Amanda Rose Belmont Center for Arts and Movement
The Story of the Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Studio and Yahweh Ballet
My name is Sandy Arena and I’m the founder of the Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Studio and the Yahweh Ballet along with my husband Sam Arena and our children Alexis, Caleb and Annaliese.
Our family opened the studio in February 2006 after our daughter Alexis – who was 13 at the time – requested us to open a Christian dance studio for her. Alexis has been a dancer since she was a very young girl and had trained over the years in a secular environment. As Christians, there were many experiences that we had particularly over the past few years that didn’t sit well in our hearts and that were very destructive in many ways to our daughter. I won’t go into the details of those years, but I will say that I believe we experienced the anguish of God during those seasons that burned deep in our hearts and that moved us to ultimately open this studio.
God is a God of redemption and His word promises that He will take what was meant for evil and turn it for good for those that love Him and who are called according to His purposes. And the end result of this anguish and the trials and tribulations we all experienced as a family, was a beautiful Christian dance studio that serves hundreds of people of all ages in the upstate NY region.
The vision of the school is the bring glory to God and joy to our souls through excellence in Christian dance education and ministry with an emphasis on classical ballet for ages 3 to adult. The curriculum that has been developed focuses on training the heart of the dancer to glorify and worship the Lord in dance and the art of the dancer in the discipline of ballet as well as other forms of dance. Our senior ministry group – the Yahweh Ballet – ministers in the community at events and churches and malls and such bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to the public through worship and dance. And isn’t that what the Christian life is all about. Each of us, as believers, are each charged to share the news of Christ with a lost and messed up world and what these dancers are doing with their worship and with the stories they tell through their dance is so powerful. Over the past year, the Lord has revealed to us a deeper and deeper levels what this ministry is really about and what happens in the heavenlies when we worship God and how lives have been changed from the work these dancers are doing. The beauty that is embodied in these dancers, I believe is the beauty of God. Tears flow and arms raise when they minister and people turn their lives over to Christ.
I’m Just a Mom
So I never really ever imagined that this would be my call in life particularly during this season and as always, you can look back on your life in retrospect and see what the Lord was up to in bringing our family to this place of founding and directing this school. I’ve said it before and will say it again – I’m just a mom and really knew not much of anything about running a Christian dance school and worship dance ministry. But God had planted some seeds about a year before we actually opened the school. I had been invited to help a church do some promotional work and the first project was to promote Ballet Magnificat – the world’s premiere Christian ballet company – who were coming to minister at the church. Now my daughter had been a dancer for many years and I had never heard about this organization, let alone Christian dancing. So during this season, I got to work very closely with Ballet Magnificat who are pioneers in Christian dance. Praise God for that ministry. At the time, my daughter, wounded and very unhappy with the secular dance world had quit dance entirely at the time. So we had a few of the dancers stay with us on a home stay and they ministered so sweetly and gently to Alexis and they encouraged her to come to Ballet Magnificat for their summer program. So we sent her to Mississippi, well actually I flew down there with her. We were so blessed and touched by the beauty of the Lord that is so evident in this organization. Every time I turned a corner in the dorm, there was a scripture or a beaming face sharing the love of Jesus with us. I met Alexis’s counselor, a girl named Tiana, and I said, why isn’t there something like this in Rochester. And she said, Oh well, I teach at a Christian dance school in Grand Rapids Michigan and it was started by two moms who aren’t dancers and who were just fed up with secular dance. That school, by the way, has over 500 students in 4 years!
So, there was a major seed sown at that point in my heart that the Lord later used when Alexis asked us to open the school for her.
Learning From Two Moms in Grand Rapids
So what I learned from these “two moms” in Grand Rapids and what we applied to our own circumstances is that the Lord doesn’t need someone in the “know” so to speak, but rather needs willing hands and feet who will follow His lead. He’s the boss period and I do my very best daily to follow what He is telling me to do. He knows the times and purposes of what we should be doing and when and how and with whom. My natural mind couldn’t get in the way of His divine plan for this school because quite honestly I hadn’t a clue how to open a Christian dance school or how to lead so many people. We are totally and completely reliant on the Lord and that’s exactly where He wants us to be as believers, now isn’t it? Our prayer from the beginning is “Lord, don’t let us mess this up!” and He has protected us and guided us and showed us His sovereignty in such a mighty way through this experience. I am forever grateful to be part of something so miraculous and so powerful and to see God move in such mighty ways.
