Dance Studio Is Small Family
Teaching dance has given Kara Sandlin a home away from home.
She is the owner of Kara’s Kicks Dance Alliance in Anderson. Her history of dance goes back to when she was five years old and growing up in Neosho. She has danced her entire life, starting in competitions at age nine and traveling frequently to locations, including New York City every January, as well as Las Vegas and Orlando. Another highlight of her dance career involved taking classes with The Rockettes.
“It’s been a big part of my life ever since I was five,” she said. “I always knew I wanted to do something with it, just not what aspect, whether to dance professionally or teach.”
She said she chose to teach because dance had always been her hobby, her escape, her “me time” and something she loved to do. She feared, if she danced professionally, it would lose some of its joy because it would be her job and it would feel like work.
Sandlin has a job working at Mercy in radiology. She earned a bachelor’s degree in health science and an associate’s degree in radiology at Missouri Southern State University. Teaching dance is what she does in the evenings. Another passion is her involvement with the praise team at Calvary Baptist in Neosho, where she sings and plays the piano.
Sandlin opened the dance studio in the fall of 2012. In 2011 she was working in Southwest City and teaching dance under her childhood dance teacher. At that time, she decided she wanted to start her own studio. During her learning years, she took tap, jazz, ballet, pointe, lyrical dance and hip hop, she said, adding she is “pretty wellrounded.” She teaches all those types of dance at her studio.
She is the only teacher at this time. In the past, she has had some assistants that were high school students. She currently has 36 students.
“We’re a small but mighty dance family,” she said. “My parents and my kids are amazing. It’s harder in bigger cities to keep connected. Here they do, and they take care of each other. It’s my home away from home, pretty much.”
She confesses envy of larger studios, but added, “It’s not about the quantity, it’s about the quality of students that you have and parents that you have.”
The dance alliance has gone every year to competitions in Springdale, Tulsa, Kansas City and Springfield. One year they went to Galveston for world finals, she said.
Last year they went to one competition and then lots of things were canceled, Sandlin said. She hopes this year things will be back to normal.
In the spring, the studio holds a show for all its students to demonstrate their work. They normally hold the recital at Crowder College, however, last year Crowder was not renting space, and so they
held the event at Calvary Baptist in Neosho.
Sandlin said dance is her passion, but it is more than that.
“It’s more than just a passion, it’s my mission field. Not just to create a passion and nurture a passion for dance — it’s my place to share the love of
Christ and also to give them their escape, something that’s just for them, something where they can lose themselves and forget about everything that’s happened throughout the day. Sometimes you see them walk in drained and defeated and they walk out with big smiles on their faces … like they left their cares at the door.”