Dancing Denise Wears Many Hats,Brings Smiles

While her studio is best known for teaching children, Denise Ugino Baller also teaches yoga, Zumba, barre exercise classes and country line dancing at area venues—and, among other things, she leads a group that performs at local nursing homes and teaches movement and dance to their residents

By Linda Quinlan

 

Denise Ugino Baller’s career, including a dance school that turns 41 this year, has evolved, but her energy and positive attitude have remained a constant.

You might need a scorecard to keep up with her schedule.

What Baller started as a dance school 41 years ago has evolved. Dancing With Denise is still a dance school, but she now teaches not only children at her own studio but also dance and movement to all ages.

“It sounds like a lot, but it’s just the way I’m wired,” said Baller, who turned 60 earlier this year.

She credits her late mother, “Miss Tina,” to her youngest charges, for the drive to start working with the elderly.

When her mother needed to be in a nursing home, Baller created the Happy Feet Dancers from among her student population, to travel there one time a month to perform. That led to visits to other nursing homes.

Today, she also travels to and teaches movement and dance to residents at a number of nursing homes throughout the area.

During the pandemic years, beyond difficult for any owner of a small business, she continued to teach, but online. She often dressed up as a princess or in another costume to keep her students’ attention. She even hosted her annual dance recital online.

During those same years, she started practicing yoga.

“You might say yoga found me,” she said.

She has always adapted as needed.

She actually started her dance school — she originally rented space at Irondequoit’s former St. Salome School — while she was in college. She attended Monroe Community College, then Rochester Institute of Technology, earning a degree in business management with a minor in psychology. She said she’d run her business and teach dance — at her own school and at various day care centers around the area — on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and take her college courses on Tuesday and Thursday.

It was after college that she reconnected with a former classmate, Billy Baller, from Bishop Kearney High School. He owned the former Boundaries Gym on Hudson Avenue in Irondequoit and ultimately offered to build her a dance studio in the same building.

The two were married and will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary this summer.

After their twins, Joseph and Kristina, now 19 and in their first year of college, were born, she said she “needed movement.” That’s when she also became a Zumba instructor and earned her 200-hour yoga certification.

She now teaches not only dance, but also yoga, Zumba, a barre exercise class and even country line dancing at area venues.

She teaches several of her classes each week at the Webster Community Center.

When the Irondequoit building their businesses were in was sold about 13 years ago, the Ballers took a leap of faith and purchased a building in Webster.

“Billy is literally the wind beneath my wings,” she said. “We are a team. We wouldn’t have accomplished what we have without each other.”

The building they bought at 1077 Gravel Road, Webster, “was a disaster,” she said. “It had no curb appeal, the property was unkempt and the inside was gross and disgusting.”

Her husband had a vision. He dedicated his time, after closing his gym, to fixing the building. He first built a dance studio for his wife, then eventually created a gym and private training center in the basement.

More recently, she said he put an addition on the building. That rented space is now home to Webster CrossFit.

“We led a very frugal lifestyle for a lot of years,” she said, adding, “but the building is self-sufficient now.”

Their efforts earned her a Webster Business Person of the Year award from the Webster Chamber of Commerce in 2020.

Billy now uses his space in the building to train people with special needs.

She has also picked up the special needs mantle. Through Community Habilitation (ComHab),, a state-funded program that provides personalized training for people with developmental disabilities, she works with a 30-year-old woman.

“I bring her with me to nursing homes and we work on money management, grocery shopping, cooking. I try to boost her confidence,” she explained. “I love being a role model.”

Besides ComHab, having her own studio and teaching at the community center, she now leads programs at 20 different places in the greater Rochester community.

Yes, she keeps a calendar on her phone to help her keep track of where she needs to be and when.

She’s especially busy in the fall. She is entering her 20th year as children’s host of the Nutcracker Magical Christmas Ballet, an adult touring company of dancers from Europe. They do one performance each November or December in Rochester and she trains the children.

“Every child who auditions gets a part,” she said.

She estimates that she has taught literally thousands of children in her career to date.

“And now I’m teaching the second generation — the children of past students,” she added.

Brittany Conlon currently has three daughters aged 11, 7 and 3 in Baller’s dance school.

“I like her ability to get on the same level as the children,” Conlon said. “She just does so well handling children.”

Mary Ketchen of Pittsford just got her granddaughter started at the school.

A ballroom dancer herself, Ketchen said she wanted her granddaughter to have the full experience of ballet and tap lessons, as well as getting to perform and wear costumes.

“It’s her first experience dancing. But she seems to enjoy it,” Ketchen said.

Arabella Giglio, 16, enjoyed Dancing with Denise so much that she not only took classes for 13 years, but now also helps out as an assistant.

“I love Denise’s positive energy and all the love,” Giglio said. “And I love getting to see the kids grow…. This (assisting in classes) is an amazing opportunity to follow Denise, too!”

What her business was when she started it at 19 is not what it is now that she’s 60, Baller said. “But the constant has always been to have fun and build confidence.”

It remains a noncompetitive dance school, meaning that students aren’t encouraged to attend dance competitions.

“I’m always trying to teach the kids that it doesn’t take a lot to make someone happy,” Baller said.

She incorporates community outreach into a lot that she does.

For instance, in the winter, students are encouraged to “adopt” an elder and buy small gifts for them that are then distributed at holidays.

The school also does a Thanksgiving can drive for a local food pantry.

She introduced another program, Leaps of Love, “to bring a little sunshine into the world,” she said. When she learns about a family experiencing a tragedy or an especially difficult time, the program provides a scholarship so a child can participate in dance.

She still draws students from not only Webster, but also Irondequoit, Penfield, Ontario and Fairport. One family travels from Hilton.

The dance studio also offers birthday parties, special events and even an about monthly Parents’ Night Out, when parents may drop their children for a fun evening and go on a date themselves.

Most recently, Baller also launched Soul Sisters, a women’s group that is open to the community.

She also was invited to pen one of a collection of stories in a newly published book titled HUG, about dealing with infertility, miscarriage and pregnancy.

“I try to have a good perspective on life,” she said. “When I was 35 and my dad was diagnosed with cancer, that was life-changing for me. Before he died, he touched my shoulder and said, ‘I’m dying before your eyes, but promise me you’ll continue to live — and live big.’”

She added that’s why she chooses to be busy, have her hands in many pots and wear many hats.

“I just like to make people happy and see them smile,” she said.