Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
At 10 p.m., when many long for bed, a hip-hop and jazz dance class with students ages 14 to 51 is just starting to get crazy.
By MELIA BOWIE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 15, 2002
PEBBLE CREEK -- It's close to 10 p.m. when the dancers slip inside Studio I.
Outside the New Tampa Dance Theatre, all is quiet. Neighboring storefronts in the Pebble Creek shopping center are dark. The parking lot is deserted and down the road friends and family are just settling in when the troupe of moms and middle-aged men, teens and twenty-somethings get started.
Warmups first.
All eyes fix on the wall of mirrors and the woman in front, dance instructor Dyane Joseph, as she leads them through stretches. Nose to toes, arms up high. Time to get loose.
"Hey, Mr. DJ, . . . I want to dance with my baby. . . ."
Madonna's voice croons to the odd assortment of students whose lives collide every Tuesday for a late-night, pulse-pounding, hip-hop class at the theater.
At any given time it could be a remix of the Dazz Band or J. Lo booming from the stereo, coursing over the collection of dancers who come each week from Tampa Palms, Hunter's Green, Pebble Creek and Meadow Pointe.
"Quicker than a ray of liiiiiight. . . ."
"All right, let's start with our isolations," calls Joseph, 31, her brown hair streaked with blond. "Head, shoulders, arms, hips!"
It's 10:15 p.m. as the group moves in unison.
Duffel bags have been discarded at the door, along with the daily grind.
In this room, at this hour, there are no housewives. No office managers. No high school students with homework waiting.
Here, the only fast track young professionals move to is the one blaring from the sound system.
And it doesn't matter if you've been dancing for a decade or a day.
"If you can tap your foot, you can dance," insists Joseph, owner of the theater and instructor of the 12-week class -- a melding of hip-hop and jazz.
"Everybody can move their hips, move their necks," she explains. "It's like putting together a piece of a puzzle: That's dance."
This is a class about energy.
Experience is good, talent is better, but energy is a must.
On paper, the sessions start at 9:45 p.m. (The studio is booked until then with the 450 after-school ballet, tap and jazz students registered with the theater.)
Class is supposed to end at 10:45 p.m., but the group is still sweating together when the late-night news airs.
"It's like 11:30 and they don't want to leave," says Joseph, who choreographs the music-video routines from scratch, adding on to them during each session.
Students range in age from 14 to 51. For some, like 17-year-old Justin Kahan, this is the fifth dance class of the day. For others, it is the end to afternoons spent chasing toddlers, schmoozing with clients or enduring exams at Wharton High School.
A number of the students are USF dance majors or performers at Busch Gardens. Others want the exercise. Some just want to look good in the club.
All were searching for some variety and excitement in their neighborhood. Joseph found the perfect balance.
"New Tampa is very upscale living, and we were looking for something fun to do," explains Kim Parker, 26.
A fraud claims representative with Bank of America, she moved to Tampa Palms with her 25-year-old sister Tamika nearly three years ago. Now both attend the class; they learned about it from a USF classmate.
"It's a variety of people, and that's what I like about it," explains Kim Parker. "It's fresh faces . . . a lot of energy . . . and the music is live. You can come in and be yourself. You're jamming and having a good time."
It's also a good place to meet their neighbors.
The Parkers are now trading music with fellow dancer Kimberly Santamaria, whom they met the week before between sashays, flying leaps and sharp turns.
"They didn't even know who the Dazz Band was," Santamaria laughingly lamented. The two dozen dancers are choreographing a routine to Let It Whip each week. "So I made them a CD . . . trying to educate the young girls."
It has been 25 years since the stay-at-home mom took a dance class.
"I'm a little rusty," admits Santamaria, who opened After Hours Pediatrics in New Tampa four years ago with her husband, a pediatrician. Now three of the urgent care facilities are scattered throughout Hillsborough County.
First came ballet, she said. Then high school, boys, marriage and children. Now "here I am, 36. I was talking to other women with kids about our ho-hum lives. We realized we had forgotten all the fun stuff we used to do."
Five-year-old Arian Sinudom peeks into the studio. Her small figure in a pink sweater, jean skirt and glittering ruby-red shoes is a familiar one at the Tuesday night sessions.
When the class is over, someone from the studio walks her next door to Circles restaurant where her parents, the owners, are later treated to a pint-sized version of the jazz/hip-hop routine.
Someday she might be one of those dancers. For now, she settles for an afternoon ballet class at the theater and a backstage pass to the complex workouts to a Janet Jackson remix. "All right, kick and dig! Kick and dig! That's a classic hip-hop move." Joseph directs, showing no mercy as sweat drips from red faces and muscles protest. The students don't quit.
Lagging slightly behind, with graying hair and a soaked tank top, Jerry Glock, 51, urges Joseph to demonstrate the step again.
Glock of Pebble Creek works as a global trade technical adviser for Citibank. He jogs in the mornings and picks up the kids from track and dance in the afternoons.
But "on Tuesday nights this is where you'll find me," he pants, eyes bright behind wire-rimmed glasses.
Glock, who goes by "Jerby" in class, signed up on a dare from his daughters, ages 16 and 11. Both were students at the school.
"Why don't you ever take a class?" they asked Glock, who confided "my wife says I have no rhythm." So he came and he saw and was hooked.
"The parents of the kids all laugh. They look at me and they're like: Jerby, what's up?"
He smiles and gives them the only answer he can. It's not bad exercise and "it's just a lot of fun."
Eleven o'clock has come and gone. The group should be winding down. Instead, Joseph darts over to the stereo and seconds later We are Family booms across the studio. Collectively, tired hips begin gyrating with renewed zeal. Shoulders snap back with choreographed precision and breathless smiles slide across the sweat-soaked faces of this late-night cast.
This is what dance is supposed to be, explains Joseph.
"It doesn't have a color, it doesn't have an age. If only the world could see through these eyes," she sighs. "That's truly a lesson I would like to teach."