Joliet's La Danse Academie Uniquely Celebrates 50th Anniversary

JOLIET, IL — Anne Hiller can remember when her mother started La Danse Academie in the basement of her family’s home in 1969 and how from the very beginning, the mission of the studio centered around family.

There were times, Hiller recalls, when dancers would spend dinner time sitting around Fran Frederick’s table as they waited for their ride to arrive. But no matter the reason why Hiller found herself surrounded by her mother’s pupils, she knew they were always welcomed.

As La Danse Academie celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, it does so much differently than Hiller and her business partner, Lori Bowen, originally planned. After the coronavirus pandemic forced the Joliet-based, woman-owned business to alter how it teaches students to dance over the past three months, La Danse is preparing to reopen on July 6 having never missed a step in providing well-rounded dance education.

Now, as Hiller runs a studio her mother started and that her daughter, Taylor, teaches at and that her daughter Dannie and niece Samantha are also involved in, La Danse is seeing second and third generation dancers continue the tradition of self-expression in a inclusive environment that offers instruction in ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, contemporary and lyrical dance.

Over the years, La Danse has remained engrained in the Joliet community. Dancers have performed at area nursing homes and have become an annual participant in the Joliet Easter Seals Telethon and have donated more than $700 to the local fundraising effort.

Now, five decades after dancers performed to music that was recorded on reel-to-reel, technology has helped to drive change in the way the craft is taught. Technology has been especially vital over the past three months, when meetings have been held over Zoom, classes have been held virtually and students have recorded their routines on video for instructors to review. The studio recently held a reverse parade in which they filled the academy’s parking lot and had the show’s audience drive through.

Although the 50th anniversary celebration and recital had to be canceled due to the pandemic, La Danse has managed to keep students engaged despite not being able to bring former students together with the current cast of dancers in the way Hiller had hoped to commemorate the occasion.

“It went full-circle,” Hiller said this week. “In 1969, the dances were just about the dance and the individual dancer. It wasn’t about formation, pattern changes and fancy tricks with partners or anything like that. It was about the individual dancer. Now, we’ll return (on July 6) and everybody has to have their own 6x6 little box to dance in, but it’s all about them again.

“It’s about their space, their dance. It’s their story now. It’s not about the showy part of the dance anymore. It’s about the individual dance.”

Hiller said La Danse will hold several smaller shows once it reopens in lieu of the anniversary celebration it had planned. The academy will open with new safety guidelines in place to ensure safety and social distancing guidelines are met and to protect students and staff from the spread of the coronavirus.

After three months of being closed and having to conduct classes virtually, Hiller said she and others at La Danse look forward to reopening and resuming the in-person brand of teaching that her mother started so many years ago. And just as Frederick emphasized when the studio started in her basement, the philosophy of belonging at a studio that has taught thousands of dancers ever since the start will remain the same.

“Coming into the dance studio has always been (about) when you walk in, everybody loves you for who you are and when you get there, you just get to be yourself and leave everything behind,” Hiller said. “We are all individuals, we all deserve to be ourselves and feel free to be ourselves.

“To be able to release whatever bothered you for the day or if you’re really happy for the day, just letting it come out of your body is really important.”

That may be even more important after the pandemic kept students from being together and experiencing in-person learning. But as La Danse prepares to reopen in just more than a week, Hiller said the staff is ready to welcome students back and continue the 50th anniversary celebration in ways that no one expected.

But for Hiller, seeing students express themselves after being forced to remain at home for so long will be worth it all.

“In 50 years, we’ve seen bad times but we pick ourselves up and we go on,” Hiller said. “That’s what dancers, performers, creative people – I guess all of us have to – but we have to say, ‘all hands in’ and work this out. We’ll build it back up and it will be OK. We’re all going to survive this. We’re all going to make it through, laugh again and pay it forward – that’s our biggest thing. Pay it forward with a smile.

“That’s an easy, generous gift and it’s free.”