After just two years, JD Dance Studio has grown so big it’s already spilling out of its Mineola home into Williston Park.
“Our classes were growing to a point that was so exciting, but we physically couldn’t get any more kids in the door. I didn’t want to stop serving the community,” said Julie O’Neill, owner of JD Dance Studio. “There was no other choice but opening a second location to make sure these kids all had a place to dance and a class to go to.”
O’Neill, a private dance teacher at St. John the Baptist High School by day, is opening a second JD Dance location in Williston Park this September after teaching nearly every night in her Mineola studio since 2023. She plans to nearly double the studio’s classes, which include jazz, tap, ballet, hip hop, musical theatre, break dance and more, jumping from around 20 a week to 35 a week.
She currently has nearly 200 students, a number she expects to grow over the fall as the Williston Park location finds its footing. O’Neill also plans to expand her offerings at her new location, adding a class specifically for special needs students on Mondays. She also hopes to add courses for adults looking to learn a new skill, as the studio currently only teaches students from toddler age through their final year of high school.
Alongside recreational classes, the studio boasts a highly competitive competition squad which has won gold at multiple regional and national competitions.
“A big part of our studio is our competition team, the JD Dance Company,” O’Neill said. “They’re very driven, they’re very dedicated. They’re in rehearsal quite a few times a week. They compete in a ton of different styles.”
O’Neill has had a lifelong love of dance. She’s originally from Massapequa and grew up dancing at a studio in Wantagh, where she began training when she was just three years old. She competed through that studio and worked there as an assistant and lead teacher while in high school and college.
“I fell in love with the ability to be in a class, and nothing else mattered. When I was dancing, I didn’t think about school, I didn’t think about my friends and the drama going on outside, or what I was doing the next day,” O’Neill said. “I was so focused on just being present and expressing myself and really immersing myself in developing the art form.”
After obtaining a degree in dance education at Hofstra University and competing on their team all four years of college, she found a full-time job teaching at Our Lady of Mercy Academy in 2022.
Between school classes and her studio, O’Neill teaches for much longer than a typical workday. But, she says, there’s nothing she’d rather be doing.
“I love seeing the growth in the children. That’s probably the most rewarding part of it all,” O’Neill said. “Seeing them work towards a new skill and then finally achieve it, and watch their confidence and excitement when they achieve new things. We get to watch them grow as dancers, but also just as children.”
“I think that’s the biggest thing for me, and what makes me love it so much is that we’re teaching them more than dance,” O’Neill continued. “We’re teaching them how to grow into human beings, how to be a team player and really develop them as a person.”
It seems her students have found her classes just as rewarding.
“We’ve become like a family. There’s kids who will just stay here, and when their parents are trying to bring them home, they’re like, ‘No, I don’t want to go,’” O’Neill said, laughing. “Just love being around the studio has been really great.”
JD Dance’s Williston Park location will be open from roughly 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays and 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.
