After eight years of operation in Cherry Creek North the company is expanding to a second location. The studio remains at Cherry Creek North and is opening a second studio at 12200 E. Cornell Ave., in the area close to the Interstate 225 and South Parker Road Intersection.

The new location will be referred to as Cherry Creek Dance South. This second location allows 5,700 square feet of space that is offering not only the dance classes, but a second retail shop as well. With this second studio they double the amount of classes and merchandise offered.

The new Cherry Creek Dance Performing Companies had a grand opening party recently, featuring professional performers from the touring cast of "Chicago," "Tap Dog," some members of the touring company of the New York City Rockettes and the choreographer of the Denver Nuggets Dance Team. The Cherry Creek Dance Performing Companies as well as the Cherry Creek Dance master class teachers and staff participated in the celebration.

Cherry Creek High School graduate class of 1986, Stephanie owns the two studios and Lee Prosenjak is the Production Manager. She graduated a year ahead of her class so she could study dance in college, aware that "dancers don't have a long life cycle," she said. Iacino was a Cherry Creek High School varsity cheerleader. She attended Loretto Heights College as a dance major. Iacino is a former member of the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders and Denver Nuggets Dance Team. The two dance studios began their fall schedule August 6.

“Look, mom, I got an A in Ballet!” Those may not be the exact word out of your student’s mouth, but many teachers are using evaluations to measure the progress of their pupils. Dance teachers take their profession seriously. We are more than just dance teachers, we are also educators. So why shouldn’t our students be evaluated on an academic standard?

One reason is lack of time. Diana Duda, the owner of Diana’s Dance and Fitness Dynamics, Ltd. of Glendale, Illinois, says, “I would never have the time to do something as complex as that, although I think it would be wonderful if I could.” Cindy Hancock owner of Danceplus in Stilwelo, Oklahoma adds, “I don’t do them, but I think they’re a good idea”.

How long does it actually take to fill out these evaluations? Not long if you are organized. For the larger studios, the director usually has the teacher fill out forms, leaving room for director’s comments at the end. Some teachers find it less work if they make notes and comments on the attendance sheets to refer back to when writing evaluations. Others compiled their comments in a classroom journal. All agreed that it saves time and money if the evaluations are distributed after class rather than mailed.

Many teacher believe that giving out written assessments is an important part of the teacher/parent relationship. “I send out evaluations largely to keep the parents informed of their child’s progress and to help them learn the terminology,” says Shannon Hargis, owner of Northside Center of performing Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee. The evaluations also serve as a non-emotional way of bringing attention to behavior problems.

Evaluation forms differ from studio to studio and are typically designed by the studio owners themselves. Whether dancers are rated on a scale of one to 10 or receive a report in narrative form, some of the skills the students are graded on are: technique, behavior, attitude, flexibility, attendance, ability and knowledge of the material presented in class. How often reports are sent varies from as often as every three months to once a year. Stephanie Iacino, owner Cherry Creek Dance in Denver, Colorado, sends her reports out quarterly. “They are fairly simple with lots of room for comments from the teachers”. The teachers comment on the student’s retention of dances taught, performance of required steps and moves. Iacino adds that the reports are well received by the parents.

Across, the board, teachers who have some sort of evaluation process agree that parents enjoy receiving feedback on their child, especially when they’re paying for the lessons. April Spisak Nelson, owner of Spisak Dance Academy in Glendale, Arizona, says she would want it for her own child. “As a parent, I would like to know what potential my child has or if dance is merely going to be a recreational activity for her.”

Patti Goulding of Patti’s place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who sends her reports out after the recital each year, says parents give positive feedback on evaluations. “I am very honest in these evaluations and most parents appreciate this because they don’t want to be spending their money if the child is not taking full advantage of the education.”

Another effective option is an in-class progress chart. Mona Drouin, owner of the Dance Studio in Marksville, Louisiana, says, “I set up posters in the studio (one per class) with the students’ names and the curriculum, listing all the steps they are to work on for the school year.” This allows the students and their parents to check progress on a weekly basis. At the end of the year, Drouin offers an award for the most improved student.

