Meet PopRox Dance Studio, the women and LGBTQIA+-owned haven that’s shaking up Seattle’s dance scene with a refreshing dose of inclusivity and joy. Co-owners Kinsey Flores and Cathy Barnett have created a judgment-free space where dance is for every body, regardless of age or skill level. With two locations in Capitol Hill and the University District, PopRox offers a diverse range of classes, from hip-hop and K-pop to Bollywood and disco, all taught by instructors who prioritize comfort and enjoyment over perfection.
From their personal dance journeys to the intentional design of their studios, Kinsey and Cathy share the philosophy and passion behind PopRox. This interview is a must-read for anyone who believes in the power of dance to bring people together and transform lives.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about PopRox Dance Studio!
Kinsey: We are judgment-free, all about inclusive and encouraging dance classes for the Seattle community.
Cathy: Dance can be really scary. Everyone says they have two left feet or they can’t dance, which is absolutely untrue.
Everybody has the ability to dance and we’re actually not even about whether you’re great at dancing or not. We’re here for the mental enjoyment, the physical part of it, the community part of it. It’s not even about whether you’re good or not.
It’s about giving it a shot and you’ll understand how much it releases the endorphins in your body and how good you feel afterwards.
You have two locations – one in Capitol Hill and one in the UDistrict. How are they similar or different?
We opened this studio in Capitol Hill in January of this year, 2024, and it is our larger studio – it is about a 3,000 square foot dance floor, versus our smaller studio which is over in U District. They are both our babies, both of our big loves, but they do serve two different purposes and two different audiences, which is what we love. We love that when we open a dance studio in a community, in a neighborhood, that it really matches the needs of the people that are there and the needs and the interests.
Our UDistrict studio is a little bit more catered to our younger audience – UW students, and then this studio, obviously we have a little bit of an older, more established community and they want some different things.We are definitely trying to match the needs of each customer in each environment.
On top of that, we offer a lot of different styles. We have our core styles like hip-hop and k-pop and jazz, funk. They’re pretty much core to our business, but we also like to throw in things that the community is after as well. So you’ll see Bollywood thrown in, or a disco class. We like to experiment and play with some fun things and it reinforces the fact that it’s not serious. We’re just having a good time.
Talk a little bit about your backgrounds as dancers.
Cathy: So I started dancing when I was six. It was something that I was naturally drawn to and was a core part of my entire childhood and life. It gave me the principles of working with teams, and feeling self-confident, and loving my body no matter which condition it was in. It gave me a lot of things that I didn’t actually realize that I was getting along the way.
At the time, it was competitive and stressful, but it actually had these underlying properties that came out in me in adulthood that I really credit back to my dance experience. It’s those unique parts of it that I wanted to build here with Kinsey and reinforce with our customers – you don’t have to go through all the stressful parts. You can just shortchange it and come and enjoy it.
Kinsey: Similar to Kathy, I grew up dancing. I started dancing when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I had friends that were doing it, and it seemed really fun.
I went to a friend’s dance class, and I signed up the next week. It taught me so many things about myself, and it really did also just build a love for dance and for music that has followed me for my whole life. But it also set a foundation for what dance can provide, especially if you allow a little bit of room for experimentation and creativity.
I remember I would come home from my dance classes, and I would either teach the dance to my family, or I would change the choreography entirely, and I would make up my own.
That’s something that really inspired why we created PopRox. We wanted to offer opportunities for people to get actively involved in dance and not just be taught a piece – we want them to be involved. We want it to feel good on their body. We want them to make it their own. We want them to have suggestions.
We love the active participation of our customers. And that’s why our teaching staff is so important. Our instructors here are not your typical dance instructors. They are very people first. It’s all about your comfort and enjoyment. It’s not about whether you’re getting it perfectly right.
At the end of the day, it is about your comfort levels in the class, and they’ll go at the pace of the class, which is really important to us. Another thing to note, too, is that we offer classes for kids and adults all the way up.
We have the tagline, “Dance is for Every Booty”, and we mean it. So whether you’re a four-year-old or you’re all the way up to 100, we don’t care. Come and dance with us. We have a very diverse group of people coming here.
What has been the reception to PopRox in the community?
Kinsey: Really positive, really warm and welcoming. One of the things that is unique to this space for us is that we’re in Chophouse Row, so we have a built-in community. We have built-in neighbors.
We’ve gotten to know almost every single one of them and everybody has been so warm and welcoming and it really makes running a business can be a lonely thing and it really makes it feel so communal inherently. And then from customers, it’s just been so nice to see so many new faces. I think that as we get older, we’re offered less and less opportunities to try new things and it becomes harder to do.
It becomes harder to do, even personally, to put yourself in a vulnerable. So it’s been so lovely to see the variety of people who come through here. We have people in their 60s and 70s that dance with us and they’ll be in a class with an 18-year-old and it’s just so cool, so warm, welcoming, positive.
We’ve both lived in Capitol Hill for 10 years. To have a location in a neighborhood that we love so much has been really, really lovely.
The color in the Capitol Hill location is the most wonderful shade of lavender purple! How did you pick the color?
For both of our locations, we wanted to make it a really fun vibe, but it was very intentional. We wanted to make sure that when you come in here, it’s sort of an endorphin rush. We want you to feel like, “okay, this place isn’t too serious. I can have some fun here. I can hang out on the couches. I can do my homework or business work before class. I can have a snack with my fellow community. I can just live a little and exist here and make it a third space.”
