Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Delaware County, PA (Delco"") and the surrounding Philadelphia Metro Region.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Dance Dreams Take Flight under Sam Sinn's Direction at Twirl Dance Studio
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Dance Dreams Take Flight under Sam Sinn's Direction at Twirl Dance Studio
Step into the vibrant world of Twirl Dance Studio, where the magic of dance and community intertwine, with the studio's founder, Sam Sinns, leading the charge. We're thrilled to share an inspiring conversation with Sam, revealing how his studio in Newtown Square, is more than just a place to learn dance—it's a transformative space where boys and girls cultivate not only their dance skills but also life-enriching values like discipline and teamwork. Sam opens up to Good Neighbor Podcast host, Bob Blaisse about Twirl's mission to shape the next generation of performers, with alumni dazzling audiences from Disney World to Broadway, and how the joy of dance radiates from the stage into every corner of Delco and beyond.
As we waltz through the episode, you'll hear about the exuberant flair of Twirl's themed youth dance spectacles that leave audiences wanting more. Twirl owner and dance instructor Sam Sinns gives us a backstage pass to his dance studio's creative process, from the enchanting Christmas shows to the exhilarating Theme Park Vacation performance at Disney Springs.
Listen to how Twirl Dance Studio transcends the traditional, bringing stories to life through dance and spreading cheer across generations. And hear Bob round off his chat with Sam Sinns by celebrating Twirl's well-deserved Good Neighbor Award, recognizing this dance studio’s unwavering dedication to fostering dance arts training for youth, which continues to enrich the vibrant tapestry of our community in Delaware County, PA. So, pull up a chair, tune in and let the rhythm of Twirl's story move you.
Website: TwirlPerformingArts.com
Call: 484-424-7307
--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond... The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
Good Neighbor Podcast
Speaker 1Hello, delco. This is Michael Barkan, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host Bob Lacy.
Speaker 2Thank you, michael Barkan, and yes, welcome again to the Good Neighbor podcast from Delco, delaware County, pennsylvania. In the southeast corner of Pennsylvania we refer to Delro County as Delco, and if you're here you know what that means. And if you're hearing this podcast from any part in the country, you're beginning to hear about Delco as well, because it's coming up as a real vibe where it's great to film movies and we're just right on the outside of Philadelphia. You know our sports teams are doing real well, and so we welcome you to the Good Neighbor podcast and today, as a good neighbor business, as we like to promote on this podcast platform, we have a dance studio owner. And why dance? Why dance? Why dance? Because it involves children, and how could you not be a good neighbor business when you're helping moms and dads and providing an outlet for both talent development and activity to young people?
Speaker 2So let me introduce today the owner of the Twirl Dance Studio we call it Twirl in here in Newtown Square. Let me introduce Sam Sin. Sam, welcome to the program. Thanks, bob, thanks for having me. It's great to have you and Sam. You know I am in the area of Newtown Square and I see not just. I think you're building where you are sometimes, but I actually see news stories about your business, twirl, and I guess it's because the news stories hits the news because of a certain forgive me, I'm a father of boys so I don't know the words as well, but you know, I see that you put on shows and recitals. I guess it would be, but more so like musical, sometimes with your dancers, correct?
Speaker 3Yeah, we do. Performances correct. Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2Well for Sam, for people listening. When it comes to dance as an activity for young girls and boys, tell me how do you classify that to the parents who are interested? Is it modern? Is it a certain kind of technique, dance, jazz and that kind of thing?
Speaker 3That's a great question. Yeah, it's interesting that you say you don't have boys. You have boys, so you don't know about dance, because we have a ton of boys dancing at Twirl. They kind of flow in and out of here very naturally. We have 55 boys currently registered.
Speaker 255 boys, Boys exactly yeah, how many registered girls do you have?
Speaker 3If you do the math with about 500 students, so 500 minus 55, what is that? That's?
Speaker 2amazing.
Speaker 3Yeah, that is amazing.
Speaker 2I didn't realize that the studio was that really that impactful in the local community? And do they come from distance to be part of Twirl, or are they mostly in the area?
