Listen Live
Listen Live Graphics (Indy)
2022 Miss New Jersey Scholarship Competition

Source: Donald Kravitz / Getty

INDIANAPOLIS — Did you know there are more than 60 dance schools in the greater Indianapolis area?

Mariel Greenlee-Lungu is willing to bet you didn’t.

“It’s there. It’s there for anyone that has any interest. And I do think that the more that the audiences that consume art are aware of the dancing that’s available to see, to experience, the more people will dance,” Greenlee-Lungu, the founder of Indy Dance Council (IDC), told WRTV.

Greenlee-Lungu was a professional dancer for nearly 15 years with Dance Kaleidoscope here in Indianapolis before becoming a dance instructor. Although she’s danced in bigger metropolitan cities more recognized in the dance industry, she says Indianapolis is her favorite dance city.

“You have different benefits in a big city. You have all of the cutting-edge trends happening, you have so many people passing through, you have access to all of this new and exciting information. But in a smaller city,” Greenlee-Lungu said, “You have this community that really embraces what it has. And so you get to know them on a more intimate level. Both the audience and the other dancers.”

There are spaces for Latin dancing, ballroom, swing, ballet, hip-hop, breakdancing, and more in Indianapolis. Mariel says the dance community in Indy is wide and vast, just like the Midwest.

Read more from WRTV here