Beyond the Studio Walls

Flex Studios is a dance education business rooted in the belief that a studio can be more than a physical space. The teachers and directors describe their work as creating a creative and stimulating environment built on high-quality technique, love, and a sense of family. It is the kind of place where students use words like home, love, and safe to describe what it means to them.

The studio distributes around $30,000 in scholarships each year, a commitment its leaders chose to maintain even through the hardest stretch of the pandemic. That figure speaks to a philosophy they return to often: small businesses are, in their words, the first to give what they have. When a GoFundMe campaign went out during a particularly difficult period, the response from the surrounding community made clear that the feeling is mutual.

Dance is tactile and physical by nature, which made the pivot to online instruction feel, as one of the studio's leaders put it, like starting a whole other business over again. Month by month the team adapted, moving between open and closed, in-person and online, all while faculty worked hours that stretched well beyond what they were being paid for. The hardest lesson, one leader reflected, was learning that it is okay to ask for help.

The pandemic complicated the familiar narrative that businesses in the same field are simply competitors. The studio's leaders found real support by reaching out to others facing the same pressures, and they came away with a broader view of what a local business community can be. In Lane County, they suggest, conscious choices about where money is spent add up, and the businesses that benefit are often the same ones quietly giving back all along.