Our Favorite Miracles!
I can’t really talk about our school and ministry without sharing some of our favorite miracles.
When we started the ministry, we just started to make some phone calls with people we thought would support the vision of the school and then the Lord got the ball rolling. People and provision came out of the woodwork, so to speak.
The Miracle of Finney – Our First Location
The first miracle was when we ran into Mike Belmont at the Strong Museum on a very busy holiday there had to have been 1000 people there. I was walking out the door and he was walking in and our paths crossed in a divine appointment and he invited us to come and speak with him that week to talk about the dance school. At that meeting, he literally provided the school with all the physical stuff on a silver platter, really. He said, here’s some rooms, here’s a phone number you can use to conduct business, oh and we’ll insure you and cover your nonprofit status for this season and you can have your opening night at our school. No charge. Now I had a business in the secular world for many years when I was a single mom. No one ever gave me anything. What a testimony of the Body of Christ. For them to have birthed this vision was and is beyond words. So we moved in, renovated and moved onward and without this start, I don’t know what would have happened. 
The Miracle of One of Our Teachers - Jill Rechlin
Other miracles followed. We had our place, we started raising the money to renovate and God kept providing – floors, mirrors, barres, a computer, refrigerator, furniture. Every step of the way. But we still had a huge void in teachers. We started praying and believing and walking in faith and God started providing. I met one of our main teachers and Yahweh Ballet dancers on a plane connecting out of Chicago. I was in the terminal and saw a girl and the Lord prompted me to talk to her. The best way I can explain it was if someone were pushing me literally to talk to her. There was a jumping in my heart and I couldn’t rest until I talked to her. I was with a group of teenagers including my daughter who I was escorting to Ballet Magnificat and I shared with them that God was telling me to talk to her and they were mortified and begged me not to talk to her, because it would have been “so embarrassing.” But I did what God was telling me to do and I am so glad that I obeyed. Oftentimes as believers God tells us to do something and it’s really stretching us out of our comfort zones. Talking to strangers can be uncomfortable, but if we don’t obey we can miss out of His best and His blessings for us. I found out in talking to Jill that not only was she a classically trained ballet dancer and that she was going to Ballet Magnificat, but that she was from Rochester, that she had graduated from Finney – the school where our dance school is housed – and that her dad was on the board of Finney. We sat on the plane together and talked up a storm. I later learned that they had been praying that Jill would meet someone to sit on the plane with because she was afraid to fly alone. That God of ours is always multi-tasking.
The Miracle of the Name Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Studio
The final miracle I want to share is the miracle of the name Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Studio. Amanda is the daughter of Tracy and Mike Belmont who went to be with the Lord – passed away - several years ago. Mike Belmont is the president of Finney I told you about earlier. He and his wife were the ones who invited our studio to be housed and birthed at Finney a little more than a year ago.
To open the school, we hosted a Celebration of the Redemption of Dance event. At the time, the name the Lord had given us was the Yahweh Ballet, which I knew was the name of the Christian ballet company. For lack of a name of the studio, at that time, we called the school at that time the Yahweh Ballet Center for Dance and Movement.
At this Celebration of the Redemption of Dance event, the Belmonts presented to us a plaque which had been found in a storage area of their home the night before the event. The plaque had been given to the family several years prior to the event when Amanda passed away along with a proto-type of a tiny, well-appointed and lovely little garden book which a relative had made. The plaque and the book are in the waiting room of our studio. The plaque read: Proceeds from the sale of this book would benefit the Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Fund to benefit underprivileged students who would like to dance. Mike had said at this event that he had forgotten about the book and the fund until the evening before our event when the Lord -- in His perfect timing -- brought it to their attention.
There was not a dry eye in the house with this presentation. We were honored and blessed to receive such a gift and to share in the life of Amanda Rose.
