Hidden Gems: Meet Isabella Johns of Danse L’Amour

Today we’d like to introduce you to Isabella Johns.

Hi Isabella, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
As a teenager growing into herself, I became a tall girl more on the curvy side. I grew up doing ballet, but ballet isn’t very inclusive of my body type. I dropped it for a few months and I found I was craving dance and movement. I grew up watching dancing with the stars and always loved ballroom/partner dancing, but I had no clue how one got training in that style. So, one day, I wandered into a ballroom dance studio. I took four lessons, fell in love with it, was asked to be an instructor, and spent the next two years at this studio learning all about the beauty of ballroom dancing and the nuances of teaching adults. Teaching adults in a private lesson setting is HARD. But there’s also nothing quite like it. Ballroom/social dancing is the most inclusive form of dancing – you can start it at any age and genuinely become very, very good at it by taking a lesson or two a week and practicing some at home. So, it’s really special as an instructor to see people of all ages, shapes, and sizes come in to learn how to dance. It’s even more special to learn the reason they’re really there – community, therapeutic hobby, desire to exercise, pushing out of the comfort zone, etc. – and help people achieve these incredible goals.

There are many incredible ballroom studios across the world that provide all these benefits to amazing people. I’ve been lucky enough to teach at two of them, but I found a passion for a niche in the big, wide, beautiful world of partner dancing: wedding couples!

My passion for them happened instantaneously when I started teaching, but I didn’t know that I was the exception until a year or so in. Most ballroom instructors want to focus on the long-term clients who are building towards these lofty goals, and I don’t blame them. There is a downside to this, though – wedding couples aren’t taken care of to quite the same caliber. In fact, most ballroom instructors I have met will actively say they dislike working with wedding couples.

Once I realized I was the odd one out, I started to see why:

• I love romance, and there’s a unique kind of intimacy formed in dancing with your partner

• I love dancing with my loved ones, and gifting couples right in a season of love and celebration with the ability to do so too makes me feel wildly joyful

• I want to help maximize the investment people are putting into their wedding – for example, planting lots of good photo moments into a first dance means money spent on lessons can be enjoyed in the form of those precious photos forever

• Choreographing first dances allow for creativity that connects love to movement – how can I show their personalities in this dance? Are they the sappy mushy type? Or are they upbeat, fun, and cheesy?

• Wedding couples are STRESSED – so I made my lessons a fun date night (champagne + chocolate included) and a time to learn a new skill set together

Therefore, when I moved to a new studio, I asked for ALL wedding couples to come straight to me. That way ballroom instructors can focus on those long-term clients and their goals, and I can make sure wedding couples get the most out of their investment.

From there, it was truly the stars aligning that made me decide I had a special service on my hands and needed to go out on my own. Nobody has created a wedding dance instruction method exclusively for wedding couples designed for the wedding context (smaller dance floors, styles of wedding dresses/shoes, are they dancing to live music or a DJ, etc.). Georgia Tech miraculously believed I have something special, so they gifted me with six weeks of intense mentorship, legal/accounting help, and seed funding.

We’re about to wrap up our first full year in business, and we have so many exciting things to celebrate: we’ve worked with about one hundred duos in the last year, we’ve hired a few amazing new instructors, and we have expanded to Nashville! In addition, I do compete/perform in ballroom professionally!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
When I started teaching ballroom as a teenager, I was working at a huge franchise studio. They have an incredibly well-put-together teacher training program, dance syllabus, and they are very professional. Their pricing is $129 for 45-minutes with a private instructor, making them on the “high-end” in the industry. Professionalism is extremely important for them, so instructors wore business corporate clothes to teach dance lessons. The men wear full suits, and in some locations, the men aren’t allowed to take their suit jacket off during the day. For ladies, skirts or dresses are worn. Pants are forbidden. Luckily, the location I was at did allow pants for the ladies. Full hair and make-up are expected. A co-worker of mine was reprimanded for wearing the popular “space buns” hairstyle to work. It didnt’ strike me as odd that dance instructors weren’t wearing dance clothes to work until I got the opportunity to see the vast and varying world of ballroom. Even though I was a teenager, I was asking my manager about six months into teaching if I had resources available to learn how to manage and own a studio one day. I was so in love with the inclusivity of ballroom. While I learned a lot of amazing teaching and sales skills in my time at this studio, their intense no-fraternization policy (don’t date or be friends with students) made me learn to put up a wall with my students. I was so fearful they would lose respect if they knew my age (16 at the time), especially because the demographic of people willing to pay $129 for 45 minutes looks like older people with lots of disposable income and therefore very “well-respected” and “successful.” I became very private and secretive in order to maintain that professional wall, but there was an internal dissonance for me.

Teaching adults how to ballroom dance is actually about helping them accomplish some deeper goal: become more social, meet a girl and fall in love, develop a hobby, feel a sense of accomplishment, step out of a comfort zone, etc. It’s really hard to get to know someone and help them accomplish their goal when the relationship isn’t reciprocated. It becomes such an intense line that it feels as if you are a therapist. Let me clear, teaching lessons is certainly not a time for a teacher to carry on about their personal life, but establishing trust and credibility is a two-way street. I became so obsessive over my words and whether or not they were giving too much information: is it okay to say I’m going on vacation to Colorado where I grew up? Is it okay to talk about how I’m a Broncos fan like they are because I went to games growing up? Is it okay to say I’m spending Christmas with my boyfriend when they ask what the holidays hold for me? Is it okay to say what I like to do on the weekends when they ask? This studio was so concerned with maintaining professional lines so things don’t get messy (teacher/student favoritism, hanging out on the weekends, dating, etc.) that I became a cold, private dance teacher. And I hated it. Behind the scenes, our small staff of five or six instructors had a complex dynamic that contributed to my distaste and ultimate deconstructing of what I was taught. Teachers would gossip about students behind their back – making fun of their appearance, objectifying them, speaking poorly of their dancing, mimicking their mannerisms, etc. Lots of things lacked authenticity and genuine care in this studio space. For premium prices, students were getting secretive teachers selling thousands of dollars worth of lessons and competitions just to get made fun of behind the scenes.

