Millennium x Vogue
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The red wall is iconic. Visitors come from every corner of the earth to pay their respects. Some never leave. Topped with a towering sign that reads “Unity Is Diversity,” the studio wall is the centerpiece of Los Angeles’s Millennium Dance Complex, a six-room building in Studio City that has become not only the world’s most famous dance-training center but an unlikely hub of inclusivity and social justice. On Millennium’s social media accounts—its obsessed-over Instagram feed and YouTube channel, in particular—this red wall is a constant, powerful reminder that for the past 28 years, legendary dancers, choreographers, and pop superstars have honed their craft in front of it. The photos of famous patrons wallpapering the entrance are only the start: Janet Jackson trained here. So did Jennifer Lopez, Prince, Britney Spears, and Ariana Grande. And on a February afternoon, five of the best dancers in the world—Charlize Glass, Delaney Glazer, Stevie Doré, Dana Alexa, and Natalie Bebko—take position at the wall to shimmy their hips, ripple their spines, and toss their elbows with the percussive swag of drum soloists. There has never been a better time to be a woman working in the world of commercial dance—and Millennium is unparalleled in its ability to foster women’s careers.
Millennium hosts its fair share of competitive classes, but hip-hop is the studio’s bread and butter—the genre that most of its dancers and choreographers are asked for. In 1991, when Millennium founder Ann Marie Hudson—then a 28-year-old fresh off the plane from New York—took over the bankrupt Moro Landis Studios building, hip-hop was considered, in the dance community, a passing trend at best. “Finding hip-hop teachers was delightful, because there was no place for them to teach,” remembers Hudson. Her hiring criteria were simple: “Good people, good vibe, and pure talent—even if they’re a nobody off of a bus.” She was irreverent about résumés and intolerant of attitudes. She took a chance on first-timers, including a 12-year-old named Wade Robson, the wunderkind who would later work with ’NSync and Spears, and gave as much weight to Martha Graham as she did to House of Xtravaganza. She placed a sign reading “No racism, no sexism, just dance” on the door of the building to drive home her message.
“It really worked,” says Hudson, remembering the first time her studios were filled with celebrities rehearsing major projects and performances for awards shows. “It was on fire,” adds choreographer Laurieann Gibson, whose illustrious career includes collaborations with everyone from Missy Elliott and Lady Gaga to Sean “Diddy” Combs and Katy Perry. “It had the energy of you’ve made it.”
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Working with a vast roster of clients, from Mary J. Blige to Missy Elliott and the Jonas Brothers, “gave me my voice as someone who choreographed out of someone, instead of putting movement on someone,” says choreographer Laurieann Gibson. “Finding their rhythm, their patterns, where they breathe, and stringing that together from that perspective.”
“As soon as we step into the studio, that’s our family for that hour and a half,” says Oakland-born dancer Dominique Battiste (right). Her dance partner Meagan Nugent, from Dallas, agrees. “To find a team and to find people that support you in what you do, that's the most beautiful thing on the planet. You can’t make it to the top by yourself. When our friends have class, we post about them so that everyone knows about them. That’s how we stay united. That’s how we grow together and make sure sexism and racism don’t come inside our industry.”
Battiste booked her first job dancing on tour with Janet Jackson. Now, she’s working toward becoming a hip-hop and R&B artist. “Coming to Millennium,” she says, “you get what you expect: greatness. When you step in here, you’re following in the footsteps of great people. You have to own who you are as a person. Have some type of confidence within you, because from there on, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
Millennium’s leave-the-drama-at-the-door policy bred a creative atmosphere free of prejudice—and especially sexism. For all of the demand for female dancers in the industry, men still dominate positions of power—and most dance studios are owned and managed by men. Millennium, co-owned and managed by women, created a new platform for female choreographers. “There’s a sensitivity required to birth the next generation of anything,” says Gibson. “As women, we carry more than just children; we birth dreams, we birth possibilities. That energy is running through Millennium.”
“I’m sure people get noticed here all the time, but I don't see that being what Millennium is about,” says Nugent. “People love coming here [because] they can express themselves freely, unapologetically, very authentic and raw. I think that’s the best thing that anyone should be able to take from Millennium.”
Natalie Bebko, 17, came to Millennium from Detroit. “People get intimidated and feel like they have to be a really good dancer to come here. But Millennium is really open. Anybody can come here. Unity, diversity, their whole message is: Just come and dance. This is a studio for you to mess up, for you to learn, for you to grow and have fun.”
Stevie Doré started dancing in Bay City, Michigan, but Millennium gave her her first big break. “I came to take a Master Class with Galen Hooks. The video from that class kind of blew up virally. It was a really cool moment, because it reached so many people around the world. A lot of people want me to start teaching because of these videos. For the first time, I want to put out my own choreography—we can be so much more than the stereotypes that we get put in on a lot of jobs.”
