Love to Dance Performing Arts Center is marking a decade of dancing. True to its name, its founder, coaches and dancers are truly there simply for the love of dance.
“I wanted to go in my own direction in what I wanted to offer to these kids,” said founder and coach Nicole Pastorelli, who runs Love to Dance as a non-competitive studio. “It’s for kids who are super passionate about dance, but don’t really want to compete. It’s a different opportunity for them, where they’re still performing and they’re still gaining that top-notch technique, just not in competition.”
A non-competitive dance studio is a rarity in a frequently cutthroat industry that prioritizes pushing your body to the limit, gold medals and places in top dance companies above all else. Pastorelli, a lifelong dancer, said she believed taking competition out of the practice opened up space for creativity, keeps things fun and ensures the passion stays alive.
“There’s nothing wrong with competitive dancing,” said Pastorelli, who used to teach at competitive studios. “I think it’s great if that’s what you want to do, but some kids don’t like to and they just want to perform. So that’s how I wanted to develop. We are passion-driven. We are well-rounded in all styles of dance.”
Pastorelli, now 43, has been dancing since she was 3 and teaching for over 20 years. She said she grew up dancing in Queens, Manhattan and Nassau purely for the love of it, studying dance at Nassau Community College and training at a Manhattan-based dance company after school.
She said practicing and performing in the competitive space had never felt right for her, but teaching for the love of the practice is where she truly found her place in the world.
“I didn’t grow up in a competitive studio, and I love that. When I started teaching, I taught competitively, and I just didn’t love it for myself,” Pastorelli said. “Growing up not in that competitive world, I remember there was no pressure. I was never anxious that I had to go to a competition and score high gold and this and that. It was just more freeing, even though I was training intensively.”
“I had many opportunities to go the competitive, performance route, and I just didn’t want that for myself,” Pastorelli continued. “I would get anxious sometimes thinking of performing. I don’t think it was for me. That’s when I started teaching and found such a different passion for it. I found passing my knowledge on to these kids more gratifying.”
She said she wanted to create a space for kids like her with her studio.
“I just feel like you get so much more out of it this way,” Pastorelli said. “Kids already have so much to deal with outside of dance. If dance is your happy place, I didn’t want to make it such a competitive thing for them. I wanted them to just feel free and dance and perform and have fun, and sometimes competition takes away from that.”
Just because Love to Dance’s roughly 180 dancers are not competing doesn’t mean they aren’t taking to the stage.
“Instead of attending competitions, we have a senior, junior and petite performance company. We seek out fun performance opportunities for them,” Pastorelli said. “In this year alone, we just danced at Citi Field at a Mets Game. We danced at the Barclays Center at a New York Liberty game. We’ve danced at Islanders’ games. We dance at tree lightings.”
Pastorelli said she believed this type of performance not only has the ability to feel more special, but also helps to build up students’ skills faster, because they weren’t stressed out and anxious, but were there purely because they wanted to be.
“I feel like they’ve adapted to learning things quicker. Choreography is retained faster and performed in a fun way while still learning great technique,” Pastorelli said. “They have a passion for practicing it in a different way, which I think is because it’s more exciting…We are just very passion-driven, so the way that we all teach excites students to learn and to get better and to just grow in a different way.”
The center also hosts an annual recital, which Pastorelli choreographs.
After deciding dancing in the competitive world wasn’t right for her, Pastorelli began teaching at studios in Nassau. Though she enjoyed it, she said she felt a strong pull to do her own thing and a desire to be more creative. In the early 2010s, she took the leap and started the first iteration of Love to Dance out of East Williston Village Hall.
Around 2016, she sought out a space of her own, where Love to Dance stands today. The concept of passion-based dance landed immediately, she said. Now she offers roughly 30 classes a week for kids ages 2 to 18, most of which have waitlists.
Many of her students have stuck with her for the full 10 years she has been open, and she said it’s been incredibly rewarding to see them grow.
“A lot of these kids have been here since they were babies…I remember that day they were maybe 3 and 4 years old, now they are 12 and 13,” Pastorelli said. “To see them get older and graduate…I really can’t believe it’s been that long. There are a lot of really special memories here.”
Love to Dance Performing Arts Center is located at 276 Jericho Turnpike in Mineola.
