Business of the Week: Artistry Dance Project, Pleasantville
For a newly opened dance school that isn’t even in its permanent home yet, Artistry Dance Project couldn’t have gotten off to a more promising start.
The school is the creation of artistic directors Kristina Wozniak and Lori Spada, both with an impressive list of performance credits on their resumes, who decided six months ago that the time was right to take the leap and launch their own business.
Officially opened for classes on Sept. 16, by the end of its first week Artistry Dance Project had 68 students between 2 and 18 years old signed up for instruction at its temporary 3,600-square-foot home on Commerce Street in Valhalla.
Wozniak and Spada, who expect to be in their slightly larger Pleasantville location at 141 Tompkins Ave. by December, said they wanted their first year of classes to coincide with the start of the new school year.
“It felt like the right time in our lives to just go for it,” said Spada, a classically trained ballet dancer. “It’s something that we wanted to do and it seemed that all the stars were aligned where we were ready by where we were in our careers to take the next step.”
What has established immediate credibility for Artistry Dance Project is its accomplished faculty. Spada, a Delaware native, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance performance from Towson University and was recruited out of school to dance with Rincones, a contemporary ballet company in Washington, D.C.
Wozniak, a Briarcliff native who graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a BFA in jazz dance performance, has performed in Las Vegas and throughout the New York area. They each teach about 18 hours of classes a week.
Spada’s and Wozniak’s contacts in the dance world have helped them to employ some of the top working New York City dancers who teach classes in an impressively broad range of styles–ballet, pointe, lyrical, contemporary, modern, jazz, Broadway and tap.
Most classes, particularly for beginners, meet once a week in the afternoon after school or in the evenings.
“If anyone wants to come once a week for the fun of it, for exercise maybe, to somebody training for pre-professional purposes and has dreams of going on to become a ballerina or dancing in a music video out in L.A. or being anything in between, we have a class for everything,” Wozniak said.
Starting this week they will also be offering a monthly master class with well-known and highly-regarded professionals. During the summer, they also launched the school’s own 23-member dance company for children from 8 to 18 years old. The company will participate in four regional competitions and a major spring gala along with local visits to children’s hospitals and nursing homes.
Wozniak and Spada agreed that their differences in training and areas of concentration provides a nice balance.
“(Dance) evolves every day and you have to have the staff and the teachers to keep it going, especially with all the shows on TV and all the choreography and everything,” Spada said. “So it’s a big thing to stay fresh.”
The other area where they spared no expense was the quality of floor. Rather than a hardwood surface which can cause more injuries, Artistry Dance Project has sprung floors that act as a cushion on the knees, hips and back. They plan to have the sprung floor moved to the Pleasantville facility.
“We’re really happy to have the connections that we’ve been able to create through our own dance training and careers and be able to bring that in has been just wonderful,” Wozniak said.
Most classes are on weekday afternoons and evenings. For more information on Artistry Dance Project, visit www.artistrydanceproject.com. and also follow on Facebook and Twitter.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
