Andrea Travis of Flair Studio of Dance & Modeling
When this year’s National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade winds its way down Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C. on April 11, some of Baltimore’s best dancers will be there. They will have learned their craft from Flair Studio of Dance and Modeling, the over 40-year-old dance and etiquette school in Catonsville.
The Flair students will join hundreds of dancers from all over the country to perform in the parade. The event helps welcome spring to the area and highlights the cherry trees gifted to the United States from Japan as a mark of friendship.
Andrea Travis helps run the Flair along with her mother Willia Bland, who is the school’s founder. Travis said it is a horizon-expanding experience for the school’s young people.
“They are meeting students from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii,” she said. “It broadens their horizon. It’s just that simple. They see things they’ve never seen before, may never see again. They see things that other children will never see. It’s an exposure.”
Flair’s students have been performing in the parade for the past four years. They receive a video of the choreography and then teach it to the dancers who will be performing it.
The parade is not their only big-time gig, either. Travis said they are often asked to perform all over the country, and have even performed in the Miss America parade.
National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade. (Photo courtesy of nationalcherryblossomfestival.org)
The school has come a long way from where it started, when Travis’ mother and a friend founded Flair in 1968 in the friend’s living room.
“On Harlem Avenue, on the 2500 block,” she said.
The friend was a professional model and Willia Bland was a commentator, fashion consultant and beauty queen. At first, they specialized in things like etiquette and poise. They added dance several years later.
Travis said she was eight or nine-years old when the two women started. She didn’t take classes herself, but that doesn’t mean she missed out on a proper education in etiquette.
“My classes were daily with my mother. That was the perk of being her daughter,” she said. “She actually had me teaching when I was about 15, 16. I was actually teaching teenagers and adults her program.”
Their studio was at Mondawmin Mall for 16 years before they moved to their Catonsville location. Travis said they were known for the fashion shows they would put on there.
Travis said they have had many girls go on to great success after being trained at Flair. Her own daughter, Willia-Noel Montague who attended the Baltimore School of the Arts before dancing all over the world. She spent 10 years performing in the Lion King on Broadway before returning back to Maryland recently to help run Flair with her mother and grandmother.
“Noel had it in her spirit that she wanted to be a dancer. We kept supporting her,” Travis said