“Ironically, very little of my job has to do with dance,” Alana Tillim tells me. “It’s about resilience, grit, and self-expression.”
Alana is the owner and director of Santa Barbara Dance Arts, the full-service studio on Cota Street that offers recreational and pre-professional classes as well as rental space for artists and events.
“We use dance lessons to teach life lessons,” she explains passionately. “We prepare the next generation of dancers. You can create works about anxieties and life’s pressures. Art is what makes us human. You cannot download an app for that.”