The best place to host your little girls bday party! It took me a while to finally write this…read morereview but it was so magical. We went with Elsa and Anna and they were amazing. Everyone loved it!!! Anna and Elsa made my little one feel so special. They did a dance for the audience that was beautiful to watch and then they invited my daughter to dance with them!! She felt so special!! I loved it so so so much. It's like a Disney show brought to you. And so spacious too! You can invite lots of kids!9 Reagan was so wonderful to work with. The staffs were amazing!!!! Made it super easy to plan and execute!!

Ray Of Light is truly a unique dance studio. I signed my daughter up in 2019 right before the…read morepandemic, and ever since we've loved it. This dance studio is very family oriented. They hold fundraisers which go toward the dancers and competition teams. The events are also very family oriented. My older kids love attending them to watch all the performances with lots of fun activities and many vendors. Ray Of Light dance studio has a special needs hip hop dance class which I find amazing because not many dance studios I know offer this. Our team just had their first "Epic" dance competition where my daughter and her team won 2 awards, one for taking 2nd overall in the competition and the Confidence is Key Award! This is an amazing dance studio! I have watched my daughter grow so much. She has gained not only friends but a family. I enjoy watching my daughter sing, dance and performing in plays with confidence. This dance studio is truly about the art and not about the awards. Love seeing the kids performing as a team and truly enjoy their art.

My toddlers (started at 2.5 years old) love going to Hudson Gymnastics! They get to freely explore…read moreso many different equipment at their own pace. Coach Rawnna is always keeping a close eye on all the kiddos and will offer support and brief 1-1 instruction throughout the class. I appreciate her gentle and warm approach to get my kids to try new skills/movements. We definitely wanna keep signing up!

Hudson Gymnastics is a wonderful gym! It's clean, spacious & the instructors are warm, professional…read more& great with the kids! My daughter takes classes with Ms. Tawnya; she is amazing (as is all the staff)! We love that the monthly classes are themed (e.g., one month was a dinosaur theme), and we highly recommend them!

We had an incredible experience working with Sam and the entire team. From the start, they were…read morekind, welcoming, and truly invested in helping us feel comfortable and confident. Sam is one of the sweetest people I've met she takes her time, makes everything easy to understand, and ensures we feel great about our wedding dance. What started as a fun date my fiancé planned turned into something really special we continued lessons for our wedding, and it's been one of the best decisions we've made. The whole team is amazing always supportive, full of helpful tips, and bringing creative ideas to enhance the experience. The environment is warm, encouraging, and never intimidating. No matter your skill level, they make you feel like you belong. This has been such a fun and memorable experience for us we're so grateful we found them. Highly recommend!

Great lessons great customer service great times! The staff there are amazing, thoughtful and…read morehelpful. I have two left feet and they have done a great job with making me comfortable and feel like I'm improving.

My bestie and I are in our BTS era. So when a dance cover choreo class for 2.0 showed up on our…read morefeed, I just needed to see if my schedule was free and well I was. So we went! L O C A T I O N MKC Project is located in a two story house building near the Cinema Place Parking lot which is where they suggest parking as it's next to the place and it's free parking. Note if you park on the first floor it does smell like pee. You may want to go up a floor to avoid your car smelling a bit pee-like. I N S I D E Note that the place is a nut free space so make sure you don't bring any nuts as they want to make sure folks who have nut allergies have a safe space. You go through two sets of gates (one at the front, then another inside). Then go inside the place and go up a set of stairs. One room has cubby holes for your stuff. They have a restroom also and then there's a fairly spacious room for the class. C L A S S Reservations on evite and it cost roughly ~$33 for the 1.5 hour class. Make sure to reserve your spot as they do sell out. I think there's a slight discount if you sign up early. Saori Sunaga from The Ruby Slippers was our instructor who is apparently baby ARMY! She basically started learning more about them as she started teaching these BTS cover classes. She already taught Dynamite before this class. The first half hour or so we got into a circle and introduced ourselves, how we found BTS, any biases, and any other choreo we'd be interested in learning. To be honest, this was great, I loved being able to just geek out with other ARMY, but I think it also pushed us over time as we ended up going about half an hour over to learn the set of choreo for the class. Then it was class. We got into lines and we drilled the harder stuff first and took our time. I appreciated Saori slowing down the steps and making sure we were comfortable moving on. She also made sure we swapped rows though some folks ended up not going to the front which I get. I did feel the later half of the class felt a bit rushed as we were running out of time but it is what it is. When we covered what we needed to cover, she broke us up into 3 groups to do a final run through at about 0.75x the full speed. Everyone was great and cheered and just was a good place to just have some fun regardless of your level of experience. This choreo is hard but it was fun when you get it down! At the end end, for MKC's socials, folks who wanted to be part of their post did one more final run through. O V E R A L L This was so much fun. Would I do it again? Yes. Absolutely. Am I still trying to get this choreo? Yes. It's hard y'all! But it's inspired me to do more dance choreo or at least learn the rest of this particular song. It's a super supportive environment. The instructor is wonderful and supportive and encourages us to speak up if we don't get a move. The space is great. Free parking also great. Just wish this was closer to home! They do have other classes so if this kind of class doesn't suit you, they also have other dance styles. Check them out and just have fun and dance!

