Janet Andrews

Dance has been my whole world, my whole life. I've been dancing since I was 3 years old, and I'm 76 this year. I'm a tap dancer, and I've been teaching tap since I was 18 - I went to dancing school at 3, graduated at 18, and have been teaching ever since. My dance teacher, Bernie's Durden Franklin, gave me all the foundation that I needed to do what I'm doing for all of these years. I've never grown tired of dance and I never said I wanted to do something else. When I graduated dance school in 1965, there was no opportunity for me to go to college and study dance, so I went to Dillard University and majored in sociology, but I was not happy at all because my passion is the dance. I didn't dance for a long time after that, maybe about 10 years, because I was rebelling. Until one day, I passed in front of a mirror and I looked into that mirror and I saw me, and I didn't like what I saw. All my friends were moving on in their careers and going forward, and I was stuck. So I decided when I looked in that mirror to do what I do best, and dance is what I do. I'm also a master social worker from Tulane, and I use dance as intervention. My dance class becomes my group therapy session where kids are able to talk about whatever is bothering them, whether it be school, family, neighborhoods, friends, whatever bothers them. I bought a building in 2020 because I got tired of being asked to leave where we were teaching. When I'm gone, my daughter will take over because she's a dancer too - she's been the dance director at Carver High School for 12 to 15 years. We run the only non-profit dance school in the city, where kids who can't afford dance classes can come and pay on a sliding scale. Until 2020, I was going into public schools doing dance programs for kids who couldn't afford dance classes.