To grow as a studio, we must welcome new talent to lead, and these days, we’re seeing new faces at a rapid clip.
Growth in teachers is a sign of a thriving studio. We’re happy to report that’s where we are right now!
Viktor Tkachenko & Yuliya Lukina – Viktor is Ukrainian and Yuliya is from Belarus. This married couple came to us from a FADS studio in Buffalo.
Yuliya started dancing when she was 13 and was a member of the Public Union Belarusian Federation of Dance Sport. Viktor started dancing when he was 8 and continued his training at various studios throughout Ukraine. He graduated from Kharkov’s State Academy of Physical Culture and Sport with a Master of Sport in Ballroom Dance and Choreographic Art.
Tamerlan Gadirov came from Azerbaijan; he was the dance teacher for Lada’s niece. Tamerlan is our Lead Choreographer and Instructor for wheelchair dance group, Dance Mobility. He has been dancing his whole life and has a long list of competitions he has won around the world.
Janique grew up on Detroit’s east side and was referred to us by another teacher. Her passion has always been in the arts: singing, acting and dancing.
Tony grew up in Fraser, and wanted to continue dancing after graduating from Valporaiso University with a degree in musical theater. He was very active and competed on the Valporaiso dance team.
On March 1st, Micha (Mikhailo Annienkov) joined us from Ukraine, a student of the other Yuliya Sinevych. He’s been a competitive ballroom dance in Ukraine and Turkey and has won many wheelchair dance competitions around the world.
We will continue bringing on new staff to our growing studio.
It’s exciting to bring in new staff, but how do you get the team to work together?
Part of it happens in our daily meetings, where we train and talk and guide our staff to be the best they can be.
We provide incentives and encouragement to help one another. We take our teachers on team trips to celebrate benchmarks and successes. We’ve been to Orlando, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Adventure Park in West Bloomfield for a team-building ropes course summer afternoon.
Whatever it takes to learn to work together, we will do.
We’ve even gone corporate in some ways – evaluating ourselves on the DISC assessment and developing personality profiles so we can understand ourselves and better understand our colleagues.