A children’s dance class at the Donna Frech School of Dance. The studio offers classes for students as young as 3, up to adults. (Photo by Sarah Genter)

NORWICH — The Donna Frech School of Dance is celebrating their 50th year of running studios and teaching dance in Chenango County.

Owner Donna Frech Sharp attended her first dance class at the age of four, and said when she got home "I told [my mom] that I wanted to be a dance teacher when I grew up."

She ended up opening her first studio on Long Island and ran it for three years before moving to Chenango County and opening a studio in South New Berlin in September of 1975. She started out with 22 students and only herself as an instructor.

The following year, she added a second studio in New Berlin, followed by another studio in Norwich a few years later, after a friend asked her to hold classes in her restaurant on Saturday mornings when the kitchen was closed. This worked for only a short time before they outgrew the space.

The classes moved to the Norwich VFW and the Norwich American Legion, but the classes kept outgrowing the venues. That was when Frech Sharp decided to open her own studio in Norwich with an extension built onto the back of her home on Rexford Street. In 1993, she built the studio that now serves as their main location at 7-9 Berry Street in Norwich.

Frech Sharp eventually closed the South New Berlin and New Berlin studios, and opened another at 9 River Street in Sidney.