Our Mission Statement

MISSION

Soaring Spirit Dance Studio aims to provide students with a foundation of dance technique that integrates faith and worship with the arts. In our studio, students will learn to dance in a Christ-like, nurturing, wholesome environment. Costumes are modest, and music and movements are wholesome.

HISTORY

The history of Soaring Spirit Dance begins with its founder, Miss Jamie Parnum, who has always had a heart for dance as a form of worship. After graduating with a BA in Dance, she found herself ministering in various churches and even directing a liturgical dance ministry.

In the mid 1990's, a fellow dance teacher, Carolyn Silva, was teaching a dance class in conjunction with Excel Choir, a choir directed towards children who were home-schooled. These were held in a local church, and occasionally Jamie was asked to sub for Carolyn. In the summer of 1996, Carolyn called Jamie to see if she would take it over, and so in October 1996, she started teaching one class that had 4 students. Soaring Spirit Dance Studio was born.

The first class met in the fellowship hall of a church and believe it or not, used the back of folding chairs as the ballet barre! People would walk through the dance space. She remembers someone trying to rope off an area, but it was noisy! “But we still had fun, and I was introduced into the world of homeschooling families, and by the end of the first year we’d doubled to 8 students!” Jamie didn’t want to face teaching in that noisy place again, so she looked into subleasing and found a studio in Cupertino and expanded to two classes.

In 1998, Soaring Spirit moved to Nancy’s Studio in San Jose where they stayed for 5 years and during that time grew to about 75 students. In 2003, Soaring Spirit moved again--to Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell. While at Ariel, Jamie continued to find ways to fulfill her heart to equip young dancers to worship the Lord in dance, and decided to expand the styles of dance that she was offering. In 2004, she hired her first teacher, Cheryl, who started with one jazz class and then later on added a tap class.

As the enrollment increased to 100, things began to change. Bigger recitals, more administrative work and the high cost of running a service-based business began to take its toll on Jamie, who had never intended to become a businesswomen. She simply wanted to be able to make a living doing what she loved -- worshiping God in dance! Jamie began to look for a way to unburden herself from the load.

In the process of considering to sell her business, Jamie ran across a dance school listing posted by Pam East (another dance studio owner) who was looking to sell her newly established Willow Glen expansion studio. As a result of this encounter, Pam and Jamie decided to share the cost of that studio as a possible solution for both of them. The newly designed studio had been built with two large dance studios, a nice lobby, office, two restrooms, four music studios and nice storage capacity for costumes and accessories. Jamie hoped that adding some music teachers to coordinate with dance classes might help the heavy financial load, and in 2006, moved Soaring Spirit one more time, to the current site at 940 Willow Street, two blocks east of Lincoln avenue in Willow Glen.

The wonderful new studio did not really lesson the burden that was growing upon Jamie, sole proprietor, and in 2007, in response to the counsel of trusted advisers, she put her business up for sale. As she sought God for an answer, He seemed to prompt her to contact Mike and Janice Morris, Christian founders of The Music Place, a similar and well-established business serving the music education community for almost 25 years.

As Mike and Janice sought God on the matter, they met with Jamie several times during several months. Over the course of these meetings, their heart grew burdened to come along side of Jamie. They wanted to determine if their school's existing administrative infrastructure could help lift some of the weight off Jamie, now aware that the financial and administrative burden had begun to affect her physically as well.

Jamie and the Morris's felt led to develop a plan by which The Music Place would assume administrative and financial responsibility for Soaring Spirit, while leaving its ownership and business status unchanged. This arrangement began in the summer of 2008. By May of the following year, Mike and Janice, (whose oldest son owns three Arthur Murray dance studios) felt like God was giving them the grace (and courage!) to have The Music Place assume ownership of Soaring Spirit. The legal arrangements were made, a gathering of prayer commemorated the occasion, and Soaring Spirit became part of The Music Place, still operating as a distinct business, but now under the auspices and prayer covering of The Music Place. 

As early as the late Fall of 2008, Soaring Spirit had hired its original employee, Cheryl Bamberger, to manage the Studio and later, in Fall of 2009, another young dance teacher, Leslie Delman to assist her. The Studio continues at the Willow Street location, with the addition of dozens of music students now taking lessons during the dance classes. We are blessed to be able to maintain the personal student care while expanding the influence of Christ in both music and dance education with 10 dance teachers and almost 40 music teachers.

In Jamie's words at her 10th Anniversary Gala, “We’ve been through a lot of experiences together… performing in rest homes, churches, theaters, Great America, all sorts of places, and when we first started doing our own SS recitals there weren’t enough dances to make a whole program. So I used to invite the dancers and their family to play musical instruments at the recital so it ended up being more a mixture of dance and music. It was fun! It’s been quite a journey we’ve been on!”

Looking forward to our continuing journey...

Sincerely,

Jamie, Janice & Mike