The click and clap of castanets echo from the flamenco studio, while across the hall ballet dancers gracefully plié at the barre. Further down the hall, dancers sail across the room in a specialized class called “Leaps and Turns.” Next door, in an old gas station converted into a dance studio, the walls pulse to hip-hop beats as dancers match moves with music. Even the lobby of Everything Goes Dance Studio, which opens onto 16th Street in Oklahoma City’s Plaza District, becomes a performance space as dancers skip in and out of the studios between classes.
Shannon Calderon Primeau, director and owner of the studio since 1995, offers her students a lifetime of dance experience, which she has mastered in training under dance legends including Jimmie and Carol Ann Crowell (who founded Crowellsville USA in 1960 and Everything Goes in 1976), El Arca, Patsy Swayze (mother of actor/dancer Patrick Swayze), Lydia Torea, Jose Junco and Adela Clara. In her 20-plus years of professional dancing, she has performed throughout the nation with the likes of Oklahoma’s own Edgar Cruz, as well as the late guitar master Ruben Romero. Primeau, along with her faculty of master teachers, offers classes in ballet, pointe, jazz, tap, hip-hop, modern, flamenco, Latin and Mexican folkloric dance. “No matter what your background is, anyone can come here and dance,” Primeau says.