Bringing in the Boys

By Lisa Traiger

Hip-hop gives football a run for its money in Texas

In Texas football isn’t a game. It’s a way of life. But in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, hip-hop is giving football a run for its money. It may be hard to believe, but certain football coaches have even been known to let players leave practice early so they wouldn’t be late for dance rehearsals.

It’s been 14 years since Dana Bailey, a Fort Worth native, opened Dana’s Studio of Dance in a strip mall in Southlake, 20 minutes from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Bailey started like most teachers: “It was a one-woman show. I taught everything—ballet, jazz, a little bit of hip-hop, clogging, lyrical, creative movement for the little ones.” Today the spacious studio’s two locations in Southlake and Keller offer about 200 weekly classes, serving 1,200 students and sponsoring nearly a dozen frequently winning competition teams.

Among those teams are three boys-only groups that have been burning down the house in recent years with their high-energy, hyperkinetic hip-hop. “I would say we have 30 to 40 boys from ages 5 to 18,” says Bailey, who taught her first boy just 12 years ago. Bailey’s students are beginning to redefine what it means to be cool in certain suburbs around the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Anyone with brawn and willpower can play football, but only a talented few can also dance. Emmitt Smith, call your dance studio.

DJ Guthrie, then a 13-year-old football wannabe, was one of the first boys to sign up for classes at Dana’s Studio of Dance. “I was heavily involved in sports in school and on recreational teams. I wanted to desperately make the Carroll High School [Southlake] football team and I had heard that some of the Dallas Cowboys had incorporated dance into their training to increase speed, agility, and flexibility,” says Guthrie.

Soon he found himself in a dance class with a dozen or more leotard-and-tights-clad preteen girls. The football field it wasn’t. “Dana made it warm and welcoming,” Guthrie recalls, “however, the girls weren’t used to having a boy in class with them. It wasn’t the most comforting of situations.”

Blame it on immaturity or hormones, but Guthrie stuck it out, made the team, and added more dance classes to his high school schedule. Today, he lives and breathes dance 24/7: At 17 he joined Orlando Ballet and performed there under the tutelage of ballet star Fernando Bujones; currently he’s touring the country in Cats. During his off hours Guthrie is an entrepreneur. His fledgling company, Project V Entertainment, based in Southlake, aims to broaden horizons for dancers while also eventually diversifying into restaurants and fitness programs.

Bailey didn’t know what was to come when Guthrie first walked into her studio. And her boys’ program didn’t accelerate until Jeremy Keeton knocked on her studio door one day. She remembers him as a 19-year-old kid working at an Albertsons grocery store down the street. “He just walked in and said ‘I teach hip-hop and I’d like to work here.’ That was way back before hip-hop was big.” Or at least big by Texas standards.

But Bailey listened to his proposal and took a chance. At first Keeton’s classes were small, but they grew. Within five years, he reports, he was teaching 26 hours a week. “Everyone wanted to be in his classes and everyone wanted to do hip-hop,” Bailey says. Girls and boys flocked to his classes for their energy, up-to-the-minute choreography and music, and the competitive spirit they fostered among students. He started with just a few boys in elementary school and every one of them has stayed with him, some graduating from high school just last year. Some of his former students now work with him in his company, Adrenaline, which produces master classes and dance competitions.

Keeton, now 30, remembers one class of little boys who were “truly just awful. They were all athletes—football and baseball. They had no classroom etiquette. They’d hit each other like it was a wrestling match.” But they loved what they were learning and eventually got serious. Keeton learned to take advantage of the sports-minded competitive streak many young boys bring into the studio. “They all wanted to be better than one another—and better than the girls,” their teacher remembers. Soon they were performing all over town, at local festivals, school talent shows, and community events where other non-dancing boys would see their energetic hip-hop routines.

That’s what attracted Nick Alter, a 16-year-old from Keller, TX. When he was in fourth grade, a few dancers performed at his elementary school assembly, then taught the children a hip-hop class. “I came home from school and told my mom, ‘I want to do that,’ ” says Alter. “My first class with Jeremy was exciting. I can still remember the combination.”

Today Alter, who is home schooled, dances six to seven days a week at three different studios. He’s been teaching since he was about 12 and now instructs fourth-grade boys at Dana’s Studio. He’s also now the “cool guy” who performs and teaches hip-hop at local school assemblies in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, following in the steps of his teacher, Keeton. A triple threat, Alter dances, sings, and acts, performing with Radio Disney Superstars, Revolution, and the Dallas Desperados, among other regional groups.

