We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Courtney Appel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Courtney below.
Hi Courtney, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.
AIS Dance (Appel Institute of Sports, LLC) was conceived from the idea of producing dancers that were not just the typical prima ballerinas but to produce dancers that had a love for dance recreationally and dancers that had a passion for dance beyond high school into the professional or collegiate arena. We encourage more of the performance base side of dance by exposing dancers to as many performance opportunities as possible.
Courtney, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
After growing up in the competitive dance world, I received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Houston. While studying at UH, I danced professionally for the Houston Texans and the Houston Rockets. I continued to teach at many surrounding dance studios and competitive dance teams then went on to be the Assistant Dance Team Director for Clear Lake High School dance team.
I believe what sets AIS Dance apart is the level of expertise our instructors have in dance. They all either have a Bachelors degree in dance or danced at the collegiate level. From winning collegiate national championships to dancing professionally to choreographing national winning dances, the level of expertise is significant.
We want potential clients to know that AIS Dance is unlike any other studio. We have three paths for a dancer to choose from: Recreational, Developmental, or Competitive. The dancer gets to choose which path they want to take depending on their level of commitment and ability. This is not a cookie cutter studio, AIS Dance allows the dancer to decide how far they want to take dance and to what next level and AIS Dance partners with them to reach that goal.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Growing up both my parents were entrepreneurs, my husband and I both owned two other businesses outside of AIS Dance and I had the mindset that if I wanted something like AIS Dance in our community then I needed to step up. I love the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, and You Were Made for a God-Size Dream and In A Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day books. They significantly impacted me on this journey of opening AIS Dance.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
For over three decades I have been in the dance scene, and by building relationships, staying up to date to the ever changing intensity of dance, and producing dancers that have a truly deep respect and confidence in dance has helped build that reputation in our market. There are so many avenues and genres of dance that my hope is a dancer will find and experience all of them to find their true passion. I want my reputation to be known as the bridge that helped each dancer that crosses my path to their next level in dance.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @AIS_danceteam
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095428303504