It’s a Friday evening at Detroit Dance Center and owners Jasmine Woods, Linda Hendricks, and Dominique Hamlett are sweeping floors and stacking brochures. They’re relaxed, laughing, and talking shop; new schedules, planned performances, and class rosters. The studio has all the aesthetics and furnishings you would expect; a selfie wall, a large hardwood dance space, and racks full of costumes and shirts with their logo on them. The trio have called the midtown Detroit studio home since 2022, but their story starts much further back.
“It was originally started in 2009,” says Hendricks. “I was in New York, I started taking classes at Broadway Dance Center and Alvin Ailen Extension and just feeling like I was coming back to life as an adult….I came back to Detroit and opened it.”
Hendricks decided to shift focus to her family life and closed the studio down after five successful years, but she kept one foot in the dance…