kids Dance and cheer
At Aspire Total Fitness we are passionate about giving our students an enjoyable and safe experience that fosters growing into great human beings, kind teammates, and strong dancers! With a fun-loving and award-winning team of instructors, we are confident your dancer will develop a stronger love for dance and greater sense of self-confidence.
OUR KIDS PROGRAMS
Level 1 Hip-hop
This is a great class for ages 5-12 looking to begin learning about dance. Come discover why dance is so great! We learn about hip hop technique, rhythm and musicality, and have lots of fun too!
Level 2 Hip-hop
If your dancer is ages 7+ with a passion for dance and two or more years of recent dance or musical theater experience, this class may be the perfect fit! Level 2 students are challenged with a faster paced teaching-style and added difficulty in choreography. Due to the higher difficulty level, all students must have teacher approval to join.
PRESCHOOL DANCE
We offer both Pre-K Ballet and Pre-K Hip Hop to all little dancers ages 3-4. We make dance fun while learning. Our curriculum was created to encourage age appropriate creativity, musicality, and physicality. Dancers will be brought through basic dance technique, interactive play, and more!
Ballet 1
This is the perfect class for elementary school-age dancers with little to no ballet experience. This class will focus on the basic movements and foundations of ballet technique. Dancers will develop an awareness of their alignment, strength, flexibility, and basic ballet vocabulary. This class will allow dancers to grow in all other areas of dance, as ballet is the foundation of all dance.
POM
Taught by former collegiate dance and cheer athletes, this class is high energy, challenging, and tons of fun. If your dancer is ages 7+ with a passion for dance and two or more years of recent dance or musical theater experience, this class may be the perfect fit! In this class students learn to cheer, stunt, and dance. Poms are a required additional purchase for this class, which will be ordered for each dancer by the instructor. Due to the higher difficulty level, all students must have teacher approval to join.
DANCE LAB
Encouraged for dancers age 7+! Students will develop and enhance their abilities to jump, turn, leap, and emote with grace and control. Blended with a dance genre of the instructors’ choosing (usually lyrical, contemporary, or jazz), as an opportunity to apply that technique to choreography.
SHOOTING STARS
This team of dancers auditions yearly for their spot in our performance and travel group. Requirements include being 7+ years old, having a passion for dance and performing, with 2+ years of dance experience, looking to take their dancing to the next level. This team participates in performances, exhibitions, and more. Dancers must attend both Shooting Stars and Dance Lab required classes per week and will be given the great honor of representing Aspire Total Fitness in front of large audiences.
Meet Our Coaches
COACH KATIE
Dance Director, PreK Dance, Hip Hop, Ballet, Contemporary/Lyrical, Jazz, Technique
With over a decade of coaching experience, I am thrilled to call Aspire Total Fitness my full-time job and home-away-from-home. I have taught, managed, choreographed, and coached for several local studios, high school dance teams, and award-winning soloists in the greater Portland area, but nothing compares to Aspire!
Our dancers are passionate, kind, and driven–and I feel so lucky to teach them! With a bachelor’s degree in science of nursing, and years of experience as an in-patient pediatric nurse, I am overjoyed to be applying my education and knowledge towards my true passions: dance and fitness!
I truly love my job and the work I get to do with Aspire Total Fitness. I also love being a mom to my daughter Wrenley, a firefighter’s wife, a friend and auntie, a Disney fan, and an avid snack-consumer.
“In life, as in dance, grace glides on blistered feet” -Alice Abrams
COACH MISSY
Dance Teacher, Pom/Cheer, Hip Hop, Contemporary/Lyrical, Jazz, Technique
Missy has danced since the age of 4 with a little push from Co-Owner Erica Knittel. **Which to this day she will tell you changed her life for the best**
Growing up, missy was involved in sports ranging from volleyball to cross country, but never gave up her love for dance. Fitness became a huge part of her
Life as she got into High School and realized how important it was to her success in athletics. Teaching around the country with Northwest Dance Company every summer was a quick lesson on how to bring it, even when you’re exhausted and sweaty.
After moving to Arizona Missy became 1 of 3 trainers at Scottsdale’s premier boutique gym BODI and ran the run club there for 3 years. Missy’s career began to take center stage and after moving to Texas, fitness took a backseat momentarily. As Covid hit, home called, and it sounded like Erica and Bexley on the other end asking if I would come and help for a few weeks while the current dance teacher was on maternity leave. Two years later and here I still am!
COACH BROOKE
Dance Instructor
Brooke’s love of dance started at 10 years old. She started learning fundamentals and technique at 11. She trained at a couple studios in the Gresham area but dove in head first to dance team at Reynolds High School under coach Holly Yeck. It was there she met Sonya Duffin, whom she continued to train and perform with after high school and in her early 20s.
Pure Dance Company is where Brooke got to really appreciate the art of dance and she will forever be grateful for those years of artistry. She also has a huge love for musical theater.
Brooke took about 9 years off of dance, in that time she married her husband Richard and started their family. Brooke has 3 wild toddlers who keep her very busy!