“We have established a syllabus to reward students for correct technique,” says Christopher Bazin, president of American Dance Certification in Universal City, California. “The student is required to perform and orally explain any step within a given level.” This gives a third party approach to evaluating our students. ADC comes to your studio and through and exam, observes and grades your student’s technique and knowledge of the level they are in.

Rating your student’s progress may be something worth incorporating into your program. Other recreational activities, such as gymnastics and swimming, give evaluations after every session, so why not dance? Whether you opt for a written report card, a student certification or an in-class chart, there are many advantages and benefits to the process, making it worth the extra time and effort.

Click Here to See Cherry Creek Dance’s Progress Report

Stacy Smith is a freelance writer from New Hampshire, where she owned her own studio for almost 11 years. She was a registered teacher with the Roycal Academy of Dancing and certified teacher with Dance Masters of America.

I checked the clips. That’s newspaper talk for going back through old files - nowadays on a database- to check for references about the subject of your story. Stephanie Iacino was not mentioned by name. I checked 22 different entries over five years, but only three cheerleaders had names.

Iacino, however, has now made a name for herself.

She is a businesswoman and a dance instructor. An employer and a profit maker.

“Yes, we’re making money now,”she said last week. “Not a lot, but we’re making money.” That also is the voice of an entrepreneur.

Iacino is the owner and founder of Cherry Creek Dance, one of more than 100 dance studios listed in metro Denver’s Yellow Pages that offer ballet, tap, jazz and other dance instruction. She offers more: “hip-hop and tumbling,” too, she said.

“A lot of people think dance isn’t a sport, but we’re very athletic,” she explains.

Her business is in its fourth year and last year turned $280,000 in revenues.

She has been a Broncos Cheerleader for the same four years, and she will be trying out for the 1997 cheerleading squad on Sunday, with 200 other women, at an athletic club in southeast metro Denver. If she makes the team, she says she’ll give the Broncos one more year to get her to the Super Bowl. After that, the studio becomes a full-time pursuit.

Not that it takes much less time right now.

Watching her teach a dozen 3-4 year old girls how to stretch their ankles - “so we can tap real fast” and doing the “rocking horse”- “one hand on the bar, one hand on your shoulder,” as the girls rock back and forth on tiny toes shows you just one part of the job that has become her business.

Her Broncos appearances and sports connections, for example, become a powerful marketing tool. Her dance company has performed at half-time shows for both the Broncos and the Denver Nuggets.

But, Iacino is not the only Broncos Cheerleader with a dance studio and another former cheerleader had a dance instruction business for several years, said Neely Hunt, director of the cheerleaders for the Broncos.

“Many more of the cheerleaders give dance lessons”, said Hunt.

David Taylor, founder of the David Taylor Dance Theatre, know for its innovative dance, guesses there are probably as many as 200 dance instructors or studios operating in the Denver/Boulder area.

Taylor said he used to look askance at the proliferation of “basement-lady studios” across the United States, but he has changed his mind over the 18 years he has operated his own non-profit dance company and school.

“There’s a place for everything,” he said. “Most students and their parents don’t want the girls to become professional dancers. “So different levels of instruction serve a purpose and spread the joy of dance”.

“The pros of the future, said Taylor, will gravitate toward more professional schools”.

But, Taylor’s nonprofit theater offers a backdrop to the economic forces Iacino has faced in private business. Taylor’s company and school operate on a $500,000 budget supported by government grants, foundations, and tax-deductible contributions.

He is artistic director of the theater and no longer teaches. The theater employs 26 people, including Taylor, a full-time fund-raiser and the 12 paid members of the Taylor dance company. The school has 125 students and children must be 4 years old to start.

Iacino’s Cherry Creek Dance has about 300 students, and she starts teaching them at age 2. She teaches many of the classes herself, although her faculty of four includes a ballerina from the Colorado Ballet who handles advanced ballet.

With an office manager too, Iacino employs five besides herself.

