Founder of Dynamic Dance selling to long-time instructor

When Tracy Kuhn made the decision to part ways with the dance and cheer studio she built from the ground up 21 years ago, she had to look no further for a new owner than within the walls of the studio.

Longtime instructor – and former student – Ashley Hoffman assumes ownership of Dynamic Cheer and Dance June 1. The change of ownership has been in progress for about three years when Kuhn made the move to Las Vegas, Nev., in March of 2020. 

“We did this three-year transition for a reason,” says Kuhn. “I’m here to be her mentor, and it’s good for me to transition without having to be ‘done’ both emotionally and professionally.”

“Tracy and I have had this in the works for a little while now, but we just announced it last week to our customers. We did it at a slower rate, announcing it to our friends and family first. It’s been a long-term thing for both of us, and when she had the opportunity to relocate, it became a little more real for both of us that this would be the path that we would eventually take,” says Hoffman.

Kuhn and Hoffman have a 17-year history together. They were first introduced as coach and student-athlete when Kuhn took on the head coach role for Brandon Valley High’s competitive dance program, and Hoffman was a sophomore on the team. After graduating, she began teaching some of the “baby classes and it just kind of took from there. I kept growing and learning and continuing my own training and the rest is history,” Hoffman said.

Kuhn elected to open the cheer and dance studio 21 years ago when the dance organization that her then young daughter, Alissa, was involved with. 

“It wasn’t run as positively and organized as I felt it could have been run. It motivated me to move along in my career and get back into the dance world,” Kuhn said.

At the time, she had been working for Wells Fargo Bank for eight years, and her employer allowed her to scale back from 40 hours a week to 30 so she could pursue the dance studio. After doing both for about a year, Kuhn said juggling both became overwhelming.

“I was very busy, which was a good thing, so I had to make a call as to whether I wanted to take the plunge or not. It was very scary and it was a challenging decision to make because I was giving up 401K with very good benefits, medical insurance, all the things,” she said. “But I felt confident enough to make a run with it, and obviously, it’s been great; I made a good decision.”

When Kuhn opened her studio, she offered competitive cheer and competitive dance, forgoing studio offerings such as ballet, jazz, hip hop, lyrical classes, and weekly classes that didn’t mandate performances and weekend competitions. 

“At the time, that was really popular, just the performance aspect of it, so that’s where we started,” Kuhn reflects. “We soon learned that that wasn’t going to be enough if these kids were going to be competitive. These kiddos needed the training in the classroom to get a well-rounded education so that they were properly trained to prevent injury and if they wanted to go on – as some have done – and move into their college years with dance, we wanted to prepare them for these times correctly.”

It was then Dynamic introduced with the performance aspect and then moved into the studio aspect, which she continued for many years.

“We’re still doing both and have just as many studio students as well as competitive students,” she said.

Over time, her studio outgrew several facilities, which was a good problem to have, Kuhn said, but that also presented challenges. That “problem” led Kuhn to building her own facility on Brandon’s westside.

“But with that came a heavy-hearted decision to drop competitive cheer from our program and the move to a recreational cheer class,” she said. “We still believed in offering that at a younger age because they don’t get that at the schools in the elementary age level, and they have to start somewhere.”

Many of her recreational cheer class students went on to become cheerleaders at Brandon Valley, as did her dance students.

“It wasn’t always just about my studio – it was about their future, whether it be high school or after high school and into college,” Kuhn said. “Some have wanted to move on professionally, like my daughter, and we wanted to provide a space where we could help them meet whatever goals they had.”

At 34, Hoffman’s involvement as a student and/or instructor at Dynamic Cheer and Dance has consumed half of her life. 

“It’s insane, to be honest,” she says. “Now that I’ve been doing it this long, I have kids (former students) that are having babies of their own. Our Shining Stars class is our 2-year-olds class, and we have so many previous dancers who have children and are bringing their kids to take class. It’s a really cool evolution to watch that happen. It’s something in the day to day that you don’t realize the impact that you’re having, but when you sit back, there really has been so many kids.”

Kuhn said she interviewed several different people that were interested in taking ownership of the studio. She said it was a process that she needed to go through to find the “right fit to take my baby.”

As it turned out, Hoffman is the “right fit to take her baby.”

“I wanted somebody who was strong and who understood the history and the challenges and all of the wonderful things that have happened and to be able to treat it with love and care,” Kuhn said.

Both women agree that change will be minimal.

“She’ll make changes for the better as the studio grows, because that’s what we do every year, but she is going to respect the beginning stages, and that was important to me,” Kuhn said.

Adds Hoffman, “I really do want to honor what she has built. To say there is going to be no changes is kind of unrealistic because I think our industry is ever-changing. Part of my job as the new owner is to make sure our program continues to stay relevant and to make sure that we are providing the best training that we possibly can.”

About the same time Kuhn was building her studio from ground up, she took on the head coach role for Brandon Valley’s competitive dance team. It was a position she relished for 17 years. Ironically so, Hoffman has followed in her footsteps and has followed Kuhn’s lead by coaching the Lady Lynx to multiple state titles.

“Part of me wants to kick myself in the bootie for leaving when I did, because I really left a fantastic championship team. I left those girls when they were at their prime and still going, but I really pushed for Ashley to take that job, not just because she worked for me at the studio, but because she was a high school dancer and she knows that history as well,” Kuhn said. 

Kuhn’s “final bow” with Dynamic Cheer and Dance is the studio’s year-end recital on May 26 at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls. She notes the event will be “quite a celebration.”

“We’re calling it, ‘Endings and Beginnings,’” she said. “The whole chapter of me moving down and her moving up will be the theme of the recital, and it will be a special day.”

Hoffman shares Kuhn’s excitement for this day and for what’s to come as she makes the leap into business ownership.

“I’m excited to step into this new position and to continue to see our program grow. I want to continue to provide a very positive learning experience for all students,” Hoffman pledges. “I’ve been doing this long enough now that it’s a very cool thing as a coach to know that you made such an impact in a kid’s life that they want to come back and be a part of it and they want to do the same for another kid. That’s probably been my biggest legacy.”

The same could be said for Kuhn’s tenure in the local dance world.

“That is one of the most emotional things about this whole thing is that most of my instructors were students of mine in some way. They were students at the studio or athletes at the high school, and it’s a real cool thing for kids to know that their teachers came from that background,” Kuhn said.

Kuhn’s next chapter is yet to be written. She doesn’t have a definitive plan at this time, but is going to take online classes to learn the ins and outs of graphic design and custom screen printing, focusing her business on a familiar industry: dance and cheer groups.

“I just really, really loved that process as an owner and having to do all of that with the studio. I’m very particular and I just really have a passion for the creative side. I don’t know if it will come to life or not but I’m going to see if I can make that happen,” she said. “It will still keep me involved in talking with my peers in the dance industry. It’s different, a little scary, but also exciting, and I have faith that God will walk me down a path, and I hope it’s the right one.”