Des Moines's northwest neighborhood has become an unlikely hub for modern dance training. We visited the studios to see what's real—and what's still aspirational.
On a Thursday evening in January, the parking lot behind Beaverdale's brick storefronts is nearly full. Inside a converted 1920s commercial building, fifteen dancers Cluster in a fourth-floor studio, warming up for an advanced contemporary class. The room has original hardwood floors, exposed ductwork, and one wall of mirrors that stops short of the ceiling. There is no virtual reality equipment. There is no biomechanics lab. There is, however, a waitlist.
Beaverdale is not a city. It is a neighborhood in northwest Des Moines, Iowa, spanning roughly six blocks of restaurants, repair shops, and—a growing number of—dance studios. Over the past five years, three contemporary-focused programs have established themselves here: Impulse Dance Project, Kinect Studio, and the Des Moines Contemporary Dance Conservatory (DMCDC), a nonprofit training arm affiliated with the city's professional company. Together, they serve roughly 400 students, from recreational adults to pre-professional teenagers with eyes on conservatory auditions.
What they share is a bet that serious contemporary dance training can thrive outside coastal cities. What distinguishes them is how each has carved out a different niche—with varying degrees of resources, ambition, and community integration.
From Ballet School to Contemporary Focus
Impulse Dance Project, founded in 2016, began as a traditional ballet academy. By 2019, enrollment had flattened. Director Maya Torres, 34, made a pivot.
"We kept losing teenagers to burnout," Torres says. "They loved dancing, but they didn't see themselves in Swan Lake. We asked: what if we trained them for the companies that actually exist now?"
Torres restructured the curriculum around contemporary and modern techniques—Graham, Horton, release-based work, and commercial contemporary—while keeping ballet as a weekly requirement rather than the dominant language. Enrollment in the teen program rose 40 percent between 2021 and 2023, she says. Two former students are now company trainees with Ballet Hispánico in New York and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
The studio's physical space remains modest: three studios in a renovated mixed-use building, with portable barres and a small conditioning room. Torres acknowledges the gap between her marketing language and her facilities.
"Honestly? We experimented with motion-capture once, partnering with Drake University's sports science program," she says. "It was fascinating. We couldn't afford to keep it. What we do have is a relationship with a physical therapist who comes in twice a month and watches our rehearsals. That's made a bigger difference for our students' longevity than any technology."
Engineering Meets Choreography—On a Budget
Two blocks south, Kinect Studio occupies the ground floor of a former auto-parts store. Founder David Okonkwo, a Des Moines native with a master's in dance from Ohio State, opened the space in 2021 with a specific mission: interdisciplinary collaboration between dancers and non-dancers.
The studio's name references the Microsoft motion-sensor device, which Okonkwo used in early workshop experiments. "It was a $50 Craigslist find," he laughs. "We projected particle effects that responded to the dancers' speed and height. Very lo-fi, but it got our students thinking about interface design, about how an audience experiences movement beyond just watching it."
Since then, Kinect has formalized partnerships with Iowa State University's industrial design program and a local electronic music collective, AuDSM. Once per semester, dancers and engineers co-develop a short performance piece, usually shown in the studio's raw 2,500-square-foot main space or at the Des Moines Social Club downtown. Admission is pay-what-you-can.
"We're not creating 'groundbreaking' work every six months," Okonkwo says. "Sometimes the collaborations fail. But our students are learning to communicate across disciplines, to pitch ideas to people who don't speak 'dance.' That's a transferable skill whether they perform professionally or not."
Kinect's enrollment is smaller—approximately 80 students—and Okonkwo has declined to expand into additional locations, citing the difficulty of maintaining personal mentorship at scale. Tuition for the pre-professional track runs $340 per month, below the regional average for comparable intensities, he notes.
The Conservatory Track
The most institutionally structured of the three programs, DMCDC, launched in 2022 as the education wing of Des Moines Contemporary Dance, a six-year-old professional company. It operates out of a dedicated facility on Beaverdale's northern edge, with four studios, on-site physical therapy services, and a partnership that allows advanced students to perform in the professional company's annual mixed-repertory show at the **Hoyt Sherman Place
