The mirrored walls of Amy Johnson’s dance studio in China Grove reflect her image as she starts her Wednesday afternoon class.
She’s around 5 feet 4 inches tall, with bright blue eyes and shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair that she has put up with a barrette. She is energetic, agile and believe it or not, eight months pregnant.
The boy she is carrying, that is “unless the ultrasound’s completely wrong,” she says, hasn’t slowed her down one bit. She teaches three to four hours an evening, four days a week.
She can even still do a split, said the amazed mother who called to suggest Amy as a Tuesday People.
“I feel very fortunate that I’m able to do with this pregnancy what I was not able to do with Linzi,” Amy says.
Linzi will be 2 years old on Sept. 27. Because Amy had had two miscarriages, her doctor put her in bed in July before she was born.
Her assistant teacher and former student, Amanda Hartness, taught some of the classes, and another teacher, Dana Lowe, filled in on the others.
“I would come in,” she says, “and just sit and watch a lot.”
Still, Amy says some of the mothers pulled their students out of the studio and took them elsewhere. It happened again when she got pregnant this time.
“Parents do not have loyalty,” she says. “I think that’s because in this area, there are so many dance studios accessible to everyone.”
But that’s the nature of dance these days, Amy says, and she’s not about to stop doing what she loves. She’s been dancing all her life.
Growing up the only child of Nancy and Morris Hildreth on Mable Avenue in Kannapolis, Amy says she was always dancing around the house. At age 7, when her mother thought she was mature enough to understand exactly what was going on in class, she was enrolled in the Evelyn Sills Studio of Dance.
“It gave me self-esteem and motivation,” she says, “and it actually taught me manners. Mrs. Sills was very much into etiquette and manners.”
Creatively, Amy says it introduced her to music she might not have listened to otherwise. “I didn’t know too many people who would have listened to ragtime music,” she says.
Evelyn Sills recognized the potential in Amy and asked if she was interested in the Royal Academy of Dance Ballet Training. It’s a technical style of ballet, she says, where students are judged on their performances by judges who come over from London.
Amy’s scores were consistently high, and she continued taking dance through high school at A.L. Brown, teaching baton to other students in the studio and serving as co-captain of the majorette squad her junior year and captain her senior year.
It was in her sophomore year of high school that Amy started dating Byron Johnson, who she continued seeing while she studied dance and he studied criminal justice at East Carolina University. Amy was in her third year there, dancing six hours a day in classes Monday through Friday, when she injured her foot.
“Actually, Igot a heel spur on my right foot,” she says, but the arches had started falling in both feet.
She returned home to Kannapolis, where she was treated by an orthopedic doctor who recommended physical therapy and a leave from dancing.
During the next three years, Amy handled car loans for C.K. Federal Savings Bank, now SouthTrust Bank, and married Byron, who went to work for the Kannapolis Police Department after graduating in 1990.
The same year she got married, Amy returned to dancing, teaching at a local studio four evenings a week after getting off at the bank. After a couple of years, she opened her own studio.
“I just decided I was going to do it myself if I was going to bust my tush,” she says.
Stage Door Dance Productions, beginning its seventh year, opened in downtown China Grove at the intersection of Main and Centerview streets. Three years ago, Amy moved her studio to the SouthRowan Executive Center in front of the Food Lion on Highway 29.
There, she teaches classes inballet, point, tap, jazz and lyrical, and Ruthie Welch comes in and teaches gymnastics one night a week. Amy is trained in gymnastics, but she’s not safety certified and Ruthie is.
Amy’s 90 students, ranging in age from 2-1/2 to 35, have an annual recital, participate in area competitions and perform at local events such as the annual Farmers Day. They’re in the Kannapolis and China Grove-Landis Christmas parades and are planning to participate in the Spencer-Salisbury parade for the first time this year.
The annual recital takes a lot of work. “It’s a big to-do,” she says. “Routine-wise, we start working probably by the middle of October, and I like to have everything completed by the end of March.”
Though the costumes range in price from $75 to $220, Amy schedules fund raisers throughout the year to help parents with the expense. The weekly dance lessons range in cost depending on the class, she says.
A 75-minute class on ballet, tap and jazz, for example, is $45. “I’m very, very economically sound on that,” she says.
Patience is one of the key requirements of a dance teacher, according to Amy, who goes to regular workshops and seminars to update her dance and teaching skills.
It also takes the ability to recognize a child’s potential and bring that out, and when children don’t come in with that potential, she says, a good dance teacher is able to instill that within them.
“It also takes understanding of a child’s body,” Amy says, “anatomy-wise, knowing that some children are more flexible than others, and being able to give off a positive and fun attitude.”
Children benefit positively from dance lessons in several ways. “They get to dance on the big stage with lots of lights and lots of attention focused on them,” she says, “so that helps their self-esteem.
“I’ve seen an oversized child come in and work their tushes off and just really nail it on stage,” she says. “Self-esteem just built right up in them.”
Learning to dance also teaches children grace and poise, according to Amy. “And it teaches them to have positive attitudes, she says, “as far as ‘I can do that. I might can’t do it right now.’ Of course, we don’t say the ‘can’t’ word in the studio.
“We say, ‘I’m learning’ or ‘I’m trying to get that.’ ”
Linzi hasn’t started taking dance yet, though her mother says she dances all around the house to Barney and Teletubbies music, whatever happens to be on.
“She’s always hollering for music,” Amy says. “And she’s not particular to just children’s songs. She likes heavy metal. She likes classical.”
Though the due date for her son is Oct. 27, Amy’s doctor plans to do a scheduled Caesarean between Oct. 17 and 20, she says, “if nature allows it.”
“That’s a big mystery,” she says, when asked about his name. “We’re having a terrible time.”
Her husband’s name is Byron, “and he gets called Bryan and Bynam and all different names,” she says. “So he wants a real strong name for a man, yet he doesn’t want it too yuppy and he doesn’t want it beatupable.”
Beatupable? You know, “when you get beat up in elementary school,” she says.
Amy likes the name Pressley Wells, Pressley after her father’s mother’s maiden name and Wells after her maternal grandfather’s middle name. “And we’d call him Lee,” she says. “That’s a good man’s name, Lee.”
They’ve also talked about the name, Carson Wells, she says.
Pressley or Lee or Wells or Carson or whatever other name he turns out to have will be moving into a new house shortly after his arrival into the world.
The Johnsons are building a new house next to Amy’s parents on Mable Avenue. “It’s almost done,” she says. “We only have about four more weeks.”
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