General information - HISTORY

Amsterdam Dance Centre openend it's door for the first time on januari 17th 1995.
An extensive offer of classes like jazz, ballet and modern dance was offered. During the daytime professional dancers came to get their training and in the evenings the recreational dancer came to take class; a new sparkling ballets studio was born! In my mind the studio had to be accesible like the studio's in the United States. This way students are offered to take single classes at any time and from any teacher they like. The only requirement of doing business this way is that you need to get teachers that teach on the highest level and belong to the best group of teachers in the world.
After a year long search the location of the studio was found; a chapel of a former convent on the Lauriergracht was the first building of the Amsterdam Dance Centre. To financially get by in the first period we rented out the studio in the evenings and on weekends for weddings and parties. All co workers of ADC dragged many carpet tiles, beer casks and furniture around to make everything possible.

After two years the amount of members had trippled and we got the opportunity to reside in the Parkchurch on the Gerard Brandtstraat together with HJS and theater company Opus One. This cooperation worked out well and for any national- and international dance lover the Parkchurch was the place to be! Eventhough the facilities we'ren't the best the atmosphere was just great! The big comfortable studio, wonderfull/cozy foyer and of course the great schedule made sure the time we spend on the Gerard Brandtstraat was one we think back on with lots of beautifull memories. Because the Parkchurch needed to be renovated we - unfortunately- had to leave after 7 years. Renters (Opus One, HJS and ADC) didn't get offered the opportunity to come back after the renovations we're finished so we needed to find ourselves a new location.

We found one! Our new building is called ‘OLYMPIA’ and is a former movie theater.
The state the building was in was so bad that the only thing we could do was fully strip and reconstruct the entire place. Because time was our biggest enemy we had to split up and each find our own place to stay in as long as construction lasted. ADC found a temporary 'home' on the DaCostakade in a building from STAP.
Squaders, a difficult building permit, building put on hold etc. crossed our path and we're responsible for keeping us on the DaCostakade 5 ½ months instead of the original planned 2.
Thankfully we left all of this behind us and finally the moment has come!
On April 16th 2005 we moved to our new building! We have the use over two big studio's and one a little smaller. We are very happy that we also have a cozy foyer again in wich you can look into our ground floor studio thru a glass wall.
We made sure we placed floating dancefloors in all studio's and took care of new fully equiped soundsystems. Of course new piano's are also placed in the two biggest studio's. On the first floor we have a spacious dressingroom with newly built shower areas .
We offer many classes for adults and children and in the future we will always strive to expand and improve our entire program.

Finally I would like to wish everyone a great time with lots of dance pleasure in our new building.

Marie-José Swart