How Boston Dance Studios Founder Tara Brown Created the Professional Training Facility She Was Missing

Tara Brown, founder and director of Boston Dance Studios, never dreamed of opening a studio—in fact, she was originally against the career path. “I didn’t believe [owning a studio] could be lucrative and I knew it would be a lot of work,” she says.

After a commercial dance career in New York City, Brown moved to Boston in 2020. As a dancer, she was confronted with a lack of professional training opportunities, particularly for “short, curvy Black women” like herself. She was pursuing avenues to teach heels classes in the city and was often turned away by studios who saw the style as too sexual and lacking technique. After accidentally coming across a listing for a studio space in the heart of Boston, formerly held by Jeannette Neill Dance Studio, Brown was inspired to create a place where all were welcome, regardless of body type, skin color, gender identity, and dance background. 

“BDS is meant to be accessible to as many people from as many areas as possible,” says Brown, who opened the studio in 2023. “My ultimate ‘why’ is to provide access to quality classes, quality space for creators, and quality education in this area that is lacking.”

Comparable to New York’s Steps on Broadway or Los Angeles’ Millennium Dance Complex, BDS offers between 14 and 20 weekly classes in all genres, with options for beginner adults through advanced professionals. Brown also hosts guest faculty from a variety of professional backgrounds to teach popping, NBA pro style, dancehall, and more. She has built a training hub for over 5,000 dancers—with the average age of students between 18 and 24—in the hopes of creating a pipeline for dancers who want to pursue professional careers in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. “BDS is really the only studio of its kind in Boston,” says Brown. 

With only two years under her belt, Brown is still learning what it means to run a successful nonprofit in Boston, particularly with limited grants and funding available for the city’s arts organizations. Through December 31, she and her team are leading a campaign to match the Cultural Facilities Fund capital grant of $80,000 to help cover renovation costs and support community efforts. 

Here, Brown gives Dance Teacher an inside look into her experience as a first-time studio owner and what she’s learned since founding BDS. 

A year after opening BDS, you wanted to quit. Can you tell me about that time and what led you to keep going?

We ran a pre-professional program and our numbers were terrible the first summer. I was in such a hole and I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it. I pulled my team together one day and said: “I think I’m going to have to close.” At that point, I couldn’t pay one of my contractors. In that first year, I was experiencing emotions and depths of stress that I had never experienced before. I didn’t know how to handle it. My mom said “You have to keep going,” so I told myself “I’m just going to ride this until the wheels fall off.” We’re still losing money a lot of the time, but we’re in a much better place. The reason I couldn’t close after that year was because there was no going back. It would have been harder to close than to walk through the fire.

What’s your process for hiring faculty at BDS?

I really pride myself in vetting every single person who comes in to teach a class. It’s not about bringing in high numbers or Instagram followers. I take pride in having impeccable integrity when it comes to having qualified teachers who understand what it means to have the responsibility to be in front of a room. It’s about real experience in the dance world, not just steps and choreography. Do you have a teaching philosophy? What are you trying to impart onto your students? Why are you teaching? These are the kinds of questions we ask. 

Where do you envision BDS five to 10 years in the future? 

I envision a long legacy for BDS, whether it’s myself or the next generation leading it. It’s a space and organization I hope to see grow well beyond the current four walls into multiple spaces, places, and cities. I want to see it continue to snowball into an organization that specifically is making sure that dance and the arts are accessible in these really special cities that don’t have the opportunities. That’s the legacy I want BDS to be built on—well beyond my lifetime.

The post How Boston Dance Studios Founder Tara Brown Created the Professional Training Facility She Was Missing appeared first on Dance Teacher.