Today we’d like to introduce you to Teng Fei and Jia Ma.
Teng and Jia, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My wife and I bought this dance studio about two and a half years ago. It was a small dance school in China town that teaches mainly Chinese dance and with an overwhelming majority of Chinese students. There are four or five different schools in the vicinity that are similar in quality and size.
We were new in Houston and looking to settle down and begin our new life in Texas. My wife is a professional dancer and I share with her the love for arts and dance. We had the hope of building a top quality dance school and really serve the community by providing top-notch dance training.
We recognize early on that in order to do that, we need to re-orient the school towards more ballet intensive, more foundation training, and provide more modern, and more diversified dance curriculum. We have been recruiting and expanding since we came, and we’ve got to know some really dedicated and talented dancers and teachers over this process.
To see real improvement and build up a good reputation take time, but we are confident with the help of our outstanding team, we will able to accomplish that.
Has it been a smooth road?
Absolutely not. From the very beginning, we were being compared and judged with the previous owner. For a studio for over 30 years, there are a lot of established protocols and processes that could be difficult to change.
We created new processes, hired new people, added new curriculum while getting familiar with all the students and parents, all in a very short time period. Meanwhile, we have to learn all the basics for running a business, such as advertising, accounting, etc. And we have to face competitions from inside and outside.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Mitsi Dancing School story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a dance studio. So we teach dance to kids from 3-17 years old, and we also offer adult lessons. We offer world-class ballet, Chinese dance, modern, jazz, hip-hop, K-pop training, and we also choreograph and create our original dance pieces and shows.
We are most proud of our team. All of our teachers are professional dancers trained at many of the world’s best dance schools and companies, including former principal dancer of Houston ballet, soloist from Shanghai ballet. Our students also advanced to the quarter-final of American’s Got Talent show in 2013.
Although we are a business, we would not compromise our quality or cut corners for profit. All our classes are conducted by teachers with extraordinary dedication and professionalism, and we are really proud of that.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think dance and performing arts, in general, is a good industry to be in right now because as the technology such as computer/internet /mobile/artificial intelligence are rapidly changing many industries around us, educating and promoting art and health will be even more in demand than before.
People will spend less time doing chores and more time on arts and health and self-improvement will become a more prominent part of people’s lives. We are super excited at the opportunity and the position we are in, and we want to be active in competitions, dance performances, culture exchanges and in dance community in general.
I think we have set our eye to become a dance school with a reputation of quality in Houston. And in order to do that, it requires us to persist and work hard for many years, and we are ready to do that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mitsidancingschool.com
- Phone: 832-638-2185
- Email: info@mitsidancingschool.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MitsiDance/
Image Credit:
Menlu Photography, Kevin Zhang, Jie Qiao, Houston Online
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