Alter’s mother, Linda, says that sometimes the biggest barrier isn’t getting boys interested in dance. That part is easy. Just let them watch a dozen teenagers in Abercrombie gear and the right sneakers breaking it down to Justin Timberlake or Aaron Carter—plenty will sign up. And the boys, once they reach high school, Bailey reports and Guthrie concurs, realize the advantage of being the best dancer in a room full of high school girls. The real barrier is convincing their fathers, especially football-fanatic Texan fathers, that dance is anything but a lightweight activity for sissies.

Bailey noticed early on that the best defense in attracting boys to her studio program was offering separate boys-only classes for hip-hop, particularly for the beginners. It helped that she had Keeton, a young, energetic, popular male teacher. “Especially down here in Texas where football is so big,” she says, “for a dad to even let a boy take a dance class, at first is really tough.”

But boys, especially those interested in competitive athletics, improve quickly. “The more advanced they get, the more into it they get,” Bailey says, “and the dads see how good they’re getting and they come around.” The boys begin to add classes in jazz, lyrical, partnering, and turns. Then, as they mature and advance, they join the competition teams.

In a little more than a decade, Bailey has changed plenty of minds in Dallas/Fort Worth when it comes to accepting boys in the dance studio and performing onstage. “We never turn a boy down,” she says. “If they start in the middle of the year, we’ll have them take a few private lessons to get caught up. If we have interest from a boy and an OK from a mom and dad, we’ll do whatever we need to do to get them in there. We want them to be comfortable when they walk into the class.”

A lot has changed since Guthrie broke the gender barrier at Dana’s Studio of Dance. He recalls, “It was tough to be a dancer and to be as active in sports as I was. To be honest, I kept it a secret! It wasn’t easy at all. Society shuns male dancers because they don’t understand that a male can express himself as an artist. Dance is the hardest sport I have ever participated in, and I challenge any athlete to keep up one day of a rigorous dance schedule.”

Bailey knows that boys can tackle a dance schedule as readily as they can take down an offensive linesman. She’s sees them do it and maintain good grades. She says she feels a different sense of energy in the lobby when the boys are in class. Parents, even those who don’t have a dancing son, line up at the studio windows to peek at their latest moves. Bailey laughs: “There have been times when I’ve had to say, ‘Stop throwing the football in the lobby. You’re going to break something.’ Oh, yes, boys are going to be boys no matter what, whether they’re in a dance studio or out on the field. You can’t take the boy out of the boy.”

FOR BUILDING A BOYS’ PROGRAM

1. Offer boys-only classes, especially at the beginner level. Dana Bailey of Dana’s Studio of Dance in the Dallas/Fort Worth area says: “We have about six or seven separate boys classes, just boys. Then some of our more advanced and intermediate boys will take some mixed classes with the girls as well.”

2. Find a male teacher who can serve as a role model for boys. Jeremy Keeton began teaching before he was 20 and was close in age to his students. He understood the music and sports that they liked. Nick Alter, too, now 16, is a clean-cut kid who is becoming a role model for a new generation of boys by showing them that boys and men can dance.

3. Let boys be boys. In class, Bailey eschews leotards and tights and has boys wear black sweat pants or jazz pants and a studio T-shirt. For hip-hop they wear sneakers or jazz sneakers. When they perform, costumes come off the rack from stores that are popular with teenage boys.

4. Send your boys and their male teachers out into the community as ambassadors. Let them show their stuff at community festivals, school talent shows and open houses, shopping-mall events, and so forth. Word of mouth and experience are the best tools for attracting boys, Bailey has found. She still fills requests from local schools to provide dance programs and instruction at assemblies, and Alter passes on his love for dance at local schools two days a week.

5. Teach to the boy. That means picking the right moves and music. Keeton teaches and choreographs differently for boys, tapping into their energy level, physical daring, and innate sense of competition. “While I do heavier, hard-hitting moves for the boys, I still make my boys do [all kinds of movement]. They can’t be afraid to do something a little more feminine. Especially,” he adds, “as they mature and advance.”

6. Encourage boys to become leaders in the studio. “Kids come in and show me a combination they choreographed and ask what I think,” Keeton says. “I encourage them to choreograph and to assist me in teaching—when they’re ready.” —LT  

Photo captions (from top to bottom):

The boys’ performing groups at Dana’s Studio of Dance perform frequently at local schools and events. Pictured are (left to right) Evan Moore, Ryan Warren, Graham Duncan, and Matthew Purvis. Photo by Photodesign 

The Senior Boys Hip-Hop Company and the girls’ Elite Dance Company perform at a Dallas Desperados football game. Photo by Tammy Velez 

The senior boys in action. Photo by McCoy’s Photography 

Nick Alter demonstrates a move at a school assembly. Photo by Linda Alter 

Admiring students ask Alter for his autograph after a school visit. Photo by Brian Guilliaux 

Jeremy Keeton started teaching hip-hop at Dana’s Studio of Dance more than 20 years ago. Photo by Linda Alter

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