As a girl, Alena Watts was a dancer and won awards in national championships for acrobatics and tumbling. It was great experience that she later wanted her three daughters to enjoy.
When the owner of the girls’ dance studio in Richmond no longer wanted to run the business, Alena, 40, reluctantly took over.
“I didn’t want to be ‘that mom’ who coaches her own kids,” she says.
But Bluegrass Dance Training Center is more than a dance studio. It is a place where girls can be girls, and where they can learn to be part of something bigger than themselves.
“We treat every girl as if she is our own,” Alena says.
The studio offers classes six days a week in 17 areas, from ballet and jazz dance to baton twirling and parade march. There are 10 instructors, excluding junior assistants, and 189 students.
Instructors care about each girl, not just her dance ability. Watts believes if a girl can move, she can dance.
“They care about them as individuals. They care about helping them grow,” says Chastity Ford, the school’s office manager. The instructors want them to “become compassionate and caring people themselves, so they kind of focus on the whole package, not just dance.”
Alena’s middle daughter, Gianna, 11, is a teaching assistant as well as a dancer. “I want the little kids to improve just like the older girls do,” she says. “I want them to just know that the older girls are there for them and that we can help them improve.”
