Tony Dovolani helps celebrate Fred Astaire Dance Studio grand opening
For Dancing with the Stars favorite Tony Dovolani, it’s a little bit of cha-cha here, some salsa there and a lot of sharing the joy of ballroom dancing with just about everyone else.
“We need things like dancing to stay in our life because that's the only social thing we have that we can share with each other without device devices,” said Dovolani.
He brought some of those dance moves and wisdom to the Northland Thursday night, celebrating the grand opening of the all-new Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Briarcliff, a venture that’s been years in the making.
For studio owner Amy Haarer, the mission is personal.
“It’s life-changing so I can tell from my own experience how it changed me, socially romantically all the different confidence building even,” she said.
The crowd packed into the studio for its launch night, and Dovolani said he wasn’t surprised by the strong turnout.
“I always tell people dancing is as easy as walking everybody that's coming into a Fred Astaire dance studio has walked out dancing,” he said.
It’s the first Fred Astaire studio in Kansas City’s Northland, and organizers say ballroom dancing is seeing a new wave of popularity, thanks in part to television.
“There’s something about the fabulous glamour of ballroom dancing right I also think there’s some beauty behind like the formal list and I think Dancing with the Stars showcases that,” Haarer said.