End Of Our 20th Season Review

We went out with a bang! Our 20th season of dance was definitely a memorable one. We are currently celebrating 21 years as of February 1st! Last I posted, I left you off in May 2012. As I have mentioned before, we have converted to newsletter form, however, its always nice to sum things up in a good ol blog post! So here we go...

June: Recital Time! Our show appropriately named "The Time" Celebrating 20 years of Dance.
Picture Day and Recital Day
Miss Leslea also had a little secret that she would reveal soon!

July and August: Summer Classes!
Miss Leslea was also busy getting Zumbafied! She created Zumba in NJ and is working hard to bring this fitness party to our studio.

September: Welcome Back! New Schedule, Students, Season and more.

October: Halloween canceled AGAIN! oh boy...

November: Recovering from Sandy and Being Thankful for all we have, including our studio and our dance families.

December: Holiday Season. Miss Leslea and Miss Camille also received their Zumbatomic Certification

January: A New Year

February: All caught up! The month of love...Just in time for the new arrival... and we are celebrating season 21!!

Welcome to the 2012-2013 Season

We are excited to teach our new students and welcome back our old. This year is another exciting one for us. The studio was open for summer Zumba, Hip Hop, and Ballet. We also had some minor renovations and we are so ready to share a new year of dance with you. Remember, you can keep up with the Uptown Beat by subscribing to our monthly newsletter. If you have missed anything I will be posting bellow. Please also see previous post, as I try to put the newsletters here on our blog as well. See you all soon! Happy Dancing!

Uptown Performance Team

Last night, we had a very unique opportunity, we were asked to perform at the halftime of the NJ Spartans football game! We were honored and thrilled, and the experience left us with wanting more. Thanks to Charmaine and the welcoming fans of the NJ Spartans, we are happily looking into more opportunities like this one. We have been asked to return to another Spartans game and can not wait to do so on October 8th. This experience has inspired us to do more and I am please to announce we now have a Performance Team... yet another addition to Uptown.

If you would like information on how to audition for our Performance Team, visit the Uptown Entertainment page on our main site.

Form more information about the NJ Spartans, please visit their page here. I think here is where I'm suppose to chant "AaaHhhOoo!!!" (something we learned last night :-))

See you at the next game!

Help bring the U Can Dance Program back!

It was always Miss Leslea's goal to start a program for children with special needs. This year I am happy to say that we finally did it! Unfortunately, timing was not on our side. Most of you know I was pregnant at the start of the program, and extremely pregnant towards the end. Sadly, I had to finally discontinue. I had high hopes on returning 4-6 weeks after delivery but once lil C arrived we realized that almost all of my free time needed to be dedicated towards him. Being down the studio for longs stretches at a time was just not working for us. With my sons demands still being pretty high, I am working towards hiring other instructors to take my place. With that, I would also love to expand the program with performance opportunities and take creative movement to a new level with props and fun games for the kids. That being said, I am reaching out to the community with hopes of some small contributions. The program was at no cost to the children or their families and I would love to keep it that way. The location will still be sponsored by Uptown Dance and some of our assistants will be donating their time. Let's see where this takes us, and high hopes for U Can Dance!! Thank you for checking out or page!

http://ucandance.chipin.com/the-u-can-dance-program

Peace, Love, Dance
Miss Leslea

Fall Fashions For Dancers

If you are like me, then most likely you own more dance attire than regular clothing. I for one look just as forward to making a statement in the studio as I do out on the town. How do you dress for class? I'll be sharing some of my favs as well as the opinions of some other dancers. While reading, let's keep in mind our studios dress code of course, I realize this limits some of us. Enjoy! and please feel free to comment and leave your favorites and the end.

I remember the time where there were not many choices for dancers as far as shoes and apparel where concerned. We had Capezio and Danskin, that was pretty much it. Don't get me wrong, I still get products from both these wonderful companies, however today its all about options, there are tons of companies who supply dancers with what they need. We have so many choices! Let's talk about style, preference and a few options that you may or may not be aware of.

