Candace Szarka, the Owner and Director of Candance Academy in Mantua, Ohio, says her studio strives to put family first, to be positive role models, to have excellence, create leaders, exceed expectations, teach life lessons while giving dance lessons, give back to their community and have a “with it – dream it – do it” attitude.
In Candace’s opinion, they stand out from other dance studio because of their affiliation with More Than Just Great Dancing. At Candance Academy, they teach their kids life lessons through dance and make them not only a great dancer but also a great child, teen, and adult.
Candace’s proudest moment teaching cannot really be summed up to one specific event. However, she says she is the proudest when she sees students return year after year and make those improvements each year, set goals for themselves as a single student or a group and then watch them succeed at their goals.
The biggest mistakes she sees dancers make is not fully applying themselves. Sometimes a student does not do their best because maybe they think they are not as good as another student. Being a dancer goes above and beyond just having great technique or winning multiple awards. Being a dancer also means being a leader and trying YOUR personal best. Candace likes to tell all of her students that even though they may not be “the best” or winning “1st overall,” it does n0t mean anything. What matters is whether or not you are doing your best, setting goals and achieving them, and being a leader and role model inside and outside of the dance studio.
Candace’s goals for this dance season are to see her competitive company students get progressively better at each competition. As long as they are giving their all, and taking corrections and applying them, they are winning to Candace. As far as her recreational students go, she wants to see them set goals, achieve them, continue to practice, and at recital, be able to notice their improvements no matter what their goal may have been.
She started Candance Academy is 2008. Candace always knew that she wanted to own a studio. At that point in her life, she was stuck in a rut. She knew she was going to be leaving the studio where she was currently teaching and had to decide whether or not she was going to go teach for someone else or open her own studio. She believes she made the right choice.
Some other things Candace thinks you may like to know about their studio is that last year (2015), they actually overcame a HUGE tragedy. They started their season off great but two weeks later, their studio was involved in a business fire. They had to quickly find a temporary location within three days. They thought that they would only be at that location for a short amount of time. It turned out that it was actually almost a year before they were able to open their studio doors at their permanent location. Her point in telling this story is not to brag about overcoming a tragedy and to get sympathy, but to point out that even though this happened, they all stuck together as a family and continued on. It is not necessarily about where you are at but who you have by your side. Through this she had her family, friends, staff members, parents, and students all working together to keep things going. This is something else that she believes separates them from other studios – they are a family!
If you would like more information about Candance Academy, visit their website at www.candance-academy.com, email them at candanceacdmy1@gmail.com, or call them at 330-274-3262. You can also “Like” them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and connect with them on Google+.
Anyone who has danced at Candance Academy is invited to comment on our blog.
Being a dancer also means being a leader and trying YOUR personal best.
