Why do some kids (and their parents) choose to participate in the competition dance experience? At Red Door, we pride ourselves on providing the same excellent technique to every one of our dancers, regardless of the path they take with us. So dancers will receive expert instruction in quality dance technique in any class they enroll in. So why would someone sign up to dance more and, to be very honest, pay more for that instruction? 

Competition Dance with Company inspiRED and Level Up Dance Team takes dance to the next level. These are our elite dancers who want more. More stage time, more instruction, more insight into dance at the pre-professional level, more opportunities to learn from experts in the industry, more of that feeling of belonging to a family. 

And that last one, the family feeling, is what we really pride ourselves on. We know that we are helping to raise these children into adults. We want them to be the kind of adults that we want running the world. Our Competition Dance programs teach not only teamwork, excellent and safe technique, overcoming challenges, short and long-term goal setting, but how to speak kindly and professionally to themselves, each other, and adults. We learn accountability and responsibility. We build friendships that last lifetimes as we sweat and overcome frustrations together and learn that as a team, we can do hard things. Our faculty are very proud that we are able to teach them to dance, but possibly more importantly, we are able to mentor them and teach them life skills. 

So, yes, Company inspiRED and Level Up Dance Team dancers at Red Door are definitely elite. They are in classes 4-10 hours a week, sometimes more. They are learning all styles of dance and becoming well-rounded pre-professional dancers with excellent knowledge of dance technique. They are held to very high standards in and outside of the studio. They foster their love of performing and thrive in the challenge of learning multiple styles of dance at elite levels to compete several times a year. They are strong athletes and beautiful artists. But they are also a family that sweats and cries together. They celebrate and encourage each other, challenge and push each other to progress. 

Come get inspiRED with us! 

Our Company InspiRED teams have been hard at work preparing for the upcoming competition
season! Altogether, our 5 teams will perform 13 large group dances, with many more solos, duets, and
trios. Each of our dancers practices for hours both inside and outside of the studio.
Mini Team is our youngest group. These tiny dancers will perform one adorable jazz dance at
two competitions: Fly Dance Competition and Legacy Dance Championship. We can’t wait to see the
minis light up the stage with their sweet smiles and fun energy!
Purple Team will compete a jazz and a tap routine. They will compete at Elevation on Tour, Fly
Dance Competition, and Energy Dance Competition. These girls love practicing their facial expressions
and leaps, as well as trying on their adorable costumes. Purple Team dancers love one another, and they
always have a good time. We’re excited to see them shine on stage together.
Red Team will compete three dances in the styles of jazz, tap, and musical theater. These girls
will attend three competitions: Elevation on tour, Fly Dance Competition, and Legacy Dance
Championship. They work very hard as a team, and they also love to have fun! Their friendships and
personalities really show on stage.
Chartreuse Team, ranging from ages 11-15, will compete at four competitions with four dances
in the styles of jazz, tap, musical theater, and contemporary. Chartreuse Team consistently works hard
in and out of the studio to improve and perfect their dances. They also love a good dance party and
spending time with one another. Their dances are always a joy to watch.
Silver Team, with dancers from ages 12-18, compete at four competitions with jazz, tap, musical
theater, and contemporary dances. These ladies work hard to play hard, and they love one another.
Their close friendships and fun-loving nature help them to work together as a team. Their dances always
include lots of teamwork and personality. Silver and Chartreuse will compete at Elevation on Tour, Fly
Dance Competition, Legacy Dance Championship, and Energy Dance Competition. We are so blessed to
have each and every one of our dancers, and we can’t wait to see what this season has in store for
them.

Company InspiRED

Noelle Porterfield

Marketing Intern

With our 2023 Dance Recitals coming up, its important to take a look at how learning choreography can help in the development of dancers’ brains.
Choreography plays an essential role in the development of dancers and the strengthening of their minds. By learning choreography, dancers are not only improving their physical skills but also their cognitive abilities.

Choreography requires a dancer to memorize sequences of movements, recall them quickly and perform them with precision and fluidity. This mental workout helps to improve memory, focus, and concentration. It also develops problem-solving skills as dancers must find ways to remember and execute complex sequences.
Furthermore, learning choreography also helps to improve coordination and spatial awareness. Dancers must navigate the stage and coordinate their movements with the music and other dancers. This process helps to strengthen the connections between the brain and body, leading to improved physical control and grace.

It is much more than just memorizing steps. It is a cognitive workout that helps dancers develop essential mental and physical skills. So next time you are in the dance studio, remember that you are not only improving your technique but also strengthening your mind.