MKC is a true diamond in the rough--a dance studio offering an impressive variety of styles in a…read morewarm, welcoming environment. The owner, Marikar, is kind, empathetic, professional, and adored by the kids. She's built a community that feels genuinely inclusive for dancers of all ages and backgrounds. MKC is a judgment-free zone where kids can truly be themselves--surrounded by friends and real opportunities to grow. Rosselyn Ramirez is a world-class ballerina whose technical expertise and boundless artistry speak for themselves. The kids' inspiration in her presence is visibly clear. Marikar has cultivated an elite team that makes every dancer feel supported and seen. In a time when the world (and technology) can make social environments overwhelming, MKC gives kids a space to be silly, move freely, and feel like kids again. What more could you ask for?

We celebrated our daughter's 5th birthday here, and it was absolutely wonderful! They truly thought…read moreof everything. They provided cupcakes, a Happy Birthday sign, candle, and party favor bags--items I had already purchased myself, but I could have saved so much time and money! Elianna was an absolute dream to work with. She kept us updated on the flow and timing of the party, and she was warm, attentive, and fantastic with all of the guests. This location was also incredibly accommodating. Our party fell during Thanksgiving break when most nearby Tutu Schools were closed and unwilling to host events, but this team graciously allowed us to book during that time. We're so grateful!

Ms Eliana is and was very welcoming for my daughters first time and continues to be thrilled about…read moregoing to ballet school. Thank you we appreciate you!

Allison is a wonderful art teacher and my daughter really enjoyed taking her art classes for the…read morepast year. She is a kind spirited person and really awesome/patient with kids of all ages. Her classes are fun and creative. My daughter always had something beautiful to bring home, and alot of them are hung up in her room at our new place :) Art classes can get expensive but i find Allison's fees to be very reasonable and it is for an hour and a half...Unfortunately we moved out of SL and the classes had to stop, if we were any closer, i would sign my daughter up for her classes in a heart beat! There is a beautiful garden and a play structure right in front of her school, another plus!

Mulford Gardens is a sweet lushly vegetated, pergola blooming playground, outdoor venue, and art…read moreschool tucked off a side street on the industrial section of San Leandro. I saw a sign for a children's art camp and took the opportunity to enrich my little peanut who goes through paper like a bag of Doritos with a little formal instruction. The camp lasted a week, three hours daily, and concluded with a celebratory art show and family friendly picnic. The instructor, Allison, is a talented life long artist from a family of artists, who currently runs the day to day functions of the park along with the school in the rear building. She is amazing with rowdy smocked children running amok flinging actual paint and canvases--not washable fingerpaint, but wear your play garb for a genuine, stain inducing introduction to techniques of fine art. My daughter came home with a bagful of illustrations of every animal known to man, a finished canvas, and a memory of an experience she wants to repeat again. Fortunately, the school offers both after school programs during the year and multiple sessions in the summer. Additionally, there are adult classes--one in the late afternoon and another on Wednesday evenings that I recently decided to dip my 'haven't painted in 20 years palette' into. It's been a fabulous three classes so far. A traditional art curriculum with warm ups, exercises in charcoal still life's, cross hatching, scratch etching, and sustained work on oil canvas. Allison knows when to give guidance and when to let you figure out brush strokes on your own. I'm learning to ride my "artist" bike all over again and enjoying every challenging, creative moment. I highly recommend this obscure little school in San Leandro. I hope it grows like the garden it's situated in.

Love, love, love Teacher Nora! This is my 3 yr. old daughter's third class and each time she has…read morelooked forward to coming...the biggest shocker is that she lets me leave her there and doesn't notice me gone! Teacher Nora keeps the little ones engaged at all times and has a great ability to make her class fun while at the same time stays in control of her class - she also has a natural confidence with kids, and carries herself like the trained dancer she is. This is a perfect dance class from which we plan to move her on to pre-ballet then (formal) ballet (with my daughter's approval) in the future. We feel lucky to have her as my daughter's first dance teacher! Good to know: Her classes are held at the wonderful Ruby's Tumbling.

