The day we visited Bethany Marc-Aurele’s Hoboken studio for this issue’s cover shoot, New Jersey was just beginning to recover from severe flooding during Hurricane Sandy. Marc-Aurele and her students had been shut out of their fourth-floor studio for more than a week. Fortunately, there was no property damage, but the loss of a full week of revenue can have a big impact on a small business.
Marc-Aurele had been questioning the wisdom of her recent move from a modest basement location to a larger space at triple the rent, but the flooding put any second-guessing to rest. “If we were still in that basement, we wouldn’t have a studio right now,” she says. “So maybe the move wasn’t such a bad decision after all.”
For our February focus on careers, we spoke with nine new(ish) studio owners who routinely face similar decisions: when to advertise and how much; whether to grow or stay small; when to delegate and what to do yourself; and always location, location, location. Studio entrepreneurship is not for the timid! The good news is that for the people you’ll meet in “A New Generation,” taking a calculated risk has paid off. They talk about their challenges, innovations and inspirations, along with four studio veterans who offer the sage perspective of hindsight.
Of course, you don’t have to own a studio to understand the risks and rewards of a career in dance. Dance Teacher is filled every month with views from educators engaged in all aspects of the field. In this issue, for example, they share advice on such varied topics as bunion prevention, teaching floorwork, mastering the isolations of Fosse-style jazz, a tap dance anti-bullying program and how to structure a fulfilling sabbatical leave.
And speaking of rewards, we are now accepting nominations for the 2013 Dance Teacher Awards to be presented in New York City in August at the Dance Teacher Summit. Send us your role models and colleagues, the people you strive to emulate and the local heroes who deserve to be recognized nationally. We will select educators in three categories: Studios and Conservatories; K–12; Colleges and Universities. For more details, click here.
Photo by Nathan Sayers