Work We Do: Reneé De Chalus, REDancers Dance Studio

Hi, I’m Renée De Chalus, owner and president of REDancers Dance Studio located here in Riverhead.

We’ve been here, this is now 31 years of teaching dance and offering the arts in the Riverhead community. 

We come in a little bit after school hours, do our warm up, our stretches. Depending on what genre we’re doing, we do combinations across the floor. And then we are currently working for our June recital so they start learning routines. I teach lyrical, ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop to all levels. I have about 70 students enrolled here at the dance studio right now from ages 2 1/2 all the way up to senior citizen. I think our oldest student is 78 years old.

Personally, I love ballet, but I’m not really a ballerina so my favorite to perform was tap.

I’ve always been dancing. Since I was old enough, my mom said, to pull myself up the crib in time to music. Long story short, I managed to find my way out to Riverhead and I opened up the dance school in 1987. I performed in regional theater on Long Island, like Theater Three in Port Jefferson and Broadhollow Theater in East Islip. And then this got in the way because I had to start teaching five days a week and it’s kind of hard to be in two places at the same time. So my theatrical career went to the side and I dedicated myself to here at REDancers.

I really enjoy teaching the students and seeing their growth. A lot of them start when they’re 3 and graduate as high school seniors. It’s fun to see that growth through the years.

They all sort of start off as a blank slate and then they start to like certain things and that’s always fun to see what they gravitate towards.

“The Work We Do” is a Riverhead News-Review multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview.