Celebrity choreographers are passing their skills onto the next generation

BOSTON, Mass. (WCBI) – We’ve been following a Starkville dancer as she worked toward her dream of becoming a professional dancer.

In this final installment, we met the teachers who train aspiring dancers chasing their dreams.

The Nexus Dance Experience has faculty members from all over the country.

They’ve worked with celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, and Brittany Spears.

And choreographed for award shows like the Grammy’s.

And now they’ve passed their skills onto the next generation.

The faculty at Nexus trained hundreds, if not thousands, of dancers per year.

They hoped each dancer learned more than just fancy footwork.

“Work ethic is so important for anything they do in life, and we are geared towards obviously dance careers. Everything we teach in our class is life skills whether they want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a paramedic, or if they want to be teachers themselves they are learning all the skills that will make them successful. We’re using dance as a voice for them to connect to,” said faculty member and choreographer Kevin Frey.

The dancers who have attended conventions like Nexus can have doors open for them if they put in the work.

“I know, for me personally, I’ve hired many dancers from this, but again I wanna be clear it’s not about that when I come in. I’m not looking around looking to see if I can hire. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve hired for TV for shows one of the counselors; actually, I used to assist me for High School Musical I knew his work, and I didn’t have to worry about it because I already knew his work ethic from here,” said faculty member and acting coach Lane Napper.

Program director Nancy O’Meara said she enjoyed seeing the leads grow and find their own niche.

“One of them is off working with Cirque du Soleil you know doing something different, but to see they all sort of go off into different things. The one thing that they always say is that the experience they had, you know being a lead counselor, the experience that they had speaking on the microphone, communication, everything they really feel like moving forward through their auditioning or any kind of interview process they really feel like the program has helped him immensely,” said O’Meara

The faculty hoped that one day their students will surpass them

“The gift that a teacher can bring to a student is that they need to one day not only be the master and be as good as the teacher, they should surpass it. Every generation should get better because we should just be passing on all the knowledge that we learned from our mistakes so that the next generation doesn’t have to make them. They can go on to bigger and better things,” said Frey.

Ainsley Dobbs wrapped up her last leg of the tour Sunday in San Diego. Her final stop will be nationals in the summer.

Categories: Local News

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