The Responsibility of the Name of the Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Studio
A few days later, the tears continued for me. There had been some strife in our organization. We are all human and we do our best daily to walk in the love, grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are offenses in the Body of Christ. God made us unique. It happens. Plus, Satan is not happy. There is much warfare.. The question is what do we do when we are offended and strife creeps in? Do we seek reconciliation and restoration by modeling the character of Christ? Walking in the flesh makes this impossible, but walking in the fruit of the Holy Spirit by staying connected to Jesus Christ through reading and following the Word and surrendering our weaknesses over to Jesus Christ and seeking love and forgiveness amongst ourselves. Without Jesus Christ, we cannot do this unto ourselves.
I was saddened by the strife and humbly seeking the Lord. That is when the Lord gave me the name of the studio which was the Amanda Rose Belmont Dance for Joy Studio with the Yahweh Ballet being the name of the ministry group. With the giving of the name came a flooding of tears for several hours at which time the Lord spoke to my heart that with the name came a very big responsibility of those who lead, work for, participate or are part of the studio. The namesake of Amanda would be a natural reminder to all of us that we were to treat one another with a spirit of gentleness and love that is only of the Lord, and with kid gloves, and that those who were part of the studio would be reminded of this with Amanda’s name and with her legacy.
Have we fallen short? Yes. But each time, I am brought back to this charge and I humbly and fervently ask God to help me to lead in a way that is pleasing to Him and that keeps love and forgiveness at the forefront even when we do stumble. Ours is an organization of many people - hundreds of people - parents, students, staff, directors, volunteers, friends. My heart is to stand back up when we stumble and seek the Lord with a spirit of repentance and remember Amanda Rose and our Lord Jesus Christ and the responsibility of her namesake. I am so thankful for this reminder as I walk DAILY in my salvation.
Alexis and Kezia – Somebodies Going to Hear from Heaven and it Might as Well Be Me.
You too “Can Open a Christian Dance Studio” – or Whatever Else God is Telling You to Do!
So here we are a year later and God has done so much, none of us can even believe it. We have 100 students now and we are growing. This dvd is some of our pieces including one choreographed by my daughter with a little girl by the name of Kezia Latin. Alexis taught Kezia in the attic of our home about six months before we opened the school and it was more seeds that had been sown into the vision of this school. The piece was done to a song that had been written by a woman who had been listening to a sermon about what are you going to do when you hear from heaven and God gives you a vision. You can believe the lies of the enemy and take on the “I can’t” attitude or you can pull up your boot straps, fight the good fight through Jesus Christ and endure in Him who was sent to save us. We are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. So this woman received this song from the Holy Spirit while listening to this message and it’s called Someone’s Going to Hear from Heaven and it Might as Well be Me.
So the piece was to honor Alexis for stepping out and asking us to open this school. It was a brave thing for a 13 year old girl to do. It’s been a battle. The road has not been easy, but God always, always provides and He promises us that He will never leave us nor forsake us and that He will never give us more than we can bear. I ran a marathon for my 40th birthday about six months before opening the school and I didn’t know about the school at the time, but I knew I was supposed to run this marathon and that the theme of it was how much pain I could endure through Jesus as my strength. I wore running pants on which I attached the words Jesus is my strength. And my training time my was special date with God and what I learned is you don’t quit at the 25th mile, because if you do it makes miles 1 through 25 worth nothing if you don’t finish! So we press in daily and fight to the finish which is basically to tell others about the saving love and grace of King Jesus.
Please Pray for Us!
So that’s only a very small part of our story! There is so much more the Lord has done that we give Him glory, honor and praise for. We will be writing a book to encourage others that they can do for the Lord what He has set forth for them to do. We appreciate your prayers and support so much. Please pray for wisdom, protection, provision, strength, times of rest, and for my family and all our other leaders and their families. Please pray for our dancers. This by far has been one of the most challenging things we have ever done. God is good and gracious and He always supplies our every need.
With much love in Jesus Christ,
The Arena Family
Sandy, Sam, Alexis, Caleb and Annaliese
An Altar to our Heavenly Father - It's Been A Privilege For Us To Serve You!
My sheep hear my voice.......