So that’s why you see the fun. We feel very proud of what we created. We created this ourselves. We didn’t have any outside help. We brought our friends in here to help build it. It’s a labor of love. And so it’s also very important for us that we built it.
What are you proud of as small business owners?
Kinsey: I’m really proud of our team. For them to to be able to create such a positive experience for people time and time again, it makes me so proud because it’s not easy. It’s not an easy job.
Every time I watch a class, I just am like, dang, they did that. I think my proudest moments have been when we’re sitting behind the desk and we’re watching a class and there’s like such a diverse group of people.
We’ve got people from religions who weren’t allowed to dance growing up, and now they’re here for college and they’re away from their families and they want to do their own thing. So they’re out there for the first time having their first dance class ever as an adult and the look on their faces! Or when people come through the front door and they’re feeling really kind of angry or tired, and they leave just looking elated and happy and joyful. Even if it’s just for that hour to give yourself a mental break from everything, the fact that we’ve created a space for that is probably what makes us the most emotional when we see that happen.
What do you recommend for a first-time student coming to class?
Cathy: (joking!) High heels, knee pads, kinesthetic tape.
Kinsey: If this is your first time ever taking a class, I would recommend an Intro Level class.
Something that makes us a little unique is we offer almost every class at four levels – Intro and all the way up to Advanced. Beginner is a lot of times where a lot of people start, but we took a step down from that because we believe there are a lot of fundamentals and foundations that people should start with that might build an additional level of confidence for them to even learn more from there.
One of our favorite classes to recommend to new people is called Two Left Feet. Two Left Feet is an intro level class, it is super beginner friendly, and our teachers work really hard to meet that class where they’re at and they move at the pace of the class.
Wear clothing that you’re comfortable wearing. People dance in all kinds of things – I’ve seen people take classes in Crocs!
Please bring a water bottle as we do try to keep cups to a minimum because we’re trying to keep our waste low.
Lastly, just bring just an open and exploratory attitude. We know that it is a vulnerable experience. We have formed every part of our business around the fact that we know that and we really work so hard from the moment you walk through our door to create a positive, warm, and welcoming environment.
And just know that we’re meeting you with that energy. And if you just want to come in and take a look at the studio, if you just want to come in and say hello, or you just want to maybe watch a little bit of a class, we’re here for you. Come in, come explore, come get to know us.
We would love to see you.
What advice would you give to someone starting a business or a brand?
Cathy: Having been in the corporate world for many, many years and running companies, etc, before we started this, the number one thing that I’ve found in successful businesses was building your culture.
I’ve been in businesses with incredible culture. I’ve been in businesses with horrendous culture.
When you’re starting a new business, you can start from the very beginning and try to get it right, because once you have a toxic culture or something that’s not going right, it’s incredibly hard to change a culture.
Focusing on culture from the beginning allows you to start attracting the right employees, attracting the right people to your business, and you live and breathe those values. Even if you have a small little shop with two employees, the way you treat those employees will absolutely show itself to your customers.
My advice to someone starting a business would be to do some research on that – speak to other people who’ve been part of great cultures, and really be intentional about that as much as you are about the location you choose or the color that you paint the walls.
Kinsey: Mine would be to remain flexible.
I think that one of the easiest ways to shoot yourself in the foot is to be so determined and so inflexible about what your vision is that you are not able to be malleable to what your customer wants, what your community is asking for, what your employees need. There are so many things that we thought were going to be the thing, and people didn’t want it, and we were quick to adjust. And there were things we never would have thought of that people asked for, and we were willing to figure it out.
I think the second thing would be to build off what Cathy said – to really take care of your employees.
Your business is as successful as your employees are happy. This is a hard job. A lot of jobs involve multiple different skills and different talents, and we have such a wonderful array of personalities with different talents, and that means that sometimes different people need different things from you. Meeting each person where they’re at and getting to know them as an individual to provide them with what they need is so important.
I think a lot of the experience we create for our customers is a reflection of the experience we try to create for our employees, at least I would hope so. It’s really important to pay attention to your employees, and listen to them. They have some of the best ideas!
Why is it important for people to #SpendLikeItMatters?
Kinsey: I think it’s a form of activism. Because we live in such a consumer-centric society, one of the most important decisions you can make is where you spend your money. It is increasingly hard to do in a way that is in line with your values sometimes because it’s hard to know what is owned by who with larger companies or where something is coming from or who was paid. The larger the company or corporation, the harder it is to know those things.
Whereas I think with small businesses, you can see the impact right in front of you and you do know the people who work there and you can see how happy (or not happy) they are. So I think it is activism. Where you spend your money is so important.
If you live in a city that you love, then spending your money at small businesses is investing in your home. And so I think it’s incredibly important to do no matter what kind of a business it is or how much money you’re spending.
Cathy: We’ve been residents of Capitol Hill for over a decade, and we really wanted to invest back in our community. Sometimes you’ve got to put yourself out there as a business to reactivate communitie. Get in there and say, “okay, this might be tough to revive, but we’ve got to start being the change”.
What else would you like to share about PopRox?
Kinsey: We have a new client special – It is our 3 for $30 deal. We really want people to try us a few times before they commit to us so they have the opportunity to try different styles and different instructors.
The 3 for $30 deal is three hours of classes for $30, and it’s a great deal because generally one hour of class is $20.
With the deal, you can do either three one-hour long classes or two 90-minute classes for $30.
If you try a class and you’re not quite sure, please always come and talk to us. DM us, send us an email, talk to the front desk. Everyone is super well-educated here about what types of classes and levels, and we’ll always recommend a perfect class for you. We want to see more new faces!