DWL Featured in the Greenville Journal

Dance Without Limits has recently been featured in the Greenville Journal! Check out the article below:

Instructor teaches students to Dance Without Limits

Beth Bradley is the oldest of 18 children.

Only two are her biological siblings, and all of the remaining 15 are considered special needs of varying levels of physical and mental abilities. Four have needs severe enough to remain in her parents’ care the rest of their lives.

Bradley’s parents began adopting children in need when she was 10 years old, adding a new sibling each year after. She learned quickly to change diapers and even how to use a feeding tube by the time she was a teenager. As she grew older, her resentment for the amount of responsibility she was expected to undertake also grew. As an adult, though, she’s grateful.

“None of it was my decision. It’s not really my story, but it shaped who I am,” Bradley says.

Through those difficult years, dance became a haven for her, and now she’s using it to help others.

Bradley, who founded Dance Without Limits dance studio in Greer where her three daughters now dance, has created a teaching environment inclusive of all abilities, something that is a rarity in the often competitive and high-pressure dance world.

“We’ve been able to create a place for kids that didn’t have a place before,” Bradley says.

Each class, from the beginning preschool ballet level through high school hip-hop can accommodate students with developmental and physical delays to a certain degree. The “limitless friends” class is specifically for dancers with different abilities of any severity. Older students without any dance experience can feel comfortable in a beginning class.

The model has been so successful that after three years in the current location at 2105 Old Spartanburg Road, the studio needs to move to a larger space.

The new location in the same shopping center as Irashai Sushi Pub in Greenville is currently under construction. The studio spans three storefronts at 115 Pelham Road, Suite 24, with twice the square footage as the old spot and three dance rooms instead of one. The additions also mean hiring additional instructors to allow for more classes at popular times, which will keep Bradley from having to turn away interested students when classes are full.

“We opened with 30 kids,” Bradley says. “We have 335 students now, and they just keep showing up, which I’m so thankful for.”

The 15 siblings she helped care for while she lived in her hometown of Hendersonville, North Carolina, were the reason she entered a niche market within the dance community. Even now her parents bring their children — wheelchairs, walkers and all — to each one of Bradley’s studio performances to show their support. Beyond that, it’s a physical reminder for the hundreds of attendees of the Dance Without Limits mission.

Bradley began dancing at 4 years old in the same studio she would eventually co-own and run in Hendersonville before opening Dance Without Limits in Greenville in 2016. It wasn’t her idea, though, to add classes for students with disabilities.

“I did it because my mom told me to,” she says.

Her mom wanted Bradley to offer a dance class for her siblings. That required more than simply adding it to the schedule. She says she had to learn how to teach kids who move differently and how to make instructions tangible for them.

“I learned how fully capable they are,” she says. “They’re just kids like every other kid and they can learn to dance like any other kid.”

Bradley says the hard work is rewarding, seeing these special students meet physical milestones because of taking dance classes.

After moving to Greenville in 2014 for her husband’s job, she continued commuting to Hendersonville to teach, hauling her own daughters back and forth.

She eventually had enough of the driving and decided to open a studio in Greenville, thinking naively ‘this will be easy.’ She knew no one in Greenville and started completely from scratch.

“If I had known what I know now, I wouldn’t have ever done it,” she says.

Word of mouth and a crash course in social media marketing led to significant growth after the first few months with parents gravitating towards a more inclusive, less-strict environment.

And now she’s taking what she considers another big risk with the new location, but she knows she can do it.

“When I find something I’m all about, I’m all about it,” she says.

Read the article on the Greenville Journal website.