When Latisha Hardy needed to find herself again, she found dance.
It happened, as she tells it, so fast. She was at the college library and two cute boys came up to her.
“Do you salsa dance?” they asked. No, she replied. They invited her to go salsa dancing anyway. She said yes.
Because saying yes is what Hardy had decided to do back then.
“I was in this phase of just saying yes to anything and everything,” she said. “I needed to figure out who I was again.”
That was in 2009, when she had just gotten out of an abusive relationship of five years. She was tired of the yelling and the occasional physical abuse and the daily name-calling.
“He probably put me down every single day,” she says now. “And then I believed him. I didn’t have the confidence to not believe what he was saying about me.”
After moving here from Las Vegas to attend the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Hardy broke up and broke away. And started to put herself back together.
That meant going to Denver for a night of salsa dancing.
She remembers it being the coolest thing she had done in awhile. She remembers feeling like Baby, the leading lady in “Dirty Dancing.” She remembers thinking, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
Hardy danced every day for the next year. She took lessons and drove to Denver as much as she could for salsa nights. Soon, she was good enough to be considered a professional salsa dancer.
“It healed me and gave me my life back,” Hardy said. “I knew I wanted to give that to other people.”
She wanted to do that in Colorado Springs, partly because she was tired of driving to Denver.
“There was no salsa scene in Colorado Springs,” she said. “I built that.”
She started by hosting social salsa nights around town, drawing crowds of 20 people that turned into 200 people. She also taught pop-up workshops and classes that turned into owning her own studio, Latisha Hardy Dance & Co.
In September, Hardy moved into a 3,500-square-foot studio on South Tejon Street. A busy schedule features classes, which are open to adults only, for salsa, mambo and bachata. Plus, Hardy leads a team of dancers, called The Boss Ladies, that perform around the country.
And yes, Hardy has kept her promise to herself. To give back.
She hears from women who say they would’ve moved away if not for her studio. They tell her they always wanted to dance, but life got in the way. They tell her this is their second chance. They tell each other everything.
“It’s a family,” Hardy said. “It’s warm and fun and it’s inviting. We’re just in it together.”
For many in her community, the studio — and dancing in general — is an escape from the struggles, big and small, of life.
“It’s a place where you can talk about it, but don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “Dancing is what we always come back to.”
For Hardy, dancing continues to heal. On Instagram, where she has 16,000 followers, she often shares how it has changed her life. And she shares quotes like, “You are the creator of your own world,” and “Confidence looks good on you, boo.”
They are the kind of words Hardy’s former self really needed to hear. Now, she barely recognizes that girl.
“I want to inspire and empower people,” she said. “I’m so grateful to have gotten something wonderful in my life and I want to give it back.”
This content was originally published here.
