Fourth in a series
Re “Painlessly, a Doctor’s Career Is Born”
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Mr. Cassese and his dance partner Jenelle Wax
John Cassese, by training and by desire a professional dancer, had no intention of entering commerce, of becoming an entrepreneur when he moved here from New York in 1984.
After the bubbling emotion of a perhaps impulsive cross-country life-changing journey to spend a little time with distant relatives, he had to find a way to support.
The three-decades-ago experience of the man who became known as the Santa Monica-based Dance Doctor to the stars, may be instructive for today’s young strugglers.
This wasn’t blinky-eyed Twinkletoes Wannabe from Dubuque shaking hands with bright lights for the first time. Mr. Cassese was an authentic professional hoofer. He had performed across the East Coast throughout his 20s.
Even without a business background, or even informal preparation, Mr. Cassese began his one-man operation with a miniscule ad in the back of Los Angeles magazine.
The way he billed himself in the ad was not euphonious – door-to-door dance teacher.
Dead wrong, he kept telling himself.
Doesn’t click.
Won’t work.
A Winner and a Loser?
A quick, possibly panicky, telephone call to his cousin Maria LaMarga blessed him with ultimate stardom. Practically as a throwaway line because she was anxious to go out the door, she blessed him with his new spangled title, the Dance Doctor.
Mr. Cassese’s eventually soaring career as a dance teacher formally launched with that Los Angeles magazine ad. “I got a call from a family in Pacific Palisades,” he said. “Glenn and Gail Berg their daughter Casey and their nanny. My first clients.
“After that, I put an ad in the Beverly Hills 213. It said, ‘The Dance Doctor Makes House Calls.’ I put in my picture and my telephone number. Then I got a call from a family in Beverly Hills. Once I started making house calls to them, before I knew it, I was driving all over, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Glendale.”
Extremely easygoing and soft-spoken, Mr. Cassese laughed lightly at his regimen in the old days. “I was eating in the car. I was brushing my teeth in the car.”
Being Flexible
Was it cost effective?
After a pause, “Yes it was because I continued to do it. I got busier to the point I had to open a studio because I was getting calls from people who didn’t have room in their house.”
But the Dance Doctor accommodated them, correlating the available floor space to the kind of dances they wanted to learn.
No such fretting today.
For nearly 20 years, Mr. Cassese’s spacious ground-floor headquarters have been a familiar landmark in Santa Monica, 1440 4th St.
“In so many social situations, though,” he says, “there isn’t a lot of space anyway. I was at a wedding of a couple students of mine at the Regent Beverly Wilshire. They had 450 guests, and the floor was so packed that there was no room to dance.
“It really was poorly planned. The Grand Ballroom is huge, and there are two levels. They sparsely put tables on the upper level and crowded tables around the floor. Should have been the other way around.”
“The bridegroom came over to me while I was sitting at a table. He said, ‘Why aren’t you dancing?’ I said ‘Where?’”
(To be continued)