I have two daughters who have many treasured memories from taking gymnastics, aerial arts, dance,…read moreand musical theater at Kids N Dance since they were little. They both developed innumerable skills and grew emotionally in countless ways under the supportive guidance and encouragement from all of the staff there, and especially from the owners. One of my daughters joined the Cirque Masquerade troupe (Expression Arts) in 2023, when she was 16. As in previous years, she has only positive things to say about Esme, Kris, and Marielle during her time in Cirque Masquerade. Like everywhere else in life, we have found at Kids N Dance that while things may not always be perfect, the staff there are all highly skilled at what they do, are compassionate and sincere, and very open to communication. As in other situations in life, rather than avoiding communication, it is always better to reach out with an open mind towards understanding the other's perspective instead of lashing out with negative reviews. Esme is brilliant, caring, and highly skilled, and like all of us, also human and not yet perfect. In our experience, it should be and is possible for mature adults to hold concerns about a perceived problem, and at the same time still recognize and show appreciation for the incredibly hard work that Esme, Kris, and Marielle have all done in order for our kids to be able to put on these magnificent shows. And let us remind ourselves that in situations where we demand curiosity from others, we should hold ourselves to the same standard and demonstrate the same curiosity towards them.

It is unfortunate that I must write this review, but we do so for the benefit of future families…read morethat may be considering Kids n Dance or Expression Arts as an outlet for their children. A little about our experience. Our daughter has taken many classes at Kids n Dance (owned and managed by the same persons who own and manage Expression Arts). As she grew older and developed a passion and skill for circus, she joined Expression Arts and was part of their circus troupe for 3 seasons. For a time, circus was a haven for our child. She built a community with the peer troupers and truly enjoyed the challenge and art of circus. Over the past two seasons, we have increasingly heard of concerns by our daughter about the environment at Expression Arts. While we were receptive to her concerns, we initially tried to ask our daughter to trust the program, embrace the challenges as opportunities to learn, and to believe in the positive intent of Esme, Kris, and Marielle. But over the past season the concerns and experiences have escalated. Numerous troupe members have come forward to raise awareness of troubling experiences endured over the course of years. Some of the concerns raised by troupe members and our daughter directly: Unsafe Physical Environment-Troupe members raised concerns of inadequate warm-up, inadequate breaks, extended time upside-down, and a persistent culture of pushing through pain and injury. During the lead up to performances, the children are often at practice for 6+ hours. Practice increases in frequency until the final few weeks preceding shows, where practice is nearly every day. During the two weeks of performances, troupers were initially asked to do 1 show on Friday, 2 shows on Saturday, and 3 shows on Sunday. Each show is ~2.25 hours. It was only after there were serious concerns raised in a parent conference with Kris and Marielle, that the 3rd performance on Sunday was cancelled. The standards, rigorous schedule, and high-risk performance are a dangerous recipe for the safety of the troupe members. Emotional Manipulation and Inappropriate Behavior- Esme often drifts between friend and coach with the troupe members. This relationship is confusing for the troupe members, with Esme using this bond to instill her values on the children and also playing favorites. Multiple troupe members have noted that Esme can be erratic in her behavior, switching between positive behavior and disparaging and belittling language. In one incident, Esme told our daughter that she must have "ADD" after our daughter offered to help with transitions. In another incident, Esme commented on the body figure of a trouper. And in another incident, she told a group of troupe members that their act was "stupid". In isolation these incidents may be explainable (and Kris and Marielle have attempted to rationalize all of the incidents), but what can't be explained or rationalized is how widespread and consistent the experiences are amongst the troupe members. After a senior troupe member sent a note to the troupe parents about her own traumatic experiences with Expression Arts, numerous troupe members came forward and shared consistent and repeated experiences. What is most concerning about our experience with Expression Arts is not the negligence of Esme, Kris, and Marielle, it is the complete lack of accountability and curiosity to do something about the numerous concerns raised by the troupe members and families. It is our belief that Esme, Kris, and Marielle have the best of intent. We believe they want to provide a safe place for children and to cultivate a thriving community built around circus. We also believe they are wholly incompetent and untrained in how to create this place. The incompetence can be addressed, there are programs like SafeSport which, coupled with Esme's passion for the art, could transform the space. But Esme, Kris, and Marielle first need to face the root of the issue and take the concerns seriously. After the senior troupe member raised concerns about her own experiences, she was abruptly removed from the troupe and essentially called a liar. The parents of the troupe then demanded a conference with Esme, Kris, and Marielle. Esme did not attend, but Kris and Marielle spent the bulk of 90 minutes deflecting and taking no ownership or corrective measures. Despite her initial love and passion for circus arts, our daughter has decided to close this chapter of her life and move on. Despite everything we note above, our sincerest hope is that Expression Arts and Kids n Dance thrives and can be a safe place for our youth to grow and express themselves. For this to happen, two things are needed: 1) Esme, Kris, and Marielle need to be curious, vulnerable, and accountable for the harm they are causing to the children. No more deflection. 2) Esme, Kris, and Marielle need to pursue the ongoing training to equip themselves to appropriately and safely engage with children and young adults.