The Beat Dance Academy puts new spin on the performing arts

If you want to be hip and edgy, you’ve got to have the beat.

The Beat Dance Academy is open at the Las Vegas Sports Park, 1400 N. Rampart Blvd., and offers classes for children 2 or older.

How hip and edgy is it? A film crew was taping an episode of “Vegas Rocks” in the summer. The reality TV show is about the Yerushalmi family, which owns The Jewelers Inc. Their children take dance classes there.

As if to promote its edgy take on dance, the lobby features walls painted to look like cinder block, complete with peeling paint.

The Beat celebrated its grand opening Feb. 9, but clients had been taking lessons there since August. The owners said they wanted to ensure that the build-out was complete before putting its best foot forward.

“You only get one chance to have a grand opening,” said Amanda Sizemore, co-owner.

The dance academy has two studios in a 3,100-square-foot space. One measures 45 feet by 30 feet and the other 25 feet by 20 feet. Both have custom-made spring floors. The larger studio makes use of its high ceiling with drop-down hooks for attaching hoops or silks for aerial art, which is taught by a Cirque du Soleil performer.

Ropes hanging from the ceiling allow one to be about five feet off the floor, not high enough to cause vertigo.

“It’s not like you’re way up in the air,” Tina Vasseghi, Sizemore’s business partner, said.

Sizemore and Vasseghi have extensive dance backgrounds. Vasseghi danced in Chicago and was the assistant artistic director and a member of the Eloquence Performance Co., a contemporary modern dance company in New York City. Sizemore comes from a family of dancers and trained at Tremaine, a dance convention and competition.

Their academy teaches students age 2 to adult in genres such as tumbling, ballet, jazz, contemporary, tap and break dancing. The academy has seven teachers. The tumbling class is taught by a gymnastics instructor. It’s looking to add to its adult program with classes in Pilates and yoga.

Sizemore opened The Beat about two years ago on her own but in a different location on Flamingo Road. It was only 1,200 square feet and could not support a dance team. With no room to grow, she looked for a larger facility.

When Vasseghi learned that Sizemore needed a new business partner, she signed on and moved from Chicago to Las Vegas just before the holidays. Vasseghi is now the ballet director.

“Every mom wants to put their little girl in a tutu at one point or another,” Vasseghi said.

She said it’s like a second home for children who do homework between classes and hang out with others in a safe environment. Right now, most of their students are ages 2 to 9.

“We definitely want to be family-oriented and close-knit; that’s how I am, and I (grew up) in studios that were like that,” Vasseghi said. “Basically, our dance teachers were family … we would tell them probably more stuff than our own mothers. We kind of want the same feel here.”

The Beat has its own hip-hop dance team, ATeamLV, which travels to perform. Its latest competition was scheduled for March 10 in Sweden.

Swinns “Swiftt” Jean-Charles is part of the team and has a dance background that spans 11 years.

“Our aim is to make Las Vegas an international platform for hip-hop units, especially to its fans in the dance community,” Jean-Charles said. “We want a different culture here within the community to be more elite and to think of themselves not just as hip-hop dancers but more as professionals.”

Kim “Toshi” Davidson has been dancing for 10 years and is part of the ATeamLV. He said having a dance academy in the suburbs made things a little more private, without the distractions of the Strip.

Office manager Daffodil Gamayon is one of six core members in ATeamLV and coordinates its productions.

She’s been dancing for 10 years and said hip-hop is a way to make dancing “easily acceptable to youths. People who can’t afford ballet, kids can definitely come together, get into a garage, put on music and dance on concrete ... what I promote within the dance unit is to be more self-reliant, to have focus and drive.”

For more information, call 702-251-0200 or visit thebeatdanceacademy.com.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.