Olguin

The podcast host, April Geen, took a break from discussing local art organizations to interview Patrick Mahomes. In this episode, April's guest is Heather Smith, a former student of the Dance Gallery School of Dance Arts, where she now works as a coach and choreographer. The Dance Gallery offers classes in various forms of dance and emphasizes both fun and family-friendliness. Heather talks about the impact the Dance Gallery had on her, including the sense of community and her love for dance. She also mentions an upcoming production with a retro theme at the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts. April concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to attend the production and to live well and support local activities. Hello and welcome back to Lubbock with a Local, the podcast for residents who are new and looking for something to do. I'm your host, April Geen. Last week, we took a break from our series on local art organizations to talk to special guest Patrick Mahomes about his time at Texas Tech. If you haven't listened to that episode, definitely go do so after this. It's awesome. So special thanks to him for being on the show. Today, we're going to get back into our art organization series and talk about a place near and dear to my heart, the Dance Gallery School of Dance Arts. Our special guest for this episode is Heather Smith, a Lubbock local and previous Dance Gallery student of 15 years, who is continuing her time at the studio as a coach and choreographer. We met through our time together dancing at DG, and she's now my roommate and one of my closest friends. The Dance Gallery has played a special part in both of our lives, and I'm super excited to have brought her on and get to talk to her about the impact it has made on her and her Lubbock community. So let's get into it. Heather, thank you so much for being here today. Yes, of course. Thank you for having me. Of course. So for the people who don't know anything about it, what is the Dance Gallery? Okay, so the Dance Gallery School of Dance Arts is a local dance studio that offers classes for ages 3 to 18 in many different areas of dance. So we offer classes in ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, hip-hop, point, all of the above. And what makes us distinctive from other dance studios in the region is that while we maintain our competitiveness and our drive to succeed, we also want to make sure that there is an emphasis on having fun, and while also creating a family-friendly community where all of our content is both modest and age-appropriate. That is so awesome. So speaking as a previous student, what impact did the Dance Gallery have on you? So the two main things that I can think of that it provided me with was community and then also just knowing my love for dance. So I was there for 15 years. I made many lifelong friends, and now working there, I have connections within the dance industry, and then also just finding my love for dance and being able to see it as a form of creative expression and just learning more about myself through that. That is so cool. And what upcoming productions can we look forward to seeing? So we just finished working on our Christmas Spectacular in December, so now we are all geared towards our major production in June, and the theme is retro. So we'll be focusing on trends from the 1920s all the way through present day. And that's at the Buddy Holly Hall, correct? Yes, it's so exciting. So this will be our fourth major production at the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts, and it is just such an incredible opportunity to display all of our hard work in such an incredible venue. That is so amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you all for listening to Lubbock with a Local. I will attach the link to the upcoming production Heather mentioned below. I hope to see you all there, and as always, remember to live well and live local. I'll see you all next week. Slay!