From tiny tappers to grown-up groovers, Battle Creek’s new Dancescape gets people movin’

Editor’s note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave’s On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — A passion for dance turned into a career for Martina Reed, owner of Dancescape, Battle Creek’s newest dance studio.

On Sunday, she hosted a Grand Opening at the studio located at 1125 E. Michigan Avenue.

“I took a lot of what I learned and morphed it to work in this community. I always wanted to own a dance studio, and I knew I could offer something special and different,” Reed says. “Building an adult program was the main thing.”

Dancescape offers instruction in many different dance disciplines with classes for adults and children, teens, and tweens. Classes for adults include Jazz, Pom, Ballet, and contemporary dance.

“I have moms who drop their kids off at an elementary school down the street who want to take a class while their kids are in school,” Reed says. “Just offering adult classes in Battle Creek is so needed.”

Classes for her younger students range from Hip-Hop to Lyrical to Tap. Eventually, Reed would like to be able to rent out space to people who want to teach Mat Pilates or Yoga. The studio currently offers space to photograph students in their dance costumes and choreography for theatre productions.

Her instructors are in various stages of earning college degrees in dance or instructional certification. Two of them specifically focus on preparing students for dance competitions.

What sets Reed’s studio apart from the more than 10 other dance studios in Battle Creek is the inclusion of lessons from her dance past that she uses to tailor her class instruction.

“I grew up in Battle Creek and danced at a couple of different studios around town recreationally and competitively,” she says.

It wasn’t until she began the process of auditioning to get into a dance school for college that she discovered the early training she received had caused physical injuries and created some unacknowledged emotional baggage.

She came to realize that she’d been trained incorrectly and in talking with other dancers, found out she was not alone. She also discovered that there’s no certification required to own a dance studio, although plenty of certifications are available to train to be an instructor.

“This was very unsettling for me,” Reed says.

As a student, bullying and body shaming by her instructors were part of the routine. At the time, she thought this was normal.

Teachers who bully often wave off their behavior as “strict teaching.” However, there is a difference: Strict teachers build students up, while bullying teachers tear students down, according to an article in Dance Magazine.

“Teaching is about imparting skills, technique, and knowledge to students. Some teachers do that with an open and relaxed manner, while others prefer structure and strictness,” says Dr. Deborah Serani, a psychologist. “Benign strict teaching can be an effective way to instruct. However, when teaching becomes more aggressive, demeaning, and hurtful, that is not teaching — it’s bullying.”

Reed says she made it her “whole mission to get an actual degree in dance so that anyone who takes classes from me or other instructors at my studio will never receive the training I did.”

After auditioning twice to get into Western Michigan University’s Dance program and being rejected both times, Reed enrolled in a dance-degree program at Oakland University. After two years there, she auditioned again at WMU and was accepted.

WMU had always been her first choice.

“They have one of the best dance programs in the Midwest,” she says.

College Factual ranked WMU as the second-best dance school in Michigan overall and for non-traditional students.

She moved back to Battle Creek to finish up a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance and graduated in 2021. She then focused on earning enough money to move to Chicago in 2022 to work in dance studios there, where she taught mainly jazz and adult drop-in classes.

“I also started auditioning for the Chicago Bulls Dance Team. I made it to the finals. Although I didn’t make the team, it opened up a whole world of NBA and NFL dance opportunities.”

There were also auditions with dance teams for the Detroit Lions and the Detroit Pistons.

“That was so cool to meet new people. I soaked it up. It’s now knowledge I can tell my dance students about and teach them about the audition process.”

While working for Dance on Broadway, a dance studio in Chicago, she was introduced to the concept of teaching adults.

“This sparked the idea of bringing this to Battle Creek,” Reed says.

In 2024, she began teaching out of a 400-square-foot space at Bloom Beauty & Wellness in Battle Creek (see related story in Second Wave). Starting with adult class instruction, she taught both choreography-based and fitness-based dance, like Zumba and Jazzercise, which are designed to burn calories and get your heart rate up.

“I was testing this out to see how it would be received in Battle Creek,” Reed says. “That first year, I had almost 150 students depending on the week and what was going on.”

“We knew right off the bat that she was going places,” says Angie English, Bloom’s Founder and Owner. “We knew our business relationship would be limited because of her growth. We wanted to help her get to that next level. We all knew that she wouldn’t be with us for more than one year.”

Reed says she knew expansion was her next step.

“In this specific community, what I’m offering, especially for adults, is needed and people want more of it,” she says.