Brooke Byrne and Sonoo Hiraoka-Petty are co-owners of Geary Dance Center in San Francisco, California. Officially, they are co-CEOs. Sonoo is the CFO and Brooke is the COO which Brooke often pronounces as C uh-oh. For this article, they interviewed Brooke. They teach mostly children but offer Absolute Beginner series in Ballet and other styles periodically. Sonoo teaches Jazz and Tap, and Brooke teaches Ballet, Character and preschool dance to 2-5 year olds. They also offer Hip Hop, Contemporary, Musical Theater, Jazz, Turns & Leaps, a boy’s class and they are working on getting Bollywood into the mix. They rent space to another organization who offers classes in Intermediate Adult Ballet, Zumba and Afro-Brazilian Samba.
Geary Dance Center offers a high standard of instruction in many styles of dance to mostly recreational dancers in order to introduce and maintain a passion for dance throughout their lifetime. While Brooke and Sonoo love training pre-professional dancers, they believe it is just as important to create the next generation of dance lovers and theater goers.
Sonoo and Brooke love all forms of dance and believe it is important to pursue at every age. They consciously decided not to focus on just a few styles or only a certain age range. They also want to train their students as if they are all pre-professional and with positive reinforcement. Both Brook and Sonoo have had positive and negative experiences, as students, dancers and teachers so when they went into business, they were both very clear about what they wanted their students and parents to experience. They opened in 2011 in a neighborhood that really needed a dance center that would be substantive but also gender, age, and style neutral.
Brooke’s proudest moment coaching occurred when she was new to teaching. She was teaching dance in a small private school as part of the curriculum. One of her young students, Christine, had Cerebral Palsy and had progressed from a walker to crutches to no assistance. The student told Brooke that she was going to be in a dance performance but did not say much more than that and Brooke forgot about it almost instantly. That weekend Brooke went to a performance of a visiting artist from New York who did three solo studies about animals and there was Christine appearing in one of the studies with the visiting artist! The joy radiating from her while she was performing was astounding and it was then that Brooke realized that dance is not just a hothouse flower to be enjoyed by a certain few and artistry does not automatically come with a perfect body. Brooke really relishes the moments when she learns more from her students than they learn from her.
In Brooke’s opinion, the biggest mistake that many dancers (and choreographers), both amateur and professional, make is focusing on whatever spectacular feat the body can do instead of remembering that dance is a form of expression. She believes that our bodies are our instruments, the outlet for our artistry and that of the choreographer, not a circus act. It is also disappointing when basics are ignored – how the arms are held, where the weight is during a movement, the expression of the face and epaulement – since details like that round out the experience for the viewer, often without them even knowing it.
According to Brooke, San Francisco is unique in that it has the smallest per capita population of children under 18 of any major city in the US and probably in the world, about 13% (currently about 103,000 children). They are one of the most expensive cities in the world in terms of housing and often kids get into schools across the city or county with parents driving them through traffic (no busing) before work. Many San Francisco families leave the city if they want to buy a home or do not get into a nearby school. Like most other child-oriented businesses in San Francisco, Geary Dance Center has an extremely limited client base. Consequently, they are constantly thinking of ways to increase their viability. Geary is expanding into after-school care at their facility, outreach classes at local schools and looking into expanding into an additional facility so they can offer more adult and teen classes and studio space for local companies and dance artists.
Sonoo and Brooke both worked at a studio with a lot of negative energy and often talked about how they would do things differently if they had a studio. They both left that studio around the same time for personal reasons and when they met up a few months later they said, “Why not try it!” So, they opened Geary Dance Center. Brooke says that it has been a steep learning curve but she attributes their success to understanding that they know nothing and they are not afraid to ask questions or seek advice, plus they totally have no problem if someone thinks they are stupid or naive. They follow their gut and ask themselves how they would want to be treated if they were a client and treat their clients accordingly.
One of the many things that Brooke and Sonoo are proud of is the welcoming and community environment that has been created at Geary Dance Center. The older kids look after the younger kids during the performances; they have parents and students who feel like family; they have an amazing group of teachers who appreciate the team approach to education; and they have awesome staff members who take the time to think of ways to make the school work better. Many of their teachers are also former students. Brooke is constantly impressed by how the school has grown and thrived and cannot believe that she and Sonoo started it.
Brooke finds that the hardest part of running a dance studio realizing that you cannot control or oversee everything and need to let go. They trust their office staff and teachers and treat their families and students with respect. They are not walking wallets. It was a little scary when Sonoo and Brooke realized that the school had grown to the point where they did not personally know, or teach, half the students.
If you would like more information about Geary Dance Center, visit their website at www.GearyDance.com, email them at info@GearyDance.com, or call them at 415-500-4235. You can also “Like” them on Facebook, check them out on Google+, watch them on Instagram, and view them on YouTube.
Anyone who has danced at Geary Dance Center, with Brooke Byrne, Sonoo Hiraoka-Petty, or with any of the other instructors at Geary, is invited to comment on our blog.
Quote: “. . . dance is not just a hothouse flower to be enjoyed by a certain few and artistry does not automatically come with a perfect body.”
Tags: adult, dance, Ballet, Jazz, Tap, Character, Hip Hop, Contemporary, Musical Theater, Turns & Leaps, a boy’s class, Bollywood, Zumba
