Freedom Blvd Dance Co is a new dance school located in Corralitos Ca. Santa Cruz County. The owner, Charleigh France, has dreamed of owning her own school since the young age of 12 and at the age of 32 she made that dream come true. What she did not know as a young business owner, when she signed the lease in February of 2020, was how to navigate the pandemic of Covid-19. Freedom Blvd Dance Co opened their doors March 1st, 2020 and shut them March 16th when SIP took place nation wide.
Charleigh France became a professional dancer at 15 years old and traveled the world by her mid 20s. After dancing with Cirque Du Soleil in Vegas she moved to Mexico to choreograph for Barcelo Resorts and quickly became a known choreographer world wide. She has staged shows and competition teams in multiple locations such as, Australia, Portgal and Greece. By her late 20s she became a national and international dance judge and participated in work with Disney and ESPN. After traveling for the majority of her life, Charleigh decided to pick a location and open her own studio so she could share her passion for dance with children and adults in a community.
Being from Northern CA Charleigh’s best memories as a child was spending summers in Santa Cruz County. As an adult she picked this county to start her business knowing how artistic and close knit the community was. So how did she save her brand new business during a world wide pandemic? Charleigh used her connections around the world to run donation based zoom classes, she taught from the front yard of homes for children who were adjusting to the stay at home order and rented out parking lots to host outdoor family dance nights for the community. Through these donation based classes she was able to save her business.
“Community saved my busines. Freedom Blvd Dance Co cherishes the community and our mission is to train dancers of all ages in order to build confidence, self awareness and discipline. We are using our art to give back to the community and we teach our students to hold each other up in our space-not compete with what they may not have.”
-Charleigh France – Owner
“Alone we can do so little- Together we can do so much.”
-Helen Keller
To learn more about Freedom Blvd Dance Co head over to https://freedomblvddance.com