Most of her 60-member dance company’s performances are promotional; and most everything connected with the studio has a price: from $6 to $8 admission tickets to the spring recital, to the minimum $45 a month for four hours of class instruction, to the dance costumes, tights and other trappings available for sale in the studio.

In February, Iacino added a new dance floor to her studio in adjacent leased space in the same building.

She and office manager Pam McCaslin attribute the studio’s fast growth to its acceptance of 2 year olds, to its location in Cherry Creek North - “Mom can go and get her hair done or her nails done or have coffee,” said Iacino and to Stephanie’s ability to connect with kids. “She’s really good working with them and helping their self-esteem,” said McCaslin.

Iacino’s fellow cheerleaders have also been impressed. They chose her to represent them at the last Pro Bowl in Honolulu.

Robert Schwab writes about small business, minority business and women in business for The Denver Post. His column appears Saturdays. He can be reached at 820-1410 or send e-mail to business@denverpost.com and put “Schwab” in the subject field.

For those of you who took ballet class, I’m sure your memories are similar to my own. I remember a freezing cold room on the college campus, and Esther, our instructor. Esther was about 700 years old and quite stern. She wore her hair hair tight at the back of her neck and had little patience for the giddiness of young girls. We practiced constantly, in our pink leotards, but it was never quite enough for Esther.

If you have a child whom you think would enjoy dance, please don’t think about your old ballet teacher, think about Cherry Creek Dance. Stephanie Iacino, the owner and director of Cherry Creek Dance, is about as far from the “Esthers” of the world as you can get. She is young and lovely and has some of the giddiness of the children she works with. The photos covering the studio’s office walls are a testament to the fun that the children and instructors have there.

The studio opened on January 3, 1994. The studio now has over 300 students ranging in age from 2 to adult. The students are required to take some ballet, but they also study jazz dance and even tumbling.

Owning and operating a dance studio is a lot of work. Stephanie does not stop there, though; she is also a Denver Broncos Cheerleader. Stephanie is in her 5th year as the captain of the Broncos Cheerleading team. She was also chosen by her team-mates to represent the Broncos at the Pro-Bowl in Hawaii. Stephanie said that the beginning of the football season is the busiest, with poster and calendar shoots. The cheerleaders also practice 10 hours per week. I personally hope that the Broncos keep her practicing well into January, for the Super Bowl.

Stephanie is a Denver native. She has spent her life studying dance, and she now shares her love of dance and of performing with her students. Cherry Creek Dance has five different companies through the studio: the peewee company for ages 4-6, the petite company for ages 5-7, the mini company for ages 7-11, the junior company for ages 9 and up and the elite company for ages 12 and up. Auditions are held twice a year for membership in the companies. Each of the companies perform throughout Denver and the studio also has an application in with Disney World to perform there. Some of the venues they have visited include Broncos half-times, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and Elitches.

Stephanie uses the companies to expose her young dancers to the world of auditioning and performing. The young performers have a great time while gaining valuable experience. For the students who are interested in pursuing a career in dance, the experience they gain in the companies is invaluable. Of course, studying under someone who has made her career of dance is also helpful and inspiring.

If you are interested in exposing your son or daughter to the joys of dance, stop by the studio at 3000 E. 3rd. Ave., suite 19. Stephanie would be happy to show you pictures of performances and tell you about the classes. Cherry Creek Dance also has a brand-new web site which you can visit at www.cherrycreekdance.com. The phone number is (303)399-8087; give them a call and let your children have some great memories of dance class.

The Cherry Hills Villager August 24, 1995 Stephanie Plue graduated from Cherry Creek High School in 1986, a year ahead of her class, so she could study dance in college and have enough years left for a career, “because dancers don’t have a long life cycle,” as she put it recently.

Plue, now age 26, opened her own dance studio, Cherry Creek Dance, in January 1994 and she now has more than 200 students and three teachers and student teachers working under her as well.

Plue is perhaps most familiar to readers and especially Broncos fans as being a line leader for the Denver Broncos cheerleading squad. She has also performed with the Denver Nuggets.

