Hello, Turning Pointe students and families!
We’re thrilled to have you with us for the 2023-24 dance year, and incredibly blessed to be celebrating our 20th year of operation this season. Whether you’re enrolled in your first class or camp with us this year, or you’ve been involved for all 20, we’re so glad you’re here! The Lord has done some amazing things within this space, and we can’t wait to see how He moves in this special anniversary season.
With a brand new session of classes now under way, our amazing teachers and staff are hard at work, pouring into lesson plans, curriculum notes and recital details. Each month, they’ll also share and focus on a devotional word and passage of scripture, uniting us in our mission to praise His name with dance in every single class. This season our words take us from preparation to harvest as we celebrate the abundance He’s provided through 20 years rooted in Him.
September: Prepare
“The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.” — Psalm 85:12-13
This month’s verses tell us that God’s righteousness prepares the way for His action. And even when His actions don’t make sense to us, we can still trust Him with our hopes and dreams because we know that God’s ways are always right—His ways are always built on a foundation of righteousness. When we’re in the preparation stage of a project, our role is to steward our dreams for His glory, and prepare for a way with Him.
God began preparing for Turning Pointe Dance when Ms. Tina was just 8 years old.
“I remember being in class and my teacher called me out and had me demonstrate something to the class and then told me that I was going to be a dance teacher and work at her studio someday,” she said. “That was the first time that I remember someone (besides my parents) speaking into my life and calling something out in me that I didn’t even see in myself yet. So I grabbed hold of that encouragement and held tightly to those words.”
Continuing to dance through her school years, at the end of high school, Ms. Tina witnessed a performance by Ballet Magnificat! — a professional Christian ballet company founded in Mississippi.
“It was a major ‘A-ha!’ moment for me seeing dance and faith TOGETHER with excellence,” she remembered. “My dream began to grow, but it wasn’t time to take the first steps just yet.”
After college and marriage, and with the start of her family on the way, God reminded her of the dream He had planted so many years ago, and one He had continued to cultivate through each plie, performance and plan.
“God reminded me of my dream that dance could be done differently—that faith and the arts could work together to produce something beautiful,” Tina said. “I got out my journal and started writing ideas of where I could potentially offer dance classes, what the class structure would look like, what the dress code would be, how much I could charge, how I could market and spread the word. After looking at all my notes, I felt peace about taking the first step. Maybe this is the time to start some after school dance classes on the side.”
“Something had been planted in my heart during that Ballet Magnificat! performance so many years earlier,” she continued. “Christian dance and Christian dance studios were not really in existence 20 years ago, so there was no roadmap or guidebook for how to do this. I just knew that if I was going to launch dance classes on my own, I wanted it to be with Jesus as the center. So with no roadmaps, no Christian dance mentors (remember no one was doing this at the time), no lawyer, and no working capital—I started a business.”
In September 2004, Ms. Tina started teaching five faith-based dance classes per week at Colorado Springs Christian School, Handprints Preschool, and their cottage program. In September 2023, more than 1,300 class units were filled by nearly 800 students at Turning Pointe School of Dance.
“God was preparing me all of those years for this dream,” Tina said. “It didn’t happen when I thought it would though—there was more that needed to be cultivated in my heart.”
God sees every day of your entire life, from the first day to the last, as important. He is caring for you right now, and is already setting plans for your life 10, 20, and 50 years from now. Whatever brought you through our doors this season, and whatever your reasons for enrolling in dance, God cares even more than you do what becomes of your life because He loves you SO much. As we prepare for the classes, peek weeks and performances this year will bring, and as you prepare to take on your classes at Turning Pointe, remember: His plans are already in motion