know how to learn, not just how to do a routine.”

Daycare dance, on the move
DeAnna Stojan ran a studio for eight years in the Wake Forest, North Carolina, area before closing shop to rethink her business model. “Preschoolers have always been my favorite age group and I wanted a job where I could spend more time teaching them,” she says. “They’re little sponges. You can get on the floor and play with them, interact with them.” Stojan also found the typical dance teacher’s schedule of after-school and evening classes cut into time she wanted with her husband.

She shut down in spring 2008 and hit the phones, cold-calling daycare centers and nursery schools within a 10-mile radius of her Raleigh home. Her new company, Dance for Kids Now, offers 3 to 12 classes a week at a variety of locations, including drop-in daycare centers, which are popular in the area. Parents sign up in advance and pay for the course as an elective. Last season she taught 50 children, but for the fall she has 12 classes scheduled, each with 10 to 15 children—a significant jump in enrollment. “So there is definitely an interest among school directors and parents for on-site dance classes,” Stojan says.

When a center agrees, Stojan offers a trial class to give parents and children a sense of what her creative movement experience is like. She then advertises the class at the center and parents sign up their children for 6- to 10-week sessions. “We cater each session to what the daycare desires. Some want a longer program; some want something that goes the whole year. But typically [these centers] want a short, two-month, weekly introduction-to-dance program.”

Each class is 30 to 45 minutes depending on the age of the children, and parents pay the $20-per-month fee to Stojan directly, eliminating paperwork for the daycare center. So far she has taught only one class per week at each site, but one center has asked for two classes per week for the upcoming school year.

“There is definitely an interest among school directors and parents for on-site dance classes.” —DeAnna Stojan, Dance for Kids Now

Dance for Kids Now is still young, and Stojan says she hasn’t yet replicated the income she earned with a full studio—and expects she won’t for a while. “It takes time to grow a business. I didn’t go into it expecting to duplicate the studio income immediately. The great thing about offering dance in the community is that you don’t have the overhead. And at the end of the day I don’t have the mom who has been on my phone all day talking to me. That part is great.”

Taking it to the community
Joy Morris-Rakowski, 23, has been teaching since she was 18, all of it at recreation centers. She grew up in Portage, Michigan, just south of Kalamazoo, where she began dancing. Now, as a prospective dance major at Western Michigan University, she teaches 15 to 20 students per session in 6 classes each week, from Wiggle and Giggle to teen jazz and teen ballet, at the Portage Community Education Center.

“A lot of the kids come to the community dance program because their parents may not be able to afford a traditional studio program,” Morris-Rakowski says. “The community art programs are a whole lot cheaper: Rather than paying $10 or $12 per class, they might pay $6 or $7 per class. That’s a lot more affordable and it’s really nice to offer dance to kids who might not be able to take it otherwise.

“I’m excited because these kids are so excited about dancing,” she notes, adding that at the traditional studio where she also teaches, students sometimes become blasé.

Morris-Rakowski arranges her schedule with the center director, negotiating nights and times. She is paid a percentage of the enrollment, which she sees as a plus. “At the regular studio where I teach, I get a flat rate per hour. Here I might have one class of only 5 students but another with 22, so basically I get paid for the actual work I’m doing and it evens out.”

She also doesn’t need to worry about paperwork. The center takes care of that and takes a small percentage, about 7 percent, as its overhead; Morris-Rakowski gets the rest. As for the perception issue: It’s a non-issue for her because she doesn’t adjust her teaching depending on the day of the week and her clientele. Her recreational dancers at the Portage center get the same classes she teaches at the private studio.

She has become so enamored of her situation at the Portage Community Education Center that she added an end-of-year showcase and volunteers her time each Friday evening for interested students who wish to perform. The extra rehearsal time costs the students nothing, and she doesn’t need to pay a rental fee to the center because nothing else is in session on Friday evenings. She uses the auditorium at the public high school and doesn’t charge parents and friends for the show since so many are on tight budgets. “It’s nice for them to get that opportunity to perform. A lot of community dance-education programs don’t have that chance, but I’m happy that I can offer it.

“I wish there was something like this back when I was in high school,” Morris-Rakowski continues. “I went to Portage public schools and we had a dance team and cheerleading, but it wasn’t the same as what this program offers, giving kids a chance to perform. I’m so excited to offer this to kids in Portage. I definitely want to keep teaching at the community-arts program.”

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