As far as our studio is concerned, we keep things simple. Little ones shoes are all the same color and brand (Capezio) which we provide at the studio. Older students have a more complex shoe list which they can either order through our studio or go to a very nice local shop called Dance Wear Etc. Heather Corneliess, the owner and also a dancer, is extremely helpful and carries mostly Capezio and Bloch for shoes and the trendiest attire for class. I will discuss some of the other brands she carries later on. You can read more about Heather here on NJ Dancers

For me personally I have two styles, one if I'm teaching and the other if I'm auditioning or taking a class. Like I said before if you are taking a class it's always a good idea to check for a dress code and respect it. If there is not one I will try to wear something that makes me feel good and flatters my body type, nothing too bold or over the top. Lets face it, when we feel good and look nice, our confidence is up and we will dancer better. Think about performance day in your beautiful costume, well I like to think of classes as mini performances and put a little effort into my appearance. You never know who may be watching. Auditions you have to dress the part, and most likely they will tell you what to wear. Again, you want to stand out but not be the talk of the casting panel (in a bad way). Don't wear all black (unless required) and don't wear florescent pink and mis-matched legwarmers.

For teaching, which is where I spend most of my time at this point in my life, I have some links and examples.

Sugar and Bruno: can be found at Dance Wear Etc. Nutley NJ

Eighteen21: can be found on the Dance Wear Solutions website

Urban Groove: also found on the Dance Wear Solutions website

Tia's Dancewear: The official site or Dance Wear Etc. Nutley NJ or Dance Wear Solutions

You may also want to check out some local designer for a unique look. I was fortunate enough to meet a wonderfully talented young women on Twitter who's designs are perfect for dancers. Studio owners may even want to contact her to make up an original logo or new line of clothing for their students. Follow and/or contact Im Soul Fly
Check out her stuff here imsoulfly.com.

I was also able to get the opinion of two dance friends on Twitter:

Victoria, owner of Allegro Dance Boutique in Evanston, IL
AllegroDanceBoutiques.com recommends her favorite leos:

~Vala Dancewear
~Yumiko
~Body Wrappers Premiere Collection
~Mirella Jozette Collection
Thanks to Victoria for this wonderful information. Make sure to follow her on Twitter or visit her store if you are in the area.

TerrenceTaps, one of my first dance friends on Twitter; a professional tap dancer, blogger and founder of tapdanceman.com. He recommends and wears Miller & Ben's. He also has a wonderful blog post about Tap Shoes on his website, this is worth the read tappers!! You will notice some really cute, trendy T's for tap class on the bottom left as well. Here is that link
Thanks so much Taps, you are the best and you are such an inspiration to me and other dancers. Keep up the great work you do!

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this post and all the wonderful designers and clothing and shoe lines who make dancers look and feel fabulous. I'm extremely excited about how many options there are for us now. Thanks to YOU too for reading, I hope you enjoyed and got some fresh new ideas.

Peace, Love, and Dance!!
~Miss Leslea

The Reason Behind NJ Dancers

I created a Social Network for Dance in August and in just 3 short months I have gained over 50 members. This may not seem like many to most, but I am very proud of the progress we have made. Some of you may wonder my reason for starting my Network, so here it goes...

On my main page my mission statement reads...

Welcome to my Network! Thank you for your support in my effort to create a positive, motivating, non competitive place for us to interact and share our love for dance. My goal is to be well known as a encouraging support system to our Dance community, and best of all, its Free! Help me in my effort and ask others who love dance in NJ to join too. Get yourself a badge or send them and invite. Questions, comments, suggestions are always welcome. I look forward to hearing from you all. Peace, Love, Dance!

As a young dancer I can remember my dance environment being extremely competitive. For instance; among other local dance schools, at competition(of course), auditions, and even among the girls in my own class. When my mother and I opened our studio, one of our main goals was to change that competitive attitude between dancers. We should unite, not be bitter towards each other. We all love dance, why not share our knowledge and motivate each other. We instill this positive behavior in all our students and accept nothing less. We also do not compete our dancers, we chose to teach our students to appreciate dance as an outlet and art form, nothing more. I wanted a companion to the mentality we have within our studio and to share our teachings with hopes that it will become contagious, hence NJ Dancers.

I recently opened up the Network to those who may not live in NJ, but who promote dance over the Internet. You can't really localize what they do, so we have adopted them into our NJ Dance Community. For example; dance bloggers, dance apparel, dance instructional sites, dance forums, etc. I feel this will be very useful to our members because not everyone has the time to search for all the valuable dance info out there on web. That's where I come in, providing resources at your fingertips on Dance NJ. You can find these awesome people under "featured members." I will also alternately display one of these members weekly on the main page so you can't miss what they are offering us.

I would love for you to stop by and visit NJ Dancers. I also love comments, suggestions, and questions.
As always, Peace, Love, Dance!!