The Dance Center in the Carmel Rancho Shopping Center is a state-of-the-art, 3,800-square-foot marvel of inventive and stylish architecture. From its previous incarnation as the Carmel Holistic Veterinary Clinic, it was designed by architect Adam Jeselnick – who also designed Affina and the Carmel Event Center – who gutted and rebuilt it in nine weeks to fulfill the dream of his wife Laura Jeselnick and co-owner/artistic director Tia Brown.
It’s a green building, cleanly designed, a tasteful space appointed with recycled plank ceramic flooring from Italy, recycled milk-washed oak from France and reclaimed teak wood. It houses four studios laid with cushiony, fully-sprung dance floors, adjustable bars and floor-to-ceiling windows and mirrors. It’s got dimmable LED lighting, zoned hypo-allergenic heating and AC controlled by Wi-Fi thermostats.
Outside the door of the granite, tile and orchid-furnished restroom, a stainless steel, sensor-activated EZH2 bottle refill station encourages the thirsty to fill up reusable bottles with filtered water and tallies the plastic bottles potentially saved from doing so – 524 a week ago.
“We want to encourage our students to learn environmentally friendly practices,” says Laura. All throughout are tastefully designed motivational quotes: “It is your attitude more than your aptitude that determines your altitude.” The next phase of construction is a breezeway and a landscaped courtyard.
The building serves as a modern chapel devoted to dance. They bring in instructors from Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans and elsewhere to teach ballet, pointe, jazz, contemporary, hip-hop, tap, musical theater and acrobatics.
It opened Aug. 3 and already has almost 400 students ages 2 to adult. That’s partly because Brown and Jeselnick both enjoy deep relationships in their communities. They co-direct the dance program at Stevenson’s Pebble Beach campus, run an afterschool dance and musical theater program at Santa Catalina, and have provided visiting choreographers to Carmel High and Monterey High.
Local audiences can see the fruits of all this labor in upcoming public performances at Carmel’s Christmas tree lightings, First Night Monterey, various assisted living facilities and more.
“All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them,” reads another wall text. This dance center serves as an example.
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