EAU Dance - Grand Rapids, Michigan

Liza V. B.

Miss Emily and the staff at Eau Dance are simply phenomenal! They have such a genuine passion for dance and care deeply about their students. They are flexible with their studio space allowing them to focus on getting the best teachers. Miss Emily focuses on the students developing a love for dance first and foremost and building on that with technique. Absolutely LOVE Eau Dance!!

Rachel H.

I will start with the pros... Emily is a phenomenal instructor and really knows how to engage the little ones (1-2 year old classes). She's super animated and fun. The class itself was a wonderful experience for myself and my daughter -- she loved going to dance with Emily! Now the cons -- The classes were constantly canceled. I participated in two sections of the class. The first class was winter/spring and was canceled 3 times in the first 5 weeks. The second class was only for 1 month and was canceled 2 out of 4 times. Emily runs the class as if it's optional weekend plans instead of like a business. This is hugely disappointing and leads to low retention rates for her classes. I do not know if this only applies to the classes for littles or all her classes, as I do not have kids in other age groups. However, I ran into a woman at the library from my class with another woman I did not recognize and I said "hey I know you from dance" and the other woman laughed and said "yeah when it actually happens. I gave up on that class a long time ago." Which confirmed that this has been an ongoing problem for previous sessions before the ones I enrolled in. I will say that although some of the cancellations had legitimate sounding reasons like going on a family trip with a terminal family member or car troubles etc, for others no reason was given at all and no refunds were offered for any of the cancellations. Offering refunds is a very standard business practice when an instructor/business is the reason for a cancellation and classes are prepaid like these ones. For the first section I enrolled in, Emily offered only one make up session even though there were 3 cancellations. I did end up speaking to her about how this is not a fair equivalent to offer only 1 out of 3 when the classes were canceled on her end. After thinking about it, she did come back and offer me a $25 voucher for the summer section which I used. However, 2/4 were again canceled with only 1 make up and no refund offered, which essentially voided her previously offering the voucher.

This is an honest review given with love because I truly don't have anything negative to say about Emily as an instructor or the classes themselves-- they were wonderful. Given Emily's strength as an instructor, I have no doubt that her business would thrive even more and have much greater client retention if she considered this issue of excessive cancellations more closely. When cancellations are completely unavoidably, clients will be understanding but they should always receive refunds or equivalent vouchers as standard. As a business owner myself, I would never dream of passing the cost of sessions on to my clients when I am the one cancelling. I would consider taking the class again despite the cons, because we truly enjoyed it when it was not cancelled. 💗💗

Cathy S.

I’ve loved taking adult dance classes with Eau Dance the past few years, the musical theater jazz class is so much fun!

Nicole S.

Elizabeth M.