Speaker 3Newtown Square is kind of the crossroads of Delco. So we get Westchester, we get media, we get average for it, average for it, we get mainline. So yeah, they come to Twirl. But it's an interesting question. You asked like, how do we mark out, what do we focus on dance-wise? So my career, my personal career you know I had a 20 plus professional dance career was mainly was Disney World, cruise ships, radio City, music hall, broadway tours. So that's what we specialize here at Twirl. We call it entertainment dance. So, negatively speaking, it's not modern dance. We don't focus on concert dancing, like we're not training people to go into ballet companies, modern companies, contemporary dance companies. We're really training kids if they want to get jobs at Disney World, cruise ships. You know rockets, that's where our sweet spot is. We don't do dance competitions, we have a performance team, but we really focus on what we call entertainment dance here at Twirl.
Speaker 2That's different. I didn't realize that you know the idea then. I guess I was thinking, you know it's an art, it's a kind of a skill set. It's good exercise, certainly. But you know, I come from a family of you know some actors and such but more stage performers, singers, and there was some dance involved. But in this case you're actually saying, if your child is kind of got a sense of performing, why not put a little bit of a lessons behind it and see if in the years ahead they would like to perform on stage? And so when you teach them dance you're actually teaching them performance to be watched and then maybe even to become players in theater. That would be kind of like a focus.
Speaker 3Yeah, dancers in particular, absolutely yeah. And so we kind of, you know, we kind of tailor all our classes towards that and we all the teachers, are kind of rowing the same direction in that way. So, and that includes, like you know, dancing together sharp, strong movements, counting music, all the things that will set the strong technique, all the things that will set these students up for success if they want to pursue this professionally. That's what we call Twirl's big. If you know you can dance for fun and we love that. But we'll give you the tools if this is something that maybe you want to take to the next level of training.
Speaker 2Sam, I feel like there's more there than just the if and the training and the fun. I know when I was raising my kids and we would have them involved in sports or Boy Scouts and things, there was always this pull through advantage of participation and training and, you know, being even led by other adults or other teachers that were not their parents. Tell me, what do you find as, when children grow up and you see them grow up now, from coming in the door probably as young as five or six years old and then staying there, becoming, you know, I guess, helpers into the studio and teams that go off to college, and what do you? What do you find is some of the pull through benefit of having had dance instruction in your life outside of being able to dance or be on a stage?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's certainly right, yeah, absolutely yeah. So, um, yeah, dance actually provides similar benefits to sports, right, so dance working together as a team, you know, obviously there's there's benefits held, you know, physical benefits as far as exercise, flexibility, all that goes. We do a lot of conditioning in our classes too. I think one of the biggest takeaways from that, I feel like, is that one of our core values at twirl is to. We have five core values, but one of the ones, one of my favorites, is leading with creativity and I do feel, like Um, being immersed in a creative environment and the fact that we, we are creative and, you know, in everything we do, our communication, our productions, our approach to teaching dance, all that creativity and that these kids living with that.
Speaker 3It gives them that critical thinking skills that helps them with problem solving, innovative thinking. All that they can take with them in whatever industry that they want to go into and you're right it is. It goes beyond wanting to dance professionally. You know, if they go into education, medical field, business, anything, I think that that creativity is a really key component to success, really. So hopefully they take that with them. You know what I mean. They see how we operate, they have, they have their own opportunities to be creative. But also to be in this creative environment hopefully affects them and affects their thinking and their way of moving forward in life and also confidence to right.
Speaker 2Being leadership, I would think, to work where, as they get older, they probably gravitate towards wanting to help the younger students. So do you put them in leadership roles? That actually teaching themselves a little bit so?
Speaker 3yeah, so we do not. We we don't have teenagers teach our dance classes for the purposes, honestly, just because I feel like it's hard for them to manage class behavior. It's not that they can't teach the steps, but we we leave that to the adults, but they do have leadership roles in our summer camps. We have a lot of workers, so we pack them in our summer camps. We have like I think we sell out this year at 48 kids per camp.
Speaker 2Wow, and that summer camp is already already sold out.
Speaker 3A lot of them are yeah, yeah. So for the, yeah, we, we open registration in January and some of them sell out right away. So we have a lot of team workers there. They learn how to take initiative, have responsibility. Yeah, it's great, it's good thing.
