Amen! I have been involved in the world of dance for over forty blah years beginning with my own training that lasted until I was twenty, my dancing and now owning and operating my own studio and dance-related businesses. I’ve seen one generation of students come as another left for university and college several times and have managed to hang in there through two economic crises.

Where I operate a small studio, in a small (sometimes small-minded)community, everyone knows everyone. You can’t trip over a curb without your neighbour hearing about it and coming back to you with the size, colour, way you looked and how you smelled description of the incident. I’ve accepted how it all works. Although this small community can be a bonus in many ways (no gangs, no drive-bys), the one thing I can’t stand and easily see being considered an “outsider” (even after 20 years of living here)is how cruel gossip can be to those who are on the receiving end.

It began with my opening my studio fifteen years ago in this one dance studio town, where I was targeted and brought before city counsel by my one and only competitor and continues now amongst their students against ours at competitions. It’s a shame, really, how much people who obviously share a love for something similar and important in each other’s lives, can’t seem to get along or refrain from using cruel gossip in an attempt to hold someone down from succeeding.

It got to the point where I had no choice but to “clean house” of the nasty gossipers and cruel intentioners, every at risking reducing my enrollment drastically the next season. But this past season was how it should be because of my decision–fun and exciting and worthwhile. It helped to remind me why I got into this business in the first place–for the love of dance. I’m now a published author and use this status to subject my students to yet another form of dance, and this is by being dance models in my ongoing dance book series, “For A Love Of Dance”, and in our “Keepsake Calendars”, and finally, in our dance products we are beginning to sell online, with my students featured and modelling in all of them.

Photoshoots are exciting and fun. Each dancer feels like it is their special day. My students work even harder onstage during presentations and shows because they know their photos may appear in one of our products, books or calendars.

No more do we have to shuffle around gossipers and cruel intentions; nor, do we have to “clean house” again… well, not my studio at least.

J.L. Slipak
Finesse Dance Studio
Fine Images Inc.