In addition, rules were bent all the time. We weren’t allowed to have students’ personal numbers on our phones. All communication was supposed to go through the studio phone. Of course, not all instructors upheld this rule. I knew if/when I ran a studio one day, I would not tolerate any of this. The training is incredible and the intent is good: put the focus on the student and take care of them in a structured way. Without quality control, however, this was greatly abused. My manager was also very open that it’s harder to “make it” as a ballroom instructor as a woman, which would play a key factor in challenges I faced at the next studio. There are many more older single females with money who want to take ballroom dance lessons than there are men. These single ladies want to take lessons often as a hobby, and they usually find an interest in competitions. With the rare single men, it’s much more difficult to get them to stay and ever compete. It’s the same for couples. Note: I was paid $14 out of $129 to teach a lesson. However, I have to add: An incredible love story came from this first studio that I will be forever grateful for – my first ballroom teacher, turned co-worker, turned dance partner, then friend, is now my love. We just celebrated two years together this week.

When COVID hit, I was fired and turned to waitressing for a few months, which I hated. I missed dancing so much, it’s in my blood. I ended up deciding to work for a new studio in Buckhead. It’s a single studio, not a franchise, and it runs on a very different model. Pricing-wise, they offer lessons for $95. They also rent out their studio to independent ballroom studios for a floor fee of $15 for 45-minutes. The studio space is four times as big as the one I started with. At this studio, dance instructors actually wear dance clothes to teach at this location, a change I was grateful for. This studio helped me deconstruct a lot of the things I was taught at the first one. Now, I could have students’ phone numbers in order to schedule lessons directly and there was no word monitoring needed, so I was able to take the incredible training of the first studio and combine it with my authentic personality. I was truly a brand new teacher. This studio also offers a unique business model for their employees: you can work for them AND work for yourself at the same time. This pushed me to work on my business while working for them – and it’s been about a year since I transitioned to running the business full time!

When I decided to create a brand exclusively for wedding couples, I had a lot of people telling me it didn’t make sense and it wasn’t possible. I visited a ballroom studio in Marietta about renting out their space on a floor fee basis and after asking a whole bunch of questions (because everyone in the business knows everyone and they hadn’t heard my name as an independent instructor) the owner looked me right in the eyes and told me I was too young, too stupid, and was going to fail. As you can imagine, I don’t work out of that studio! When I applied to Georgia Tech’s start-up incubator, they took months longer to give me a decision than anybody else because my business wasn’t “techy” and they couldn’t quite understand what the point was of the business I was creating. People very close to me expressed doubt. I’m lucky I’m gifted with that gut instinct voice that I always listen to – I kept pushing ahead. I had such a heart for working with wedding couples and I could see the shift that needed to occur: I needed to offer dance lessons in the wedding space so wedding couples can stop going to the ballroom space – an industry not catering to them or taking care of their specific needs.

We’ve been impressed with Danse L’Amour, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Danse L’Amour is a dance company catering to those in love, specializing in wedding dances. At Danse L’Amour, we love LOVE, and we love DANCE. Our passion is to create special moments and memories for a lifetime. In an industry that caters to every detail for a couple’s special day and a bride’s dream of a lifetime, the first dance is often ignored, both by the wedding planners and the dance studios. It is this niche, at the intersection of the wedding and dance industries, where Danse L’Amour specializes and delights in serving its customers. Many brides have dreamed of getting married since they were little girls, but they settle for their first dance to be a high-school-prom-esque hug and sway. Danse L’Amour offers customized choreography and lessons to match the dreams and aspirations of all the wonderful details the bride has chosen for her special day and to give the groom a little swag. We might even earn him a few brownie points.

We pride ourselves in our depth of knowledge concerning the nuances of dancing on your wedding day: dancing in wedding attire, choreography based on floor size/set-up, choreographing based on your personality as a couple, lifts/tricks that fit the wedding context, etc. Photo moments are a HUGE part of our brand as well: we make sure to put in photographable moments throughout your dance so you can extend your investment in both dance lessons and your photographer! Lastly, we only hire teachers who genuinely adore working with wedding couples.

Our services include ALL things wedding: not only the first dance as husband and wife, but also mother/son dances, father/daughter dances, bridesmaid and bride dances, line dances for the whole family, general social dancing for attendees, and any other creative iteration out there.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
As a recent development, my love story about my dance partner/coworker and I has recently gone viral on TikTok! One day in late February, we posted a video of a dance trick we really love – a telemark – that has since received 1.1 million views and 101k likes! Soon after that, we posted a three-part series about how our relationship unfolded with is currently at 1.4 million views and 160k likes! This has been such a fun whirlwind to get to share our story and we’re hoping that this will open doors for us to be able to travel and teach: myself teaching wedding dance instruction across the country and Nick (my dance partner/beau) teaching ballroom technique!

Pricing:

• Private Dance Lesson: $95
• Group Dance Lesson: $25/head
• 5 Private Dance Lessons: $450
• 10 Private Dance Lessons: $860
• 15 Private Dance Lessons: $1200

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.danselamour.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danselamourweddings/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danselamour
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@bellatheballroomgirl1

Image Credits
Jordan Ho