Reviews of Oasis Dance Center (Dance School)

Nov C

Oasis Dance Center is my favorite dance studio and my dance class is the highlight of my week. The studio is great for learning and continue developing skills and techniques in dance. I would highly recommend this studio to anyone looking to learn more about Egyptian dance.

Wendy Hvisdak

Oasis is the place to be for creative, artistic, culturally authentic dance in a beautiful atmosphere filled with laughter and friendship.

Kenzie Bellydance

Love, love, love the new space on Webster Street! We are so lucky to have a community of amazing women here. Classes start at the beginner level and go all the way to intermediate/advanced. Specialty workshops are offered to introduce and focus on specific topics. Come join us for a class and discover how wonderful this dance form is!

Branden Kania

Oasis Dance Center is my happy place! The highly knowledgeable instructors have so much passion and joy in their dance and they easily pass this to their students. The studio itself is lovely and inviting. I highly recommend studying here and count myself lucky for finding this gem. I had never danced a day in my life before finding Oasis, and now I can't imagine my life without it!

Belly Dance by Tiffany

Oasis has been my dance home for over 10 years, and I could not be more in love with the experiences I have had here! I needed a new challenge and some time just for myself after having my first child, and have not stopped taking classes since. The instructors here are amazing, teaching not only about the dance, but also about the culture from which this beautiful dance form originates. They both continually study and train in order to maintain the high level of instruction that they offer. I cannot recommend this studio highly enough!

Lyubov Yelinson

If you are an introvert with two left feet, Faaria and Kenzie are going to use their teaching magic to unleash a graceful sparkly bellydancer hiding inside you. They are the BEST!

Shana House

Honestly probably the best dance studio I've been to! The teachers are great and so supportive! You don't just learn the moves, you learn about the culture which makes it so much more interesting and meaningful.

Heather Farley

At one time I had given Oasis a glowing review, but I felt the need to change that after seeing the despicable way they treat their students. The only reason I even give one star is due to the fact that both Claire and Kenzie are amazing dancers and they do host fun classes, also they are the only place around to learn this style of Egyptian dance. That's where the positive ends however, I'm afraid. I waited months after leaving to make sure I wrote nothing out of anger, but seeing Claire's continued poor treatment of her paying customers encouraged me to rewrite this. Never in my life have I seen a business owner act so clicky and rude towards the people who pay her bills. It's bad enough that she forgets choreos we've rehearsed endlessly, she then gaslights us into thinking we just "misremembered" despite us having video recordings of the original. This is always awful, but especially when she knows many of her students come to her as a way to heal from their pasts and help their anxiety, not to have more thrown at them. She encourages discourse between her students even after preaching "acceptance and tolerance" and allows certain students to violently verbally abuse others without saying a word. Kenzie has a penchant for challenging her students' political beliefs on her social media (which no business should EVER get into) and then encourages students with differing political views to part ways from one another, ending years long friendships over baseless nonsense. Even after I was forced to leave because of my political views (I was never hurtful to anyone), and after they made the completely unprofessional decision to brag about it on their business FB page, they then portioned off all the Trump supporters into one group that she barely even gives any effort to, despite they're paying just as much as everyone else. Now with the pandemic, she isn't following through on purchases people have made for specialty class packages worth hundreds of dollars, effectively leaving them high and dry with no money returned or worthy alternative offered. Online classes were offered to cover a couple, but they don't equate to hundreds of dollars worth of value. The only credit I can give them is that this pandemic has been terrible for everyone, so I can't completely blame them. The fact is though, it couldn't hurt to address the issue with their students instead of just taking the money and running. Claire will have you believe that the Buffalo dance community is full of drama and hateful people, but in my experience, every other dance instructor I've met has been amazing. This includes instructors I've heard Claire speak poorly about to her students. (So professional) Unfortunately Claire's unwillingness to be cooperative during festivals and events is also what has gotten her hard working performance groups excluded from many events they used to do, and look forward to. The most unfortunate part is that her classes are a great way to find friends, get away from the world and experience a different culture. But I don't pay to have my mental health worsened, to be gaslit, or to be quietly bullied until I leave. If you have an interest in Egyptian dance, this is your best bet in the Buffalo area, so proceed with caution, don't tell them your political views. Don't add them on Facebook, or better yet? Find another teacher online.