Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Dancers in the 3- to 5-year-old ballet class at Birmingham Academy of Dance on Aug. 14.
For Autumn Armstrong, dancing has been a lifelong passion.
Armstrong is the founder and owner of Birmingham Academy of Dance, or BA Dance for short. Though she said that her love of dancing began at an early age, she realized quickly that choreography was her true desire.
“I began dancing when I was 2 years old. I started doing choreography in my basement when I was 4 or 4 years old,” she said.
“I started doing competitive dance along with competitive gymnastics growing up, but my true passion has always been choreography and teaching. I started doing choreography for colleges and high schools when I was 15 and just never stopped,” Armstrong said.
As she celebrates the 10th season of business at her dance studio on U.S. 280 and three years at her studio in Trussville, Armstrong remembers the challenges she and her team faced when attempting to open the studio during the summer of 2015.
“We had opened for the summer in a temporary space. Our build-out got delayed. We had registered 100 kids before we had started, and we were in a one-room space next door to where they were building out our space,” she said.
Running a studio gave her a new perspective on the world of dance.
“Most of the work that I did before [opening the studio], was me just coming in and setting routines for different high schools and colleges. I never got to see the finished product, so I wanted to see that process from beginning to end and [see] the dancers that I was working with get a foundation, and then see them through all these phases that they go through as they grow up and dance,” she said.
As the number of students increased year after year, Armstrong realized there was a need for a second location of BA Dance.
“We opened Trussville in 2021. We noticed they [our students] were having to drive from the other side of town. Within the first year, the enrollment at our Trussville location matched enrollment at our 280 location, so there was definitely a need,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong said Trussville has been a great location for another studio.
“The community has been great,” Armstrong said. “That's where all of our students come from; people sharing with their friends, sharing their experience. The community has just been so supportive of what we're trying to do; focusing on being sure they're trained from a young age, with proper technique, but also taking care of their dancer.”
Armstrong wants to expose young dancers to more than the traditional forms of dance or popular dances they may see on social media. In addition to ballet, tap and jazz, BA Dance also offers hip hop, musical theater and “recreational” classes for those who don’t want to be in the competitive dance space.
Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Students in the 9- to 11-year-old competition group run through choreography.
Learning how to run a dance class, how to choreograph a routine or the kinds of jobs available in the performing arts field after high school are just some of the things that Armstrong hopes her students also learn while at her studio.
“Whether it be commercial TV, music, concerts or choreographing for award shows and television shows, it just kind of opens them up to the industry as a whole,” she said.
When it comes to the viral dances popular on social media, Armstrong said they make room for those opportunities, too.
“Our program allows for students that want to come in and just have that one hour of having fun, getting just to move and listen to music. It definitely brings in a different type of program for us, where we do open it up to just recreational dancers that want to come in and just maybe learn something they've seen off of Tik Tok. We break it down and show them how to do it,” she said.
BA Dance is perhaps best known for being a competitive dance studio. Armstrong and her staff take individual dancers and groups to competitions across the country every year. The studio has produced national champion dance groups and five individual national champion dancers in the past three years.
“We started out with around 125, and now we are at around 500 students. It’s been a great experience. We opened for kids of all ages, all levels, whether they want to dance professionally or not. It’s really come full circle to be everything I wanted it to be when we opened the program,” Armstrong said.
For more information about Birmingham Academy of Dance, visit their location at 234 Main Street in Trussville or at 5033 Highway 280, Suite 103, in Birmingham, or find them online at badance280.com.
