Meet Those Dancing Feet

For 25 years, Andrew Currie has kept generations of young people on their toes and inspired them to follow their dreams

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Andrew Currie’s Dance Space in Miracle Mile is a place for children to develop their talent. Photo by Steven Martine
Andrew Currie’s Dance Space in Miracle Mile is a place for children to develop their talent. Photo by Steven Martine

In 1999, Andrew Currie was at a crossroads.

Currie performed in Cats in Vienna in 1987.
Currie performed in Cats in Vienna in 1987.

At 35, his body was telling him that his days as a professional dancer were numbered. He had performed in Miss Saigon, Cats, and a tribute to Angela Lansbury on Broadway. For two years, he toured the United States with the company of La Cage aux Folles, starring Peter Marshall and Keene Curtis. He was in the original company of Starlight Express with Andrew Lloyd Webber when the Broadway production opened in Las Vegas.

His highly successful career had taken him on world tours throughout Europe, Japan, and Canada with some of the most accomplished actors and performers in modern times. But, after two ACL surgeries, he knew it was time to re-evaluate his life and work.

“Professional dancers, like athletes, can work until they are maybe 30 or 35,” says Currie. “It’s hard, physical work. You do eight shows a week, and I did Cats for three years and Starlight Express—with the strenuous roller skating—for two years. I kept working as long as I could. I was very lucky to have that kind of dance career.”

Dance Space instructors Paula O’Malley, Lilly Herman, Currie, and Maria Sommers. Photo by Steven Martine
Dance Space instructors Paula O’Malley, Lilly Herman, Currie, and Maria Sommers. Photo by Steven Martine

“Theater people are crazy, funny people,” he adds. “You’re watching a Broadway show, but backstage we’re having the time of our lives, acting like children playing dress up, just having a grand old time.”

Currie in Starlight Express in Germany in Las Vegas in 1993
Currie in Starlight Express in Las Vegas in 1993.

In the back of his mind, Currie contemplated the possibility of opening a dance studio someday. “I thought I would like it because when I walked into a dance studio, it was the world to me,” he says.

Currie, who was living in Manhattan, had been coming to the Vero Beach area regularly to visit his mother and stepfather, who retired in Sebastian. Eventually, during those visits, he became a guest instructor at Dance Space in Vero’s Miracle Mile shopping plaza.

“The dance community is very small, and dance education in Florida was still growing,” says Currie. As word got out that he was visiting from New York, he was invited to do master classes at other studios throughout the Sunshine State. “I was teaching more, liking it, and really felt drawn to it,” he remarks.

A class of young ballerinas practice their movements. Photo by Steven Martine
A class of young ballerinas practice their movements. Photo by Steven Martine

In September 1999, following his second ACL surgery, Currie decided to take a break from the Big Apple and recuperate in Vero Beach for the winter. During that time, the owner of Dance Space asked if he would manage the studio while she was out of town for three months. She had been going through some personal issues and suggested that it might be an opportune time for him to consider owning a dance studio. “In December, she phoned to say she wasn’t coming back,” recalls Currie. “If I didn’t purchase it, she was prepared to close it.”

By then, Currie was growing fond of his new role and had developed a close bond with Dance Space students and their families. So he purchased the studio, and now, 25 years later, three of those original young students—Maria Sommers, Marissa Wright, and Lilly Herman—are Dance Space instructors with children of their own.

After school Monday through Thursday, the studio is bustling with laughter and chatter as students aged 3 to 18 scurry to and from classes in “small fry creative movement,” ballet, jazz, hip-hop, lyrical, and musical theater. On Saturdays, 30 students who train with the studio’s competition team devote additional time to perfecting their performances for conventions and competitions held annually in Orlando, West Palm Beach, and surrounding areas. A recital for all students is held every year in May at Vero Beach High School.

Ella, right, is part of a more advanced dance class. Photo by Steven Martine
Ella, right, is part of a more advanced dance class. Photo by Steven Martine

“I started dancing jazz with Andrew when I was 11, says Sommers, who teaches lyrical dance to students from elementary through high school. “I’m pretty sure our dance technique was not very good at the time, and he retaught us everything. He came at a time when dance was not what it is today. There were no dance shows. There were not many dance studios here. There was nothing to inspire this community, except Riverside [Theatre]. He brought a taste of Broadway to Vero and elevated the dance scene here, for sure.”

“The crazy thing about him is he’s so humble,” she adds. “He’s way more accomplished than he lets on. He’ll tell me stories about living in Paris during the Cats world tour. When we travel with the competition team, people stop him all the time. He knows everyone, from the instructors to the judges.”

“He’s created such a great environment for students and faculty. We’re all just one big family,” remarks Wright, who was a teenager when Currie took over the studio full-time. She began instructing at Dance Space following her high school graduation. Now, living in Martin County and working as an elementary school teacher, she makes the two-hour round-trip drive with daughters Ava and Mia several times a week to instruct small fry creative movement and beginner jazz as well as assist with the competition team.

