Nadine Vosse Smith

My Story

I started teaching dance classes at the age of 19. I taught at Art Linkletter, which was a chain of dance studios back in that day and also traveling to small towns in Arkansas and Tennessee renting space at community centers on my own until I built up enough clientele to rent my own building in the heart of Memphis, Tennessee. As a young child, my mom put me in dance class because I was shy, and I fell in love with it. Starting lessons with Margory Duckett and finishing with Burney Lyons of Memphis Tennessee, I trained in tap, jazz ballet, acro and modern dance. I traveled and danced, entertaining the troops with USO Tours, and I even danced on stage with Elvis, before Elvis was Elvis. I was “burned alive” as a professional magicians assistant and was a Can Can dancer in the Metropolitan Opera Performance of Carmen featuring Marguerite Piazza, along with many other performances and shows. As a studio owner, my dancers have been invited to be Mouseketeer’s on Disneys Mickey Mouse clubhouse, I’ve had dancers on Broadway in NYC, dancers perform on the Ted Mac amateur hour in New York, dancers over seas choreographing in Europe, Canada and cruise ships through the years. One of my students that I taught for several years became the mom of the now famous, Justin Timberlake. We’ve had dancers in Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles pursuing  their professional careers as dancers after high school and we have had dancers  representing several universities such as Memphis, Tennessee, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Alabama and Middle Tennessee state dance teams and companies. I moved the studio out to Collierville, TN in 1999 where my daughter, Jackie, has stepped in to continue the legacy of the studio. Our dancers have been competing locally and nationally for several years now.. winning a multitude of  titles at the regional and national level, and our dancers also have been training earning scholarships, protégés and assistant jobs around the country. We have the most amazing staff of professionals, a lot of our staff are former dancers of ours but our staff comes from all over the country! I now enjoy watching my grand daughter dance and being a fixture at the studio meeting new people, chatting with the dance family and watching the dancers excel at their crafts. I still occasionally make it to the dance room to clean some routines to get stage ready! We are super excited to be celebrating 60 years of dance this season and can’t wait to see what’s in store for NVS in the future!