Welcome to the Lisa Pilato Dance Center ~ Our dance school is celebrating 37 years of dance education, featuring caring, knowledgeable, energetic faculty and 4 spacious dance studios. Our dance school year runs an average of 30 weeks excluding holidays. Whether you are young, or young at heart, it is a fun place to be!

What we teach your children. I have been teaching dance for 42 years; 37 at the LPDC and 5 at my home studio, the Donna Miceli Dance Center. As I look back at how it all came to be, I can’t help but smile at the many accomplishments both on and off the stage, competitively and recreationally, but most importantly, personal achievements of those we teach on a daily basis. This is the true joy of being a teacher at the LPDC – ask any faculty or staff member.

Here are the things that we want you to know.  We are teaching your children to take up space. We are asking them to stretch out, to stand tall, to open their arms like wings. We are asking them to move large, to be enormous, to spread out. We are asking them to move from one corner to another in three steps. If this carries over into their life at home, just know that we encouraged it. It may mean they spread all their belongings out all over the house. It may mean they sprawl out on the couch so that no one else may sit. You have every right to ask them to clean up and share space, but just know that they may have gotten the idea from us and we think it’s super cool that they are listening.

We are teaching them to question things when they don’t understand and how to question those things effectively and intelligently. We are teaching them the importance of good communication skills. We are teaching them to think out of the box. We are teaching them time management and how to change their clothes in 15 seconds so they don’t miss the bus! We are asking your children to make noise (yes, I know, they already do). We are encouraging them to raise their voice. To scream with joy. To pound the floor with their feet.  To sing with the music. To say their steps while they do them. To hum out loud. To be heard. We just want you to know, we’re doing everything we can to keep them from being silent. We like our dancers to have an edge in the world and it comes with a full out WARNING LABEL: Beautiful Human Creations In Progress!!

We are telling your children to eat. We are teaching them that dancers are athletes, and athletes need fuel. We are teaching them that energy is required for every movement – even a simple pose.

We are showing your children that dance is a love for life. Good teachers teach technique and choreography. Great teachers pass along the love for dance. Technique is important, absolutely. Choreography is beautiful and crucial to building stamina, but the love of dance is the key that holds it all together. We want your children to dance for the rest of their lives – whether it’s one Zumba class a week while they are the CEO of a major corporation or it’s eight shows a week on a Broadway stage. We want them to know that dance can be the medicine that keeps them healthy, regardless if it ends up being a career or not. So please, we beg of you, do not ask them to keep still as they tap dance down the cereal aisle at Market Basket (Thank you Artie T for keeping the floors in pristine condition, but more importantly thank you for treating your employees like family) or pirouette on Wal-Mart’s floors.  Please, do not ask them to stop stretching in front of the television. Please, let them move and wiggle and dance every single minute that their bodies let them.

Finally, we are teaching each child that beauty is so much more than what he or she sees in the mirror. We are teaching your children the beauty in a strong calf muscle built after years of ballet class (#CantFindBootsToFit). We are teaching your children the beauty of inner confidence when he or she walks into an audition or interview room and has that fleeting thought of, do I belong here? The beauty of teamwork, of perseverance, of self-expression. We are teaching them how beautiful it is to be just who they are. As Lady Gaga so eloquently puts it, “My Momma told me when I was young, we are all born superstars”.

That’s what we are teaching. We are teaching your children how to roar. Loudly and unapologetically.

We promise to continue teaching all these things. All we ask is that even on their noisiest, messiest, craziest day, you remember that they’re only trying on for size, the lessons that we are passing on each week. Whenever you can let them be 100% themselves, with complete freedom, without apology, you are breaking the mold and changing the future for your children ~ and we for one, are so proud to be a part of it.

Miss Lisa 

(adapted post DSM)