So whether your dancer is performing in this year’s recitals or not, they are gaining a LOT by learning the choreography in class each week!

A quick google search for dance studios will populate many options for families to choose from. A google search for kids activities will pull up an even larger list of options to choose from, but Red Door Dance is not like the other places on those lists. There is something special about Red Door and you can feel it when you walk in, you can feel it in your first class, you can feel it in your 200th class. 

The most important thing to us is building up the whole child. Yes, we are a dance studio and yes our staff is highly trained in each of their expertises. Our dancers will get a wonderful dance education through our programs, but that is only the start of what you get when you walk through our doors. Our students are not just dancers to us, they are people. Being a More Than Just Great Dancing studio, we live by the words “we don’t teach kids to be great dancers. We teach dance to make great kids” spoken by Misty Lown. Red Door takes each student’s unique journey as an opportunity to teach life-long skills, create cherished memories and provide valuable experiences. 

The teachers and staff at Red Door are dedicated to our mission to inspire children to move and be creative and through dance, teach them valuable life lessons, build confidence and create successful humans.

When asking our staff and students “What is one word you think of when you think of Red Door” here are some of the answers I got: 

Home

Family

Freedom

Stability

Friends

Confidence

Comfort

This list is evidence of our mission coming to life. Our reason for existing. Our reason for wanting to spread our love of dance to as many kids as we can. It is our great hope as an organization, as a business, as a community, we can reach more students who can learn the lessons we have to teach, create the memories and have the experiences.  

So while we will pop up on your phone when you google ‘dance studio near me’, we are so much more than that.

By: Noelle Porterfield

Our Red Door Nutcracker was a huge success, and we want to thank everyone who attended! All 3 shows were sold out and we love that we had so many people excited to watch the show and support our dancers. 352 dancers participated in this year’s shows, and we are so proud of each and every one of them. Nutcracker is a beneficial experience for dancers of all ages and levels because it boosts confidence, enhances intelligence, and is such a fun and rewarding experience.

The Nutcracker experience allows dancers time on stage, raising their self-confidence. When dancers perform alongside peers of different ages and levels, they are encouraged in their own ability. Nutcracker also enhances intelligence by pushing dancers’ out of their comfort zones. Dance is a great exercise for both the mind and body. Because Nutcracker dances are learned in a relatively short amount of time, the experience forces dancers to push the boundaries of their learning abilities in a fun and immersive environment. We challenge dancers’ memories and ability to pick up choreography quickly. 

Aside from how much our dancers learn during the process, Nutcracker is simply a good time. Dancers love both the process of learning and practicing a routine, as well as being able to perform it on stage for a live audience. The backstage experience at a professional theater and the thrill of the stage truly is unique, and we love seeing dancers of all ages enjoy that time. 

Once again, thank you to all who attended and supported our 2022 Nutcracker. We couldn’t have done it without you!

We had so much fun at our third annual Fall Street Party on October 22, 2022! This was our biggest year yet! We want to send a big thank you to all of our sponsors for your support in making this event happen! 

1.Avalon School of Music

2.Wylie Willow Company

3.Wylie Med Spa

4.Elite Diamondbacks Cleaning

5.Summit Church

6.Bryan Band

7.Torc1 Racing

8.Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea

9.Carters Lemonade

10.Omg Creamery

11.Wylie Elite Allstar Cheerleading and Tumbling

We also had bounce houses, face painting, and tattoos. We are so excited and can’t wait for more fun next year!

The Nutcracker is possibly the most well-known and most-performed ballet in the dance world. It is a time honored tradition that began in 1892 and has gained much popularity through the centuries. Why should your dancer participate in A Red Door Nutcracker? Aside from the fact that dance is a performance art and we dancers absolutely LIVE and LOVE to be on stage?

Arabian

This performance is an opportunity to enrich your dancer’s education by becoming part of the history of ballet! The Nutcracker is a tradition that intertwines so many dancers all over the world. It is a shared experience, and one that offers the opportunity to grow and create memories year after year. As dancers graduate to new classes at Red Door, they can progress their way through the entire story of The Nutcracker, dancing different roles that are earned through hard work and dedication. If a student joins us at 3 years of age, they can possibly dance every role from a Mouse and Soldier all the way to the Sugar Plum Fairy! A Red Door Nutcracker is entirely made up of our fabulous dancers, showcasing their talent and progress in an adaptation of a full length ballet.