Television opened doors for many of those who trained at the studio. Gibson earned a starring role in MTV’s Making the Band. So You Think You Can Dance, which launched on Fox in 2005, has turned many choreographers and dancers from niche talents into global stars. Millennium has filled judging panels and stages, from America’s Best Dance Crew to Hit the Floor to Dancing With the Stars. Nine years ago, Millennium launched its own YouTube channel, which draws hundreds of thousands of viewers, and its Instagram account has 1.3 million followers (for context, Broadway Dance Center, New York City’s most famous dance complex, has 138,000). The red wall features prominently—along with dancers performing moves that will be imitated all over the world.
Such social media attention means female dancers can define their own style and cross freely into once male-associated genres and roles. “The exposure Millennium has given to us is absolutely incredible,” says Glazer, 22, who recently struck a choreography deal with Champion. And women can take credit for work that’s too often lifted from them. Jae Blaze, the Millennium teacher and preeminent dancehall choreographer behind Kanye West’s “Fade” music video, is heading to Jamaica to offer free social media and industry training to other women in dance—many of whom have struggled to find opportunities. “The female choreographers there have zilch,” says Blaze. “Their male counterparts tour Asia and Europe, but the women stay home.”
“I made a trip on a very limited budget to come and train at Millennium,” says Brooklyn-born Dana Alexa (at right in a pink). “As soon as I walked into one class, I was hooked. It’s alive. It’s electric. I was like, ‘I’m moving to Los Angeles.’”
“With our new generation, we’re being seen a lot more,” says Santa Clara, California–born Charlize Glass, who was regrammed by Beyoncé when she was 12. “Normally, I’m here almost every day. It really helped my growth. I was one of the only younger dancers in the classes. It was scary, but it helped me become more confident. It also helped me get jobs, because you grow relationships with choreographers.”
“I knew I wanted to be a dancer the first time I took class at Millennium,” says Delaney Glazer (far right). “I had never seen anybody as good as the people in class, and it just inspired me to go back home and train. It's iconic.”
“It’s just starting to shift,” says Gibson. “As a woman—and as a black woman—I find it challenging and frustrating, and sometimes lonely, that I’m still fighting for respect, for acknowledgement. There are still times when I’ll be the only female in a room with decision makers. And when the job goes well, you are put in a position where you should be lucky you were let in!”
Hudson is determined to see Millennium’s ethos reflected on a broad social scale. “We want to nurture the next generation,” she says. And her studio is growing, with ten franchises around the world, from Beijing to Brazil—even as more and more dancers come to L.A. to lay sweat in front of the red wall. Millennium has been and will always be, Hudson says, “a template for what I want the world to be: no racism, raw talent, keeping it real.”
Benedetta Patuzzo (at left in gray) started learning dancehall when she was 14 in Verona, Italy. “I didn’t have a lot of support. My parents said I should have a regular job, that my passion should just be a passion. But I wanted to invest everything that I had in dance. I decided to spend three months in L.A. As soon as I got here, I saw that Jae Blaze was teaching dancehall. The class was amazing. The way she trained dancers—she’s just on a different level. I came constantly. After a few months, she asked me to be her assistant. So here I am. I’ve grown more in two years in L.A. than my 10 years back in Italy. We are really dedicated to the empowerment of women through movement.”
Alexandra “Xandi” Neal is a born-and-raised Angeleno who came to Millennium at a young age. “I was like, ‘I belong here.’” Now, she’s working on building her own dance brand. “I do a movement series with three different classes to connect the mind and body, called X Lyfstyl. It’s about awareness and intention to bring forth your dreams.” She sees X Lyfstyl as a “fitness, fashion, entertainment, and beauty” endeavor. “I get to do that at Millennium because they’re on that level.”
“With the women’s empowerment movement, there is a shift as far as the message,” says legendary dancehall choreographer Jae Blaze (at center), “but individually, in the little pockets of jobs and occupations, it’s still slow. We still have work. I want to see women in dance in more powerful positions. I want to see the transition of a dancer to a choreographer to a creative director to a producer. Those jobs, they’re just very male-dominated.”
“I created a women’s fitness dancehall class where we use resistance bands. It’s called JukGyal,” says Jae Blaze. “Right now it is toured between Italy, London, North America, and Jamaica. I want it to be as big as Zumba.”
“It's like the only school you see on all the videos online,” says Laurien Decibel, who discovered Millennium online while living in Belgium. “I even think back in the day, before YouTube was huge with the dance videos, it was already kind of the school you could find when you were looking up American choreographers or teachers. The industry’s here. Everybody knows the red wall. Even non-dancers know it. These dancers are celebrities for foreigners. That’s crazy.”
Alysia Douglas moved to L.A. to train at Millennium from Poughkeepsie, New York, just last year. Being away from home, she says, “I’m learning about myself, being a woman, and being and dancing strong. Other women [here] are empowering me by standing in their truth. I don’t have time to be sad. I have to stand tall, remember who I am, and know that I can. When I first came out here, I missed home. Jae [Blaze] is Jamaican, my family’s Jamaican. When I took her class at Millennium, I felt, ‘Oh, wow, I’m home.’”