Plue began her career as a dancer and dance teacher after spending several years as a Cherry Creek High School varsity cheerleader. Last year she was one of the judges deciding who would win a coveted spot on the current cheerleading squad. So what led Plue to her present position?

She attended Loretto Heights college as a musical theater and dance major, but the school closed in 1987 and became Teikyo-Lorreto Heights and no longer offered a major in her chosen field. So Plue left the college world and like many would-be performers, went to Los Angeles and New York. But she stayed only a year “because I love Colorado. I wanted to support the performing arts here”. So she did fashion and hair shows, using her natural rhythm and long blond tresses. Then she sang backup for Shari Belafonte when she starred in a Paramount Theatre performance.

“I did a lot of local events until 1991, when the Denver Nuggets started a dance team,” she said. Stephanie was already teaching dance by then. She was part of the Arvada Center production of “42nd Street,” and then co-directed and choreographed “A Drug Free Youth” program for school assemblies. She also participated in the 1991-92 Elitch Gardens “Ride for the Future.”

While focusing a full year on just her dance teaching, one of her students, Vanessa Gallegos got a spot on the Michael Jackson video, “Remember the Time.” The student also acted on the television show, “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper.”

When the Denver Broncos brought back their cheerleading squad in 1993 Stephanie Plue auditioned and won a spot on the squad. Asked how the pay is, she replied, “It’s equivalent to Broadway stars.”Plue has nice things to say about fellow villager and Bronco owner, Pat Bowlen and general manager John Beake. “They’re wonderful to work for, the whole staff is.” Plue is still with the Broncos, in her third year, one of 24 cheering women. She’s gone with the team to Barcelona, Spain where she said the cheering squad was busier than the football players, asked to appear at malls, on beaches and at lots of parties.

She had just returned from Tokyo in early August when we caught up with her. So how was it, we ask? The temperature was 102 degrees and the humidity was 100 percent. It’s smoggy and the only air conditioning is in the hotel, she said she paid $10 for a glass of iced coke and $70 for a buffet meal. After four days, she was dehydrated and glad to be going home to dry Denver.

Plue is glad to be a participant in local community improvement activities the Broncos engage in throughout the state. Last Thanksgiving she and team members fed the homeless. Last February she went to Durango to work with disabled athletes at the Durango-Purgatory Adaptive Sports Association. “We were the celebrity skiers. We skied in a bucket along with people from different NFL teams,” she said, noting her sensitivity toward injured athletes whose lives had changed in an instant.

Stephanie Plue has big dreams to go with her new studio and her job with the Broncos. “I want to be a role model to fight drugs and gangs. This is such a good outlet, here at the studio.” Student’s parents drive in from Monument, Boulder and Brighton. The kids come at 4 p.m. after school and practice up to 17 hours a week. They are required to take tap, ballet and jazz dance if they are in any of her four aged-grouped performing companies. Her youngest group is five to eight years old, the advanced company goes up to age 20.

Her company of students performed at the Broncos’ Half-time Christmas program last year and they were on stage at the recent Cherry Creek Arts Festival for the second year. Students have also appeared at all News 4 Education Expos, the Kids Fair at the Colorado Convention Center each April and in local dance competitions. They have also participated in the Children’s Museum Trick or Treat Street on Halloween.

Although the studio is less than two years old, the walls of Cherry Creek Dance are already lined with glass, gold and silver trophies. And on her left ring finger she has her own trophy, an engagement ring from fiancée John Iacino. The couple plans to live in the Washington Park area of Denver.

But Stephanie wants readers to know she credits her folks, David and Linda Plue of Cherry Hills Village for her early in life success. “Without my parents I wouldn’t be here today,” she humbly says as she surveys her cozy garden level studio at the corner of Third and St.Paul, in the heart of Cherry Creek North. Parent demand created the studio, parents of the students Stephanie had taught at other existing dance studios. To reach Cherry Creek Dance, call (303)399-8087.