Accommodating some 200 students in classes teaching classical ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary and hip-hop dancing, the school offered a slice of the discipline that founder and Artistic Director Lisa Sutton tries to instill in her charges with short, sweetly choreographed pieces performed by her students.
Parents like Karen Lissonshowed support for the new venture.
“We just love Miss Lisa,” she said. “She has worked so hard for this moment, and you’ll see it in the dancing today.”
The studios were created in four months by Sutton’s “rock ’n’ roller” husband, Jamie, a studio engineer who, Sutton confided, “has absolutely no background in construction or design.”
Brightly colored walls lined with barres and posters of Mikhail Baryshnikov are reflected in mirrors.
Sutton studied under scholarship with the school feeding the American Ballet Theatre and has won international teaching awards. Eighteen years of teaching dance in the Burbank area have seen her working with some of the more notable dancers to spring from Southern California, such as Natalie Krakirian, who just won the Grand Prix Award at the Youth American Grand Prix international competition.
But she also helped shape Olympic skater Lu Chen, the first skater from China to ever win an Olympic medal in figure skating, whose artistry relied just as much on ballet as triple axels.
“Ballet is the foundation of all dance movement,” Sutton said. “Like the foundation of anything, if it is not laid properly, everything collapses.”
