Spotlight on… DANCEBOX
Infectiously and dance positive teacher founder Illana Gambrill explains why she started her empowering dance classes and how we can all find healing on the dancefloor
DANCE WITH ILLANA’S FAVOURITES… Song If by Janet Jackson.
Kit Oversized joggers and a sports bra. I love Weekend Collective.
Shoes Adidas NMD_R1 Primeblues. They’re like a hug for your feet.
Speaker The Bose S1 Pro has the power to fill a room with sound, but is small enough to transport everywhere.
Find out more at dance-box.co.uk or follow @danceboxofficial on Instagram
If you’ve ever argued that you can’t dance, Illana Gambrill has news for you: ‘We all wiggle before we walk – dance is innately in us. Inhibitions creep in as we get older. But we can all bring back our inner child.’
Gambrill is on a mission to spread this message on her Instagram account @danceboxofficial, through her online dance platform The Powerhouse and by teaching pop-up classes and workshops. The brand’s ethos focuses on the freedom and therapeutic qualities of movement
– which Gambrill discovered in her first dance class, aged 12. ‘Learning the choreography was euphoric,’ she says. ‘Even at that age, I knew dance was healing and meditative. It became my drug.’
Gambrill attended dance college after finishing school, but she left early after suffering from an eating disorder: ‘I wasn’t what society would tell you dancers should look like; I was a chubby Israeli girl and I had to shift myself to be in that industry.’
Still, she continued to pursue a dance career, landing jobs on The X Factor and Britain’s
Got Talent, and touring for artists such as the Sugababes. But, thanks to increasingly suffocating ideas about body image, she says, ‘I began to fear dance, rather than it being this incredible thing.’
So, in 2014, Gambrill opened her own classes, starting with one lesson a week in Essex, near her home: ‘It wasn’t considered cool to teach non-dancers, but I wanted to get back to the love of movement.’
Learning energetic routines to anthems from
Beyoncé and Lizzo makes for a great workout: ‘We do a real nasty cardio warm-up, stretching and body conditioning, then we do the routine until we pass out. You sweat buckets and people burn hundreds of calories.’ But ultimately, it’s not about that.
‘It’s all about mental wellness,’ says Gambrill. ‘When you hear the music, you free up stuck energy. Whether it’s work problems or bad relationships, you forget about all of it – and you remember who you really are. This is a way to release the stresses and traumas trapped in your body.’
Her glowing reviews are a testament to that – like the person who told her they had found the confidence to walk away from their unhappy marriage. Word spread, and soon Gambrill was running seven packed-out classes per week.
Creating a haven for all people has remained a constant aim. Gambrill starts every lesson with her signature ‘confidence strut’. Each participant must strut across the room to music, expressing themselves however they like. ‘Most newbies dread this,’ she laughs – but stepping outside your comfort zone can be transformative. ‘It’s about owning the space you’re in. They get to the end of the room being cheered and feeling so supported, and this feeling then leaks out into their lives.’
Gambrill took her classes online during the pandemic and she still releases new routines on her Powerhouse platform every week. Although she no longer runs regular sessions in Essex, she teaches ad hoc classes in private members’ club Soho House, alongside larger workshops in venues such as Colour Factory in Hackney. Her goal is to take Dancebox workshops across the UK – and with the creation of her app, she plans to go global.
Clearly, there’s demand for Gambrill’s offering, as the fitness space moves away from weight-loss rhetoric towards an inclusive, inner-strength approach. ‘There’s a huge market for judgementfree workouts, and brands outside the yoga and dance world will begin tapping into that,’ she says. ‘There’s definitely a shift happening.’
In the meantime, Dancebox will continue to be a safe space for so many, under Gambrill’s attentive and authentic gaze: ‘Everyone deserves a space to be unapologetically themselves.’