Penelope concentrates on drills during ballet class at Dance Space. Photo by Steven Martine
Penelope concentrates on drills during ballet class at Dance Space. Photo by Steven Martine

“I have studios around the corner from my house, but Andrew is part of our family,” says Wright. “There is quality instruction and choreography, and Andrew built a solid competition team from the ground up. Thanks to Andrew, we were able to travel to New York, where Ava took her first Broadway class and saw her first Broadway show.”

Fourteen-year-old Ava, a ninth grader at Treasure Coast High School in Port St. Lucie, took her first Dance Space class when she was 3 and never looked back. Now on the studio’s competition team, she aspires to dance through college and, ultimately, on Broadway or with the Rockettes. “I love the environment here,” she says. “The teachers push us to be the best we can be. My best friends are here at the studio. If I have a bad day, I can get cheered up here.”

While Ava lives, eats, and breathes dance, her 6-year-old sister, Mia, has a lighter take on the experience. “I like jazz best,” she smiles. “It’s fun and it makes me happy.”

Caroline concentrates on drills during ballet class at Dance Space. Photo by Steven Martine.tif
Caroline concentrates on drills during ballet class at Dance Space. Photo by Steven Martine

Herman, a beginner ballet instructor who was also one of the original Dance Space
students, observes, “I wouldn’t be who I am without Andrew. I was such a timid person. I was the quietest one, but he brought out my confidence by creating a safe space for me. We all go through personal things in our life. Thank God I had Andrew and the girls. It was a home away from home. That’s so important in middle and high school.”

The family dynamic, Herman and others point out, started early on with Currie’s late mother, Barbara, who was a friendly, familiar presence at the studio. “Back in those days, I think of Miss Barbara at the front desk greeting us with the biggest smile, making everyone feel welcome,” adds Herman. 

Currie acknowledges that his mother—though initially skeptical of his career choice—was his biggest supporter. Growing up in Darien, Connecticut, he was a competitive gymnast who was introduced to musical theater during a high school production of Grease. “They hired a choreographer named Cecilia. I’ll never forget her. She said, ‘You should be a dancer!’ I was like, ‘That’s a job? No one ever told me you could do that!’”

Lilly Herman leads a class of upcoming young ballerinas at the studio. Photo by Steven Martine
Lilly Herman leads a class of upcoming young ballerinas at the studio. Photo by Steven Martine

That revelation led Currie to seek out dance classes in Connecticut and Manhattan, where he received top-notch training at Steps on Broadway and the Broadway Dance Center—two meccas for the international dance community. “I was taking classes with people like Mary Tyler Moore, Baryshnikov, and Brooke Shields,” Currie says. “It was a really nice, inclusive community.”

That early professional training earned him a scholarship to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. But, by the end of his freshman year, he had already landed dance roles with a film in Japan and the touring company of La Cage aux Folles. “Back in the day, you weren’t allowed to dance professionally while earning a degree, so I had to leave school,” he explains. “Today, if you landed a job while still in college, you would get credit for it.”

Currie points out that there are many lucrative opportunities available for dancers, from Broadway and touring companies to cruise ships and theme parks, all supported by union benefits. Although several Dance Space alumni have gone on to dance professionally around the world, Currie is quick to mention that he is not trying to groom every student to be a professional. “For those who want the opportunity and are willing to work at it, I want to make sure they receive the best training. If they wanted to go to a Broadway audition, they could cut it.”

Dance class. Photo by Steven Martine
Dance class. Photo by Steven Martine

Lily Goulet is one such student. After 14 years of dance instruction and several years of team competition with Dance Space, the 17-year-old senior at Indian River Charter High School is applying to bachelor of fine arts programs around the country with the hope of pursuing a career in the dance field. Her love for musical theater, especially tap, led her to choreograph dance numbers for several high school productions and, most recently, the Vero Beach Theatre Guild’s Something Rotten!

“Like any little child, my mom enrolled me in dance to try it, and I think it was something I was always meant to do,” explains Lily. “My group grew up together and they became a second family for me. Andrew was my inspiration. He created a safe space for me to express myself.”

Dance class at Dance Space. Photo by Steven Martine
Dance class at Dance Space. Photo by Steven Martine

Students and instructors credit Currie with helping them grow as performers and people, teaching them how to present themselves properly and treat others with respect. “You can always spot a student from Dance Space by the way they walk in heels,” enthuses Tricia Goulet, Lily’s mother.

Whether it becomes an avocation or a vocation, Currie says, “Dance provides children with great tools for success in school and life, by learning discipline and teamwork.” That philosophy is on display every day as Dance Space students file into the studio, outfitted in leotards or tights, with hair pulled back into a sleek bun, cell phones silenced, and heeding three words of advice: “No divas allowed!”

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