For Pam White, a move to “The Happiest Place on Earth” comes with a little bit of sadness.
White, 51, owner of Concord’s Capital City Dance Center for the past 28 years, will soon attend her last competition with the studio. In July, she will move to Florida to work part-time as a character attendant at Disney World.
“It’s exciting to have this change – and mostly, some time to myself. But yesterday, when I was taking down stuff, I was sad because, you know, this has been my home,” she said. “Both my kids practically grew up here.”
Miranda Milano, a former dancer at Capital City Dance Center, will take over the studio and step in to fill White’s Mickey Mouse tap shoes.
Milano, 32, joined a class at the studio at age 4 – the second year White ran the place – and has been dancing ever since, with a career that has included professional stints and choreographing gigs.
“There’s a lot of people, like myself, that love dance because of that studio,” Milano said. “It’s where my roots were: Capital City Dance Center with Pam.”
The studio will undergo a few changes under Milano’s leadership, complete with a new name: NV Dance Productions. Additionally, dancers interested in the studio’s competition teams will now be required to audition, so they can be placed on a team corresponding to their abilities.
Milano said she wants to focus on continuing the studio’s growth by maintaining and improving the quality of dancers it produces.
“If there’s a little girl who wants to be a ballerina when she grows up, at least we’ve given her the foundation and the technique and passion that she’s not afraid to go out and audition and try these things,” she said.
This past year, 150 dancers attended the studio to learn ballet, lyrical, jazz, tap, clogging and hip-hop. As soon as a class exits one of the studio’s three rooms, the next class enters, White said, keeping the place fast-paced and full of action.
As she looked at the bare purple walls of her studio, White described her impending departure as “bittersweet.”
White has made the move to Florida before – to Disney, in fact. After graduating college in 1986, the New Hampshire native drove to Orlando and scored a job as a Disney parade dancer and character performer.
“When I was 11, I told my mom I was going to dance on the Castle Stage,” White said. “And I was actually doing that dream. I met my goal.”
In 1988, however, White received a chance to pursue the second of her “two dreams” when a former dance instructor offered to sell her the studio – just months before she was supposed to go on tour to Tokyo Disneyland.
“The other goal was to teach dance,” she said. “So I ended up leaving Disney, giving it up, because that’s what I wanted to do. . . . And I’m really happy with the way I did it.”
White poured her time and energy into the studio, heading a move from its old Main Street building to a larger studio on Hall Street in 1995. But for her, the most defining part of Capital City Dance Center is the people.
“It’s like a family,” she said. “I’m seeing students grow up.”
As she leaves her studio family in Concord, White will be reunited with others. In Florida, she will join her daughter Molly, who also works as a character attendant and hopes to dance in Disney World’s 45th anniversary parade, just as her mom did for the park’s 15-year celebration.
White will also work part-time for a travel agency. And she plans to drive two hours on the weekends to continue teaching dance at a studio.
But first, she gets to enjoy one final special moment with her Concord dance team. Come July, White and the team will travel South to perform their year’s work at Disney Springs in Orlando.
(Katie Galioto can be reached at 369-3302, kgalioto@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @katiegalioto.)