From the tender age of eight, Jasmin La Caris knew she wanted to be a dancer and one day open her own dance studio where she would be a dance instructor. After studying flamenco, jazz, contemporary and hip-hop for 15 years, she decided it was time to teach.
She found a small space on Van Ness Ave. in downtown Fresno and called it The Caris School of Contemporary Dance. She put together a company of dancers and instructors—all current or former Fresno City College students—that include Danny Moua, 25, Joe Orta, 32, Daphney Yalung, 26, Megan Condley, 20, and Courtney Lopez, 18.
The shows performed by Caris and Company are created, choreographed and performed by its members at The Broken Leg Stage located next door to the studio. They arrange a themed free performance on the first Thursday of each month in conjunction with Art Hop Fresno so the community can watch and learn more about Fresno’s dance culture.
“We want to open the door for people to experience dance and to learn about it more,” says La Caris. “We want dancers to come and be united and explore their art, their thoughts and feelings within them through dance.”
Courtney Lopez credits Caris Dance Studio for giving him his big break. He was an amateur dancer fresh out of Color Guard when he auditioned for La Caris. Five dancers had shown up for the open audition and he felt sure he would not be chosen. However, La Caris, Orta and Moua saw raw talent in Lopez, someone who had a burning passion to dance.
“I didn’t think I would make it but they believed in me and took me under their wing,” says Lopez.
It is the ability to take a raw talent and shape him or her into a refined, professional dancer that Orta says they are most proud of.
“At Caris Dance Studio,” he says, “we’re opening the door for adult dancers. We’re all adult dancers and we want to express our dance and our art as adult dancers. We want raw meat, raw talent, everything raw. That’s one thing we’re really proud of.”
The dancers call the tiny studio home, but it has limitations. When the dancers practice their lifts, most times someone’s head goes to the ceiling. Raising the ceiling will be expensive, La Caris says, and, at the same time, the old lighting will need to be renovated.
In addition to this, costumes and props can be expensive. The dance company is scrambling to raise funds to purchase costumes, props, rent space and make improvements.
“We’re working our butts off trying to keep dance alive,” says La Caris, “to keep the studio alive.”
Currently their funding comes from teaching students, renting out their studio to FCC dance students and their own pockets.
“As dancers, it’s essential in the community to have dance studios and get dance funded,” says Megan Condley, a dancer with Caris and Company and an FCC student. “We need people to help support and fund-raise and donate whatever they can to help save dance.”
Condley and her fellow dancers also lament the fact that FCC’s funding for the dance program is being cut.
La Caris agrees that FCC’s dance program was once the best and the biggest in the valley and funding and support for the program needs to be made a priority.
“Dance is fading away,” says Condley, “and it’s sad because they’re trying to cut the Fresno City dance program and that’s one of the best programs in the valley.”