Performing in A Red Door Nutcracker is different from our year-end recital in many ways. Perhaps the most obvious is that it is similar to a professional ballet company experience in that dancers learn their choreography and perform in a much shorter period of time-often as few as 9 weeks! This is so impressive and teaches our dancers that they can achieve difficult goals by focusing on hard work and dedication.

A Red Door Nutcracker also gives our dancers the opportunity to share their progress with family and friends each year during the holiday season. It is an uplifting show where the older and younger dancers support each other backstage and during rehearsals. This is truly an experience like no other! Performing in front of a live audience builds confidence, poise under pressure and encourages the expression of emotions through movement.  Watching your dancer learn that they can do hard things is such an invaluable and invigorating experience. We wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!

So please join us for our fourth annual production of A Red Door Nutcracker.  We can’t wait to see what your beautiful dancers achieve!

Mice2

1. Help them set up their accounts with the right privacy settings.

Private is best! This is the easiest way to keep their posts/ information secure and prevents bots/ spammers/ predators from being able to follow them.

2. Friend/follow them on every platform. Make this a rule..if they want to have social media, they have to let you follow them (make sure they haven’t blocked you).

You’ll be able to tell if they blocked you if you type their username into the search bar and it says “user not found”.

3. Encourage open communication/ check in with them.

By not making social media a taboo subject in your household, your kids will be more likely to come to you for advice or when something happens. Try not to make social media a negative subject. 

4. Monitor what media they are consuming by looking at the profiles they follow. You can see this under “following”.

5. Turn post notifications on so that every time they post you can check in on the content. 

The most important thing is that you talk to them! If you have any questions regarding your child’s social media safety, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] I’m happy to answer any questions!

For several years I have been the Red Door Dance Costume Manager. I was excited to take on this fun and important job! Imagine buying costumes with someone else’s money, and outfitting every dancer I see on a weekly basis in sparkly, fun costumes! This was going to be the best job ever! I knew I could do this- I’ve clothed an entire family for … well, lots of years.

It turns out there’s a lot more than buying costumes to the role of Costume Manager. For starters, did you know that there are more students at Red Door Dance Academy than there are in the average elementary school in Wylie? This year we will outfit our students with over 1200 costumes for recitals, competitions, and The Nutcracker. This fall we measured over 600 dancers for recitals and competitions. We then select unique costumes for every dance. This year we have over 150 different costume styles, each with its own tights and accessories.  Then we order the costumes early enough that they can be made and shipped to us well before they are needed for the many events our dancers participate in.

I start wielding my magic wand at this point in hopes of getting costumes as quickly as possible, managing exchanges and dealing with ever changing delivery dates.  This year has been an especially interesting year to find, order and receive costumes. The disruption of the global supply chain (I am a logistics coordinator as well) has been broken for the last year. It sometimes affects our ability to get costumes that we,and our suppliers, expect to be here in plenty of time.

Sometimes our orders end up like a disaster movie plot. This is a true story – last October we ordered costumes for one of our competitive teams. The manufacturer notified both us and the costume company that the costumes were on their way from the factory.  But, a month later I got a notice that these costumes were no longer available. What happened?! It’s very dramatic. A cargo ship hit a patch of very rough weather in the Pacific Ocean causing 40-foot swells to send some containers overboard. Then—if you can believe it—some of the remaining containers caught fire. (The crew was safe.) You can’t make this stuff up. 

Then we get to do a particularly fun task.  We individually unpack every costume, check it out and hang it with written instructions in its own costume bag. Over Christmas break, we packaged about 750 of those costumes with the help of our amazing STAR dancers (our teen assistants). 

My job is not done though until every dancer has their costume and is happy. 

We love costume season and I love making it happen for your dancers!

At Red Door, we strive to provide our dancers with information and tools that they can use to live a healthy and happy life! Red Door is a proud More Than Just Great Dancing affiliated studio, which means we can pass on advanced tools and resources to our students and families! 

As health is a top priority for our families, students, and staff, we wanted to share some healthy habits that can be implemented in everyday life! 

1. Spend more time outdoors- instead of watching tv or on your tablet, consider going for a walk, or playing at the park with your friends

2. Fuel your body with nutritious foods- try incorporating one fruit or vegetable into your meals this week

3. Stay hydrated- increase your water intake this month. Instead of juices, sodas, and sugary averages, choose water instead

4. Set a goal for yourself- maybe you want to read 1 book this month or get your middle splits! How will you achieve this goal? Write down a game plan.