Kravenko Dance Academy
Janet Kravenko landed in Las Vegas in 1959, a dancer in the famed "Lido" at the Stardust Hotel. By the early 60's, she had retired because, as she said, "Women didn't dance much past the mid to late twenties back then."
Janet focused, instead, on her dance studio. She opened "...with one room and it was fifty long and it was twenty wide and we made room at the front for a tiny waiting room and at the back for some storage by the bathroom. And my husband, who knew nothing about dancing schools, he said to me, 'Jan, you don't need all that space.' And I said, 'What do you mean all that space? It's one small studio.' And he said, 'No, it's much too big. What are you going to do with all that space?' He said, 'Let me teach golf in the end of the studio. We could put a net up.' Can you imagine doing pliés with the thud of a golf ball?'"
"To be honest with you, having a business like this, it's always a fine line between 'Are we eating today or not?' Well, we do well but the problem with dancing schools is that the space has to be large and how much can you charge for dancing classes on a one-to-one basis? And wouldn't you rather have a child come to you for five years and not exhaust the parent after the first year with excessive fees?"
Wouldn't you rather, she adds, teach children more than steps? "It's about learning about life and learning to be strong and learning to have confidence...Scholastics are now figuring it out, the last ten years, that children who have music and art in their lives are smarter or faster. We knew that. We've always known that, but now they're actually putting it on paper so it has become so. And that's the reason you take dance class. That's why you come to ballet class."
"We encourage them to go to university. That's what we talk about - taking this experience and getting through school. To get an education, sometimes with scholarships, because nobody wants to hire a stupid dancer. You've got to have a brain."
Of course, she also wants them to have solid technique and refuses to participate in competitions. "Nope. Hate them. Actually I'm a fool, because competition studios make a lot of money. A lot of money. We tried competitions. We did about three competitions and we walked away with the gold goodies and then looked at each other and I said, 'Uh, what does that mean?'...I don't think dance is about being competitive. I think you're competing with yourself. I didn't like the feeling of you've gotta have all these extra classes and they're going to have to pay you for the extra classes and the extra costumes, and then you're going to do solos and then before you know it you're doing routines. You're not training the body. You're not training the soul. You're not raising up that child. You're just competing that child and I see no value in competitions as far as learning to dance. Now obviously there's a value in the performance levels, which is great. But I often find that girls that do competitions only go to a certain level and then I look at their technique and there are great holes. It is a lot of tricks and so I just prefer not to do them."
She also prefers teachers with a similar vision. That generally means family - not strictly, but generally. "I'm very leery of hiring teachers. I'm putting children in their hands who have been put in my hands for good care. I've got to make sure that they have the right technique being taught, that they're not going to injure their bodies. I have to know that they're not going to say inappropriate things. I have to know that they're not going to teach them inappropriate things for their age."
"I also have seen other people entrust part of their school to other teachers and they've lost part of their school. Teachers will walk away and take half of the school with them. It's happened to one teacher in this town twice. You cannot give too much power to any one person. My family I trust. My girls I trust. Scott I trust. Dallas I trust. But they're not here every day. They're not interested in taking over my school."
They're only interested in helping Janet turn out quality dancers. "I tell my senior girls when they graduate, I tell them, 'Ok, I've given you everything I have to give you. Now you go out and share it with someone else.'" That attitude has brought success to Kravenko Dance Academy and set a positive example for countless young dancers.