Twirl Dance Studio and Performances
Speaker 2Well, there's probably folks that you know put down a reservation and then they change their plans, are going to the beach. So our listeners that are out there. Today we're speaking with Sam sins, who is the owner of twirl. It's a dance studio for boys and girls in Newtown Square, pennsylvania, very well known and successful, it seems, in a certain kind of niche market for performing arts and and also, you know, summer camp and and putting on performances themselves. Sam, tell us a little bit about what those performances are like, if, if you would, where maybe you host them? How big of a venue or what? What are they musicals? Are they some kind of dance theme shows?
Speaker 3Yeah, so they are dance. They're more dance theme shows. We don't do book musicals so we don't do like name. You know we're not doing Shrek junior anything like that, but we do. We have a performance team so every Christmas we put on a Christmas show. I leverage all of my Disney friends talent from my years at Disney World. They do voiceover work for me. I'll write a show.
Speaker 3This past year Our show is called Journey to the North Pole, so it was like a little 14 minute show. We've got four levels of our performance team. They have full costumes. We put together a little production that we shop around to tree lightings, christmas events, nursing homes. It's super cool, fun. It's slick and it presents itself like a real show, not just like a little. It's just not like here there's some kids dancing, it's an actual show with the beginning, middle and last. The year before our show was called Santa's Christmas party. We also are returning for next year show but and then for the spring we put on theme shows very similar. We have I use my voice over artists, friends. We have a sound editor. He packages are very cool show.
Speaker 3This year our show is our big shows at Cheney University, which is in Westchester at their auditorium. But we also will package smaller shows. In two weeks we'll be performing at the Wilmington Blue Rocks baseball game and that's another little show. And this year's show is called Theme Park Vacation. It's basically a Disney theme show and it's kind of cool because we'll be taking the shortened version to Disney World, actually in June. So we're taking 46 dancers.
Speaker 3We'll come to Disney World, they'll perform at Disney Springs and we have events for them there. It's just twirl. We're doing our own thing down there and it's a lot of fun. It'll be our second time going to Disney World. We went two years ago and we performed a little version of our show called Time Machine. So that's kind of what we do for our shows. They're kind of unique in the fact that they're little productions. The audience never sits in the dark in silence waiting for the preschoolers to come on stage. They're always hearing a story or an intro and the show really just kind of flows along more like a production than a dance recital.
Speaker 2That's wonderful. You painted that so well. I'm sure that there were a lot of listeners that are imagining and remembering days of their own dance lessons or going to their children's shows and I not even being a father of girls or boys at one of the dance, I could imagine being there. When I heard you describe all of that, it sounds like a great deal of fun. And the fact that you take those shows on the road and bring some joy to others, you know, even like to those retirement homes. But the fact that those young people get to see that joy, that they feel that they've contributed that joy, that can be a really a life changing moment as a young person and it really kind of puts them on the path of really sharing themselves and bringing joy to others, being in service to others. And you know you're at the front end of that, sam. You're leading Twirl.
Speaker 2It's the Twirl Dance Studio that we're talking about and it's Sam Sins, the owner of Twirl. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the Twirl studio at work that Sam just got there talking about, the website is twirlperformingartscom, and so that's T-W-I-R-L twirlperformingartscom. We'll take you to the website of Twirl and give you a chance to see more and learn more. And we wanna thank you here, sam, because obviously what you're doing is bringing an art to youth and youth to our neighborhood, and we thank you for being a great business neighbor, a good neighbor, and we award you the Good Neighbor Award today and we'll be sending you that seal and wanna. Thank you, and please tell folks that you were on this podcast, because I think that the more they can hear you explain that heart and mission that you have for what you're doing with youth today, the more people will wanna get involved. So thank you again for being a guest on our program, sam.
Speaker 3Hey man, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2Thank you, Sam and, ladies and gentlemen, twirlperformingartscom. You can even call them at 4-8-4-424-7307. Check out that website and find the Good Neighbor Twirl and Sam Sins. Thank you, Sam, very much for being a guest on our program today.
Speaker 3Of course. Thanks, bob. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnddelcocom or by calling Bob at 610-557-3745. Thanks for taking time to watch the program today.