SimonaDance teacher and choreographer. Dancehall and twerk classes in Bucharest, workshops and online courses.Mereu

I opened Dance Prestige at 21, at a time when dance still had to explain why it deserved to be taken seriously. Since then the school has grown alongside the industry and alongside me. Today I'm less interested in building “one more good class” and more in building a place where people can start, get very good, change their minds, explore, and always have a next step. I believe in technique, repetition, discipline and cultural context. I believe that if you teach dancehall you have to know where dancehall comes from, not just which combination you saved yesterday. And I believe “good enough”, repeated often enough, becomes mediocrity. But I don't believe you have to make someone feel small in order to help them get better. If I had to compress the Dance Prestige philosophy into one sentence, it would probably be this: high standards, without making people small.

Dance Prestige, since 2012

The idea comes first. The movement after. I've made enough choreography to know that more steps don't necessarily make a better thing. I'm interested in the whole picture: who the person is, what energy they carry, what story you understand about them before anyone explains anything and, importantly, what we can take away. Sometimes the answer is choreography. Sometimes it's a walk, a look, a pause, or doing nothing exactly when everyone expects you to do something. I've worked with artists, brands, cameras, stages and all kinds of briefs that started with “we want something cool”. My job is usually to find out what cool means this time. Choreography is one instrument. Taste is the harder part to learn.

the idea comes first, movement after

And I still teach. After more than twenty years of dancing, I still walk into the studio every week. Because in a spreadsheet people are very well behaved. They have retention, frequency, packages and percentages. In the room they have fear, pride, bad days, tired bodies, and moments when something that wouldn't come together for three weeks finally does. That's where I remember why I do everything else. I'm interested in how the body learns, how freedom appears, and what happens the moment you stop trying to be perfect before you accept being seen. Sometimes dance says a great deal about us. Sometimes it's just good music and an hour where you love being in your own body. Both feel like very good reasons to keep going.

and I still teach, every week