A dance studio built around the dancer in front of us

Every studio has a motto. Ours describes a sequence we watch happen in real dancers, usually over years rather than months.

Aspire is the part families see first — a child decides they want something. Sometimes it is a skill they saw at recital, sometimes it is simply wanting to be in the room with their friends on a Tuesday.

Strive is the long middle. It is the season a dancer spends failing to land a turn, and the class where they finally do. Most of what we teach lives here, and most of it is not about dance at all — it is about staying with something difficult past the point where it stops being fun.

Inspire is what comes back around. Our older dancers are watched closely by the little ones in the waiting area, and they know it. Some of them come back to teach.

We would rather a dancer leave us able to work hard at something than able to do a triple pirouette. Most of them manage both.

Most of our dancers are recreational, and that is a complete way to be at ASI — a class or two a week, a recital in the spring, and no expectation of anything more. Nobody is treated as a lesser dancer for choosing it.

For dancers who want more, our company programme runs by application and competes through the season. The two tracks share a building and often share teachers, which means a recreational dancer who catches the bug does not have to go elsewhere to pursue it — and a company dancer who wants to scale back has somewhere to land.