Love to Dance Performing Arts Center<\/a> is marking a decade of dancing. True to its name, its founder, coaches and dancers are truly there simply for the love of dance.<\/p>\n\u201cI wanted to go in my own direction in what I wanted to offer to these kids,\u201d said founder and coach Nicole Pastorelli, who runs Love to Dance as a non-competitive studio. \u201cIt\u2019s for kids who are super passionate about dance, but don\u2019t really want to compete. It\u2019s a different opportunity for them, where they\u2019re still performing and they\u2019re still gaining that top-notch technique, just not in competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
A non-competitive dance studio is a rarity in a frequently cutthroat industry that prioritizes pushing your body to the limit, gold medals and places in top dance companies above all else. Pastorelli, a lifelong dancer, said she believed taking competition out of the practice opened up space for creativity, keeps things fun and ensures the passion stays alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with competitive dancing,\u201d said Pastorelli, who used to teach at competitive studios. \u201cI think it\u2019s great if that\u2019s what you want to do, but some kids don\u2019t like to and they just want to perform. So that\u2019s how I wanted to develop. We are passion-driven. We are well-rounded in all styles of dance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A dancer performs on stage.<\/p>\n
Pastorelli, now 43, has been dancing since she was 3 and teaching for over 20 years. She said she grew up dancing in Queens, Manhattan and Nassau purely for the love of it, studying dance at Nassau Community College and training at a Manhattan-based dance company after school.<\/p>\n
She said practicing and performing in the competitive space had never felt right for her, but teaching for the love of the practice is where she truly found her place in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t grow up in a competitive studio, and I love that. When I started teaching, I taught competitively, and I just didn\u2019t love it for myself,\u201d Pastorelli said. \u201cGrowing up not in that competitive world, I remember there was no pressure. I was never anxious that I had to go to a competition and score high gold and this and that. It was just more freeing, even though I was training intensively.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had many opportunities to go the competitive, performance route, and I just didn\u2019t want that for myself,\u201d Pastorelli continued. \u201cI would get anxious sometimes thinking of performing. I don\u2019t think it was for me. That\u2019s when I started teaching and found such a different passion for it. I found passing my knowledge on to these kids more gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she wanted to create a space for kids like her with her studio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel like you get so much more out of it this way,\u201d Pastorelli said. \u201cKids already have so much to deal with outside of dance. If dance is your happy place, I didn\u2019t want to make it such a competitive thing for them. I wanted them to just feel free and dance and perform and have fun, and sometimes competition takes away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A Love to Dance team sits together.<\/p>\n
Just because Love to Dance\u2019s roughly 180 dancers are not competing doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t taking to the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of attending competitions,\u00a0 we have a senior, junior and petite performance company. We seek out fun performance opportunities for them,\u201d Pastorelli said. \u201cIn this year alone, we just danced at Citi Field at a Mets Game. We danced at the Barclays Center at a New York Liberty game. We\u2019ve danced at Islanders\u2019 games. We dance at tree lightings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pastorelli said she believed this type of performance not only has the ability to feel more special, but also helps to build up students\u2019 skills faster, because they weren\u2019t stressed out and anxious, but were there purely because they wanted to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like they\u2019ve adapted to learning things quicker. Choreography is retained faster and performed in a fun way while still learning great technique,\u201d Pastorelli said. \u201cThey have a passion for practicing it in a different way, which I think is because it\u2019s more exciting\u2026We are just very passion-driven, so the way that we all teach excites students to learn and to get better and to just grow in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center also hosts an annual recital, which Pastorelli choreographs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After deciding dancing in the competitive world wasn\u2019t right for her, Pastorelli began teaching at studios in Nassau. Though she enjoyed it, she said she felt a strong pull to do her own thing and a desire to be more creative. In the early 2010s, she took the leap and started the first iteration of Love to Dance out of East Williston Village Hall.<\/p>\n
Around 2016, she sought out a space of her own, where Love to Dance stands today. The concept of passion-based dance landed immediately, she said. Now she offers roughly 30 classes a week for kids ages 2 to 18, most of which have waitlists.<\/p>\n
Many of her students have stuck with her for the full 10 years she has been open, and she said it\u2019s been incredibly rewarding to see them grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these kids have been here since they were babies\u2026I remember that day they were maybe 3 and 4 years old, now they are 12 and 13,\u201d Pastorelli said. \u201cTo see them get older and graduate\u2026I really can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been that long. There are a lot of really special memories here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Love to Dance Performing Arts Center is located at 276 Jericho Turnpike in Mineola.<\/p>\n
For more business coverage, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of Love to Dance dancers pictured together. Provided by Nicole Pastorelli Love to Dance Performing Arts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[288,1117,2563,9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-business","tag-dance","tag-mineola","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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