A place where people can go to move, connect, heal, create, and dance!
Denver Dance Center offers drop-in, open classes for intermediate to professional-level adult dancers.
We hold classes 7 days per week, including most holidays.
Our dance studio gives the artist in everyone, the opportunity to grow and flourish in a comfortable and supportive environment.
Denver Dance Center provides a space for creative expression and healing; elevating mind, body, and spirit through dance, movement, arts, and community.
Denver Dance Center aspires to lead the way as a center of inclusive dance and arts. We strive to cultivate high-quality instruction and offer classes in a supportive community.
Beyond dance, we are growing as a center for health and wellness. DDC is currently home of Engage Movement Arts (pilates) and Sharon Wehner Dance and Movement Coaching (GYROTONIC® Method, yoga and nutrition coaching.)
In the future we hope to expand our wellness offerings to incorporate additional holistic practitioners and modalities to support health and vitality in our community.
Sharon Wehner
Owner/Instructor
Sharon Wehner is a dancer, teacher, and movement coach. She enjoyed a fulfilling 22-year career as a Principal Dancer with the Colorado Ballet and has had the opportunity to travel the world as a guest artist, working with companies and renowned choreographers throughout her field. She currently performs as a freelance artist and teacher and recently made Denver Dance Center the home of her Dance and Movement Coaching business. Sharon loves working with people of all ages and abilities to find more health, vitality, and joy in their bodies through modalities such as ballet, yoga, Dance for Parkinson’s Disease and mobility challenges, and the GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® methods. She runs a mentoring program for teen and pre-professionals to help aspiring dancers develop holistic mind-body practices that support their dance journeys. Sharon is also a certified sports nutrition coach and member of the International Association of Dance Medicine.
Since moving to Colorado in 1995, Sharon has enjoyed being an active member of the dance and arts community throughout Colorado. She is passionate about making quality dance opportunities available to all populations, which is why she is honored to take on the reins of Denver Dance Center in October 2023. She believes that DDC is an integral part of the Colorado dance community and is excited to carry the legacy that Kris Kehl began, forward into the future…supporting the dancers, teachers, and companies that call DDC their home.
You can learn more about Sharon and her offerings here: www.sharonwehner.com
When Kris Kehl, DDC founder and former owner, first approached me about taking on the reins, I was not sure how to respond. Four years after retiring as a principal dancer from Colorado Ballet, I was performing as a free-lancer, building my movement coaching and teen mentoring programs, and I was not necessarily looking to run a dance studio. At the same time, I had always turned to DDC to support my training and performing, and I knew how valuable those classes were to me and to others. I suppose the simple answer as to why I accepted the proposal, is that I didn’t want DDC to go away!
There are plenty of studios that offer dance classes for children, but it’s a different thing entirely when a studio’s main focus is to serve an adult population.
People dance for many reasons including exercise, creative expression, social connection, personal growth, mental and emotional health, and to support a dance career. They also dance for less tangible reasons. Often people find that as they move through the ups-and-downs of life, it helps to move their bodies—to process life experiences through their bodies. NOT having dance in their life feels like a void. Denver Dance Center offers an open supportive environment for people of all walks of life to fill that void.
My story and my personal Why: When I retired from Colorado Ballet, I was not ready to stop dancing. I had to take an honest look at what dancing meant to me, beyond the dream job of being a principal dancer in a major ballet company. Once I stripped away the egoic aspects of identifying myself as a “dancer” I was left with a simple truth. Dancing was not necessarily my identity but it is absolutely a part of my essence.
Looking through this lens, I could see how so many people gravitate towards dance as part of their essence as well. So many studios help children foster their desire to dance. Denver Dance Center fosters the same in adults. How amazing is that! And, in my opinion, absolutely necessary in our community and in our increasingly challenging world.
So, the deeper answer to “why did I take over DDC” is that I knew its value in people’s lives and felt called to not only keep it alive, but to help it thrive and take it forwards into the future.
A bigger dream….
Once upon a time, I received a vision of myself directing a Center of Dance and Wellness. I’ve always been drawn to holistic medicine, and how movement and dance can be healing on all levels…physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This Dance and Wellness Center vision seemed to literally drop from the ethos, and I had no idea how to bring it to fruition.
Denver Dance Center already has such a beautiful culture of supportiveness, creativity, and respect for dance. It felt like organic ground to seed the vision. Not only does it provide consistent high quality ballet classes, but also a space for independent teachers to host offerings in other dance forms… modern, jazz, contemporary, samba, capoeira, heels, hip hop, folk-dance, and even burlesque. DDC is also the home of Ballet Ariel, providing space for the professional company to rehearse and create.
On the wellness side, Amy Anderson runs her pilates and dance medicine practice at DDC. My own my movement coaching space is at DDC– providing instruction in Dance, Nutrition, Gyrotonic Method, and yoga.
The bigger dream is to one day expand DDC to offer more dance and movement classes, as well as space for other wellness practitioners to run their businesses….acupuncturists, physical therapists, massage therapists, etc…
All of this feeds back to the original mission of Denver Dance Center: to provide a place where people can go to move, connect, heal, create and dance!
A place for people to come home to their bodies, find peace and joy in their own skin, expand their boundaries, and express their creative spirit.
Kris Kehl – Founder
Seeing a need to make ballet accessible to those who had never danced as well as those who wished to continue to dance for the joy of it, Kris took over the struggling adult program when she became a company member of Colorado Ballet. Beginning with two students, Kris taught evening classes after full days of rehearsal. The program grew through two studio moves and twenty years as a result of Kris’ dedication. When she stopped performing in 1998, Kris focused on expanding the offerings for adult students. The program now covers a full range of ability from beginners to professionals/former professionals. In 2002 the Executive Director of Colorado Ballet at the time suggested that Kris take ownership of the adult program (run as a part of the academy until then) and run it as an independent business while remaining in the Colorado Ballet studio space. The summer of 2009 provided the opportunity to open and move her expanding adult program to a home of its own, Denver Dance Center. The space also provides a rental venue to other teachers and professionals to teach and create.
Coming to Colorado Ballet as a dancer in 1985, Kris performed as a soloist from 1988 to 1995. Favorite roles/performances include Marzipan in Nutcracker, Balanchine’s ballets Seranade and Concerto Barroco, Pas de Trois in Swan Lake, dancing the Black Swan pas de deux in Joinville, Brazil; and performing Raymonda’s Act III variation in Rosario, Argentina. Her choreography includes children’s parts in the Nutcracker (for which she was Children’s Rehearsal Director for Colorado Ballet), Viola for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, and Amahl and the Night Visitors for Opera Colorado. Colorado Ballet studios. She was company teacher for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble and for David Taylor Dance Theater, and staff teacher at the Denver School of the Art, at Canyon Concert Ballet, and at Cherry Creek Dance.
Most recently, she was invited to be a guest teacher for Opus Ballet Camaro Santiago Chile, for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, and for the Vail International Dance Festival. Other guest teaching includes Festival de Danca Rosario, Rosario Argentina; Festival de Dancas do Mercosul, Bento Goncalves, Brazil; Xlll Festival de Danca de Joinville, Joinville, Brazil; Ballet Hawaii; Orange County Dance Center; and Ballet Charlotte