Photo by Jon Anderson.
Nealey Towns Alonso, the owner of the Jackie O’Neal Dance Studio, leads pre-teen girls in a master jazz class.
The Jackie O’Neal School of Dance has been around since 1948 and moved to its current location in Rocky Ridge Plaza in 1996, but the school in recent years has changed hands.
It did not, however, leave the family.
O’Neal’s granddaughter, Nealey Towns Alonso, took over ownership and management of the school about two years ago from her mother, Tammy Towns.
But Alonso isn’t new to the dance studio either. She grew up in it, dancing from age 2 to 18, then dancing as a Tiger Paw at Auburn University and a couple of years in New York City before returning to Vestavia Hills about 20 years ago to teach at her family’s studio.
Alonso developed a love for teaching at the Broadway Dance Center in New York City but decided there was no better place to teach than at the studio her grandmother started.
“It’s a really special place,” she said. “It’s more than just teaching dance. We teach the whole human. We focus on creating young leaders. It’s helping our kids know their self-worth, understand teamwork, giving their best, supporting and encouraging others.”
The studio has about 350 students each week learning everything from jazz and ballet to tap, acrobatics, hip hop and lyrical contemporary dance in five dance rooms. The season runs from Labor Day to the third weekend in May, but there also are summer intensives, summer camps and an infusion program that brings in choreographers from places such as New York and Nashville.
About 100 students are in companies that travel around the South to compete.
“It’s an absolute privilege to teach these amazing kids that are exceptional dancers, but more importantly incredible human beings with kind hearts and caring spirits and compassion for one another,” Alonso said.
