Education & Classes in Longmeadow

Ballroom instructor Jared Vigneault—recipient of the Top Teacher award at the 2012 Massachusetts DanceSport Challenge—draws from multiple dance degrees and eight years of ballroom experience as he works to infect his pupils with dance fever at Poise, Style & Motion. Along with a diverse cast of experienced instructors, he works to help students of all ages and abilities gracefully twirl across the dance floor through private and group lessons, social parties, and performances. They prepare their students to confidently cut a rug at dance clubs, weddings, competitions, and important business meetings with instruction in several styles. Their instruction range from the fast-paced footwork of swing and the merengue to the more stoic arts of the tango and waltz. To whip bodies into dance-athon shape, Poise, Style & Motion's instructors blend their fancy-footwork training with aerobics during their Latin-dance-inspired fitness classes. They also help dancers improve their endurance and pump up core muscles with modified merengue, samba, swing, and paso-doble dance steps.

When Jennifer Hill was a baby, her mother sang to her. When she was 2, she began singing full songs in tune. Throughout her childhood she sang at fairs, school musicals, and local sporting events, where she would belt out the traditional pregame rendition of "Welcome to the Jungle." She went on to receive a scholarship to the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music, and currently she's the frontwoman of the jazzy rock outfit Jennifer Hill & Co. Music has stitched through the entire fabric of her life, and for more than a decade, she has worked to help students discover the joy of creating beautiful noise.

Jennifer tailors each private lesson to the individual student and welcomes all musical styles and genres in order to encourage young artists to pursue their unique voice. Whether a student's passion is to tumble a jazzy melody across the piano keys or pen an infectious pop song, Jennifer lends students the confidence and expertise she has accumulated in more than 25 years as a performer.

Dick Doherty's Beantown Comedy Escape has three homes: Remington's Restaurant in Boston, New England Seafood Restaurant & Lounge in Methuen, and Park Grill & Spirits in Worcester. While the Methuen and Worcester locations bear the name Dick Doherty's Beantown Comedy Escape, the Boston location is known as Dick's Beantown Comedy Vault, since it resides in a renovated bank. With a 12-foot vault door serving as the background of its stage, the 75-seat venue has witnessed a quarter-century of confused cat burglars and standup comedians, including Dane Cook, who held a weekly gig there for more than a year, and fellow Boston natives Bill Burr and Joe Rogan. Dick Doherty's comedy clubs as a whole continue to detonate laugh dynamite with their rotating casts of national and local comedians.

Stacey Sparrow has a knack for teaching art. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art with a teaching certification, Sparrow has been helping students locate their inner Rembrandts for a decade while also creating her own commissioned works. With the help of a dedicated staff, she helms workshops and classes for adults and youngsters alike, rolling out specialty sessions such as vacation art programs that study the techniques and quirks of various artists, such as Picasso’s Blue Period and Michelangelo's tendency to sleep on the ceiling.

Professional bartenders teach in classrooms set up as fully functioning bars. The facilities present lifelike conditions for students to learn skills such as the proper shake and pour for a variety of cocktails, muddling raw ingredients, and getting the right amount of head on a draft beer. Courses also cover the technical elements of bartending, which may include setting up drink stations, understanding liquor laws and board-of-health requirements, and operating payment systems that accept both credit cards and gold ingots.