The smell is cappuccinos and French pastries. The sound is little feet scurrying around the studio waiting for instruction. The sights are kids with pink tutus and hair in buns and half-awake locals waiting for their coffee. It’s a beehive of activity on Monday morning at Ooh La La Dance Academy and le Petit Chateau coffee house. It’s Day 1 of summer camp, dance-style. Kids ages 7 to 15 get the chance to learn ballet, jazz and all the classic dance methods. And the adjoining coffee house is humming along to folk tunes from the radio. La Jolla-based owners Damien and Susie Grafte recently expanded their one-room dance academy to two large dance studios and a French-inspired coffee house. Damien runs the coffee house side and Susie leads the dance academy. Why expand a dance studio to include coffee? The Graftes wanted to offer parents and guests a place to relax in a culturally diverse atmosphere wherein art mediums commingle. “In big arts cities like New York and Paris,” Damien explains, “arts are a social thing. At our place, people can watch dancing, gather, have coffee while they dance, whatever!” Perhaps best of all, it gets the parents out of their cars and off their phones and into the coffee house to talk and take in Damien’s original art on the walls. In addition to kids’ classes, the studio space has allowed Susie to expand popular classes like Hot Tango Tuesdays, where you can take a tango dance class in a relaxed community environment or just mingle at the coffee house. The academy’s 20-plus instructors teach everything from Latin burlesque to cha-cha-cha and ballet. Students who take part in major recitals for the dance academy get to travel with the group. This summer’s troupe destination is Greece. “It’s a family atmosphere here,” says Cassandra Stephens, dance instructor and part-time barista. Susie started Ooh La La in 2011 in San Diego after years of loving dance. “When salsa dance exploded in 2003, I got addicted,” she says. “I would work in Santa Barbara and then dance at night for four [or] five hours in Los Angeles.” That’s when she began entering competitions, eventually placing 10th in the world with cabaret lifts and tricks and salsa. The owners met in Bora Bora, even though he’s originally from the Bordeaux region of France. When they decided to get married, his dancing background and love for French culture made for a perfect business partnership for the couple. Ooh La La Dance Academy and le Petit Chateau, located at 7467 Cuvier St., is open seven days a week for dance instruction, parties and competitions and coffee. For more, see ollda.com or call (858) 456-4500.
