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The Secret Garden of Dance was founded on April 19th, 2004 by two very passionate and experienced dance teachers, Gaye Harvey and Sanushka Ranasinghe. They envisioned more than just a dance floor, mirrors and a sound system, but a place where students could truly feel comfortable whilst experiencing the joys of dance. This vision has been the driving force behind The Secret Garden of Dance and since then they have successfully moved from a mobile dance service to a permanent location in Camberwell.

 

With a team of loyal friends and family, they spent four weeks converting a vacated solicitor's office into a beautiful dance studio on Burke Road. Although the risk was huge and it was an enormous task and was a huge risk

 

Gaye has been learning Ballroom, Latin and Rock ‘N' Roll dance styles for more than 15 years. She started out at a very young age with her brother as her partner, who was a national junior champion!

She has also been a highly sought-after dance teacher and has been teaching for over 10 years, at various dance studios in Melbourne, Sydney and in Perth. At one stage, she travelled to Hawaii with one of her advanced students to participate in an international amateur competition.

 

Sanushka's roots in dancing started from a very early age in his home country of Sri Lanka , where he would be a regular on the dance floors of various family parties and dinner dances. One of his earliest recollections of dancing was watching his two cousins perform a Contemporary/Jazz piece to Michael Jackson 's “Bad”. Since then, his love for Michael Jackson's dance and music has grown immensely to the point where he uses many of Jackson 's moves in his own choreography!

 

 

What's behind the name?

 

The name ‘The Secret Garden of Dance' came from a few inspirations and ideas that the founders Gaye and Sanushka shared. They knew that their dance studio was going to be unique and would offer their students more than just dance instruction. Both Gaye and Sanushka felt that their students should not feel like they're entering a shop or a corporate workplace, where everything must be bought. Instead it was to be a place that was welcoming and easy going, and the primary focus was on having fun whilst learning to dance. So they felt the name itself would have to be unique and would most likely not conform with ‘marketing standards'

 

Gaye and Sanushka also felt that dancing is a natural form of art and has deep ties with culture and history. Dancing itself should be an organic thing, something that has a living and breathing rhythm. This idea compelled them to find a name close to nature or something that was more down-to-earth.

 

Finally, they also decided to somehow incorporate the letters ‘g' and ‘s' after Gaye and Sanushka, as it was going to be a dance studio that reflected their own personal visions and philosophies. This obviously ties into the use of ‘Garden' and ‘Secret' and that's how the name, ‘The Secret Garden of Dance' came into existence!

 
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