GOLD WINNER
House of Eights Dance Studio1533 Barrington Street, 2nd floor
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SILVER WINNER
Unleashed Studio245 Waverley Road
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BRONZE WINNER
Haliente Dance Studio1678 Barrington Street, upper floors
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"I got into dance a little late, technically," Abady Alzahrani, owner of House of Eights, told The Coast in 2019, "because most people start dancing when they're kids, but I started when I was about 19 or 20." But, with this third-year-running gold win for Best Dance Company, Alzahrani shows he’s making up for lost time. His wildly popular drop-in dance studio, located on Barrington Street, boasts a roster of visiting dance instructors and locals who, at this point, are stars on the rise in their own right. Offering everything from K-Pop classes to high-heel-based stepping, House of Eights is founded on a judgment-free, all-bodies-welcome approach that nods to the Vogue movement in its name. “There’s not many places where you can twerk or touch yourself or pretend to be all these different characters and laugh and cry in a room of other strangers that you might not know and feel okay to do that, and feel safe to do that,” Alzahrani said when he won gold for the second time in 2021. But Alzahrani knows it’s all about the dancers themselves. House of Eights is “like a second home to people,” he said in 2019. “Some people are here four and five days a week.”
