NORWICH – It’s been 40 long years since the Donna Frech School of Dance began teaching students. This year is their 40th anniversary and the studio is looking back on how it all began.
The founder of the school, Donna Frech Sharp (formerly Donna Frech), opened her first studio in South New Berlin in 1975. “When I was younger, I used to live on Long Island,” said Frech Sharp. “My family and I used to come up here on vacations and I fell in love with the area.”
Frech Sharp, holding a deep passion for dance, decided to move to Chenango County and open her very own school. “There weren’t a lot of schools in the area,” said Frech Sharp. “I thought that this was a great place to do what I love most.”
Frech Sharp opened her first studio in a storefront in the Town of South New Berlin in September of 1975. She fondly recalls making small signs with her father and putting them in the newspaper boxes of local residents as her first form of advertising. Frech Sharp’s first class had 22 students and only herself teaching.
“I can remember at our first registration. A mother and her two daughters came in to sign up,” said Frech Sharp. “I have since stayed in touch with the two girls.”
Frech Sharp says that both girls will be attending her recital next week.
The very next year, under some pressure from other locals who wanted to enrol their children in the school, Frech Sharp opened her second location in New Berlin. A few years later, with the school still growing, Frech Sharp was asked by one of her friends if she could hold classes in Norwich.
“She said her daughters danced in Norwich and wanted me to have classes at her restaurant on Saturday mornings when the kitchen was closed,” said Frech Sharp, adding that this worked out only for a little while until she outgrew the venue. “We went from the restaurant to places like the VFW and the American Legion and kept outgrowing them all. Eventually, we knew we had to get our own studio in town.”
That was when Frech Sharp built her first Norwich studio. That studio was an extension built on to the back of her house on Rexford Street. This worked for almost ten years until the School outgrew that location and had to build their current location in 1993.
“It just became too much to run three different studios,” said Frech Sharp. “We eventually gave up the South New Berlin location. It was just too small.”
This way of thinking didn’t last long though as Frech Sharp soon decided to open a location in Sidney. There she decided to rent storefronts so she could store all her equipment for the Sidney studio to make running three studios a little easier.
“When we first started, it was just me teaching the kids,” said Frech Sharp. “Now we have six instructors, two of which are my own daughters.”
Frech Sharp went on to say that all of her instructors took lessons from her and have since returned to the area to teach. Her daughters, Kathleen Cragle and Kristen Miller, have both been teaching for her for more than 16 years each. She elaborated, saying that a good majority of her students still work with dance in one way or another, be it in dance therapy, teaching, or something else that keeps them involved in the art.
