Business & Tech
Starlight Dance Studio: Teaching Ballet to Ballroom For All Ages
Is this segment of "10 Palm Desert Businesses You Need to Know," a local dance studio gives opportunities for students want to become professionals, as well as those wanting to emulate what they see on television.
Hidden on El Paseo as it curves back to Highway 111 is the Starlight Dance Studio, where Patty Williams has been helping novices learn and training aspiring professionals for 15 years.
Starlight teaches dance classes for all levels, from beginners to experts, and from toddlers to the elderly.
“We’ve had a lot of adults come in to learn ballet for the first time“ Williams said. “They come in for the exercise, and they enjoy the music. They know at age 40, they’re not going to become professional ballet dancers, so they’re not coming in for that reason. They study posture, they do it for the exercise and it strengthens and lengthens their movement life.”
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Starlight has three studios over its over 4,000 square foot facility, with one specifically made as a ballet floor.
Different dances are best on differing surfaces. She explained that a harder floor that gives tap its recognizable sound, is too hard a surface for the ballet dancers that need a raised, springy flooring.
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The expertise and love of dance showed as Williams showed off the studios, which along with dance, also teach musical theatre.
Williams noted that the current shows on television dancing has encouraged some to take up that art form.
"The dancing that has been on TV has sparked a lot of new interest. And we do get people of all ages, we get ages 3 thru students in their 80s," Williams said. "Adults that do come out are sparked by the shows on TV. 'Dancing with the Stars' gets them interested, so they want to do ballroom. They love the exercise. Its not just studying to be a professional, its to enjoy dance.”
Students get to show off their skills with two performances a year.
“We just did our holiday performance,” Williams explained. “We did ‘The Nutcracker’, and [the students] are just beaming.”
The other production, in June, is one that is truly a Palm Desert experience; taking place at the McCallum Theatre.
“It gives them an opportunity to perform at a very high level theatre experience where we have the most wonderful lighting, and sound, and backstage experience for them as performers. They get to feel what it feels like at a professional level.”
The training that Patty Williams and her staff give to students, along with the ability to perform at the prestigious McCallum Theatre, makes Starlight Dance Studio a truly unique place in the desert.
