20th Dance anniversary at Lanterman

Ballerinas and little pink panthers danced across Lanterman Auditorium stage on Friday afternoon as members of Doreen’s Dance Studio celebrated their love of dance and the studio’s 20th year anniversary.

Twenty-six dancers performed 27 dances for an audience full of family and friends. And this year, owner and instructor Doreen Alderman joined her students on stage in some of the dances.

“It was fun, but to be honest I am still recovering,” Alderman said afterward.

“She really is a good dancer,” said fellow dancer and elementary student Kathryn Cassutt from La Cañada.

Cassutt has been a student with the dance studio for seven years and said she loves everything about dancing.

“What I like is if you do something wrong, Doreen explains it to you and helps you do it right,” Kathryn said.

Loyalty and devotion from students is a time-honored tradition at Alderman’s studio. Many of her students stay with her for years and end up teaching classes.

“Look at Megan Barker; she has been dancing with me for 15 years,” Alderman said. “And then to be such a great teacher that we have had to open a second class because she is so popular. That’s the most amazing thing.”

Alderman began her career as a dancer in New York where her first “claim to fame” she said was as one of the back up dancers for Steve Martin’s performance of “King Tut” on Saturday Night Live. She paid her dues in her New York with “a lot of dinner theater” she recalled. Then she danced on Broadway in “42nd Street.”

“Then I had my first child,” she said. Alderman was married to actor Kelsey Grammer at the time.

After her daughter Spencer was born, she went back to “42nd Street” performing in both New York and Los Angeles.

She and Grammer moved to Los Angeles where she played many roles in television and in a movie.

“But not enough to really support myself,” she said.

She went back to her first love of dancing and opened her studio in Glendale. Since then her life has changed. She had her second daughter from another marriage. Both daughters learned dancing at their mother’s studio. Throughout the many changes in her life the one constant has been dance and her students.