"It Takes an Athlete to Dance, but an Artist to be a Dancer"

The quote that I have posted for the title of this particular entry is one of my all-time favorite dance quotes. I was always offended when people claimed that dance wasn't a sport, because clearly they have not experienced a legitimate dance class in their life. However, when I defended dance as a sport, many people claiming it is an art form were offended. I love that this quote covers both bases. It takes an enormous amount of controlled strength and flexibility to pull of certain moves gracefully enough to make it look effortless. Now, this video is to the extreme in some ways, but I think it makes my point. Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1DqfJtd3sU

Now I can step down off of my soapbox about that. I've decided what I want to call my studio. As you can see, this blog is called DaNcE StEpS. This is the name I wish to call my studio for a variety of reasons. Dance has many forms, and I want to offer as large of a variety as possible. If I were to call my studio something like "Perfect Pointe" it would imply that I am only offering dance classes such as ballet, jazz, and maybe ballroom. I want to offer ballet, jazz, hip hop, tap, ballroom, modern, contemporary, aerobics courses, gymnastic/tumbling, etc. I think the name Dance Steps covers all forms that I would be able to offer.

I also enjoy the simplicity of it. It doesn't have to be "Miss Angelee's Spectacular School of Dance" or "Miss Wittwer's Academy of Dance". People can just simply say, "Hey, let's go take a class at Dance Steps tonight". It also eliminates the "cheesiness" factor; because both of the fore mentioned names are not only too long, but kind of sound ridiculous. Also, I think Dance Steps is a more approachable name than anything else more elaborate. If I approach a studio called "Miss Angelee's Spectacular School of Dance" I'm going to assume it's going to be a relatively strict environment with relatively "stuck up" or "snobby" dancers and dance instructors. Dance Steps seems straight forward and more relaxed.

I have some ideas for my logo as well. Everyone doodles while they are in class, especially if their professor in unbelievably dull. Though I have tried to "walk away" from this dream as I've mentioned before, whenever I doodle, I sketch ideas for my dance studio logo. I want it to represent what my studio is about in as simple a way as possible. I've thought about having the words Dance Steps embedded in foot/shoeprints like you would see in a dance instruction manual. That would be relatively basic. I've also considered the having a stick figure with black & white tap shoes casually leaning against the words "Dance Steps", but the issue with this one is they may think it is strictly a tap studio. I think my favorite idea so far is to have silhouettes of different dancers in the background behind the words "Dance Steps", or something similar. I could have a dancing couple, a hip hop dancer, and a ballerina or something. I was kind of messing with different silhouettes, as you can see in my picture. It would be done a little more professionally, but I like the basic idea.

"Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythm of your life. It's the expression in time and movement, in happiness, joy, sadness, and envy." -Jaques D'ambroise