Unlock The Value In Your Dance School

Misty Lown, Mandy Yip, & Teri Mangiaratti

The Dance Advisory Committee at Ensemble is dedicated to preserving the legacy of our dance businesses and ensuring their future for generations to come. We’ve been exactly where you are. We’ve built thriving dance communities from the ground up, poured our hearts into our businesses, and spent sleepless nights worrying about our employees, clients, and dancers. We’ve spent countless weekends in auditoriums, running on coffee, just to be there for our students. We’ve taken thousands of phone calls and meetings with teachers, parents, and dancers—because we care as deeply as you do.

Like you, we reached a point where we had to ask: How do we protect what we’ve built and secure its future? For us, joining the Ensemble platform was the answer. Now, we’re here to help others navigate that same journey—ensuring that the businesses, communities, and legacies we’ve worked so hard to create continue to thrive past the founder.

Misty Lown serves as the President of Ensemble’s dance and music schools. Misty has been educating, mentoring and leading in the dance industry for 30 years. As the founder of More Than Just Great Dancing, she continues to guide hundreds of studio owners across the country and now leads our 80+ performing arts schools impacting thousands of young students each week. Misty is a lifelong learner and currently working on her dissertation for her PhD in Organizational Leadership at Concordia University Chicago. She is dedicated to supporting the success of our students and staff at our performing arts schools and stewarding the legacies of our founders who have entrusted their schools to our care.

Mandy Yip is the President of Ensemble’s Dance Business-to-Business department. She works closely with Acrobatic Arts, the company she founded, as well as conventions, curriculum programs, and mentorship organizations across the Ensemble platform. Mandy is passionate about fostering meaningful connections—building a strong community among our B2B brands while deepening their impact on the larger dance industry. She is dedicated to uniting these businesses in shared purpose, preserving the legacy of long-standing dance organizations, and creating new opportunities that bring dancers, educators, and entrepreneurs together.

Teri Mangiaratti is a Regional Manager overseeing several dance schools in the Northeast and also works closely with legacy dance studio owners on their transitions. As a studio owner for 30 years, she understands the concerns the legacy studio owner is facing when making the decision to sell. You might be worried that no-one will take care of the studio or your employees like you would or that you’ll miss teaching. You are also tired, stressed, and ready for a change. Teri helps dance studio owners navigate the sale process both organizationally and emotionally. Whether studio owners want to stay on at their school as a General Manager, Artistic Director, master teacher, part time teacher, consultant, or truly graduate from the demands of studio life, Teri works with the school owner to create that next chapter.

We know this is a big decision—because we’ve been there too.

Imagine a future where Ensemble handles your studio’s finances, budgets, human resources, employee benefits, payroll, continuing education, Google presence, legal compliance, and taxes—so you can focus on those parts you love about your studio or your next chapter. Whether you want to stay deeply involved in your studio, pop in when it feels right, or step back entirely, you can know that your studio will be in good hands.

We are committed to providing a future-focused solution for dance businesses—one that doesn’t exist anywhere else. There’s no platform like Ensemble, and no advisory team as connected and dedicated as ours. If you’re curious about how this might work for you, give us a call, we’d love to chat!

Jeff Homer | Founder of Ensemble Music Schools

I’ve been a lifelong (but decidedly unexceptional!) student of music – through 10 years of piano lessons as a child, in my high school and college choirs, for a brief period as an aspiring drummer after college, and back to the piano as an adult.

Perhaps all that music study really did make me better at math, because I made it through an Economics degree at Harvard and out into the world of investing. I worked in Boston and later in New York City with a number of small- and medium-sized businesses to help them build infrastructure for scale and growth.

In 2018, I moved to Denver to take a job at a family investment office, but also started looking for a community-minded small business I could get involved with where I could apply my skills in a setting where I’d see my impact on real people, rather than on a spreadsheet. Happily, I came across a music school that was listed for sale and was instantly transported back to memories of my own journey through music. I realized I could make an important contribution supporting the business side of this school’s operations, which needed a lot of work if they were going to match the quality of the instruction. Ensemble Music Schools was born.

Over the last four years, we’ve built a platform with specialists for all of the behind-the-scenes tasks needed to support a music school’s operations, including marketing, finance and payroll, recruiting and teacher professional development, and tax and accounting. More importantly, we’ve worked with more than 75 dedicated and longtime owners to transition their schools to our ownership, allowing them to unlock the value in their beloved local businesses and free up time for other priorities like retirement, time with family, teaching, performing, and other business interests.

Ensemble is committed to safeguarding the musical legacy of the many founders and owners that have entrusted us with the future of their community. When we acquire a school, our primary objective is continuity for students, parents, and staff. We’ve retained the brand and identity of each of these schools, and have focused on our role behind the scenes building infrastructure to support a growing population of students to discover their potential through music.

If you’re interested in selling your music school, I would be delighted to work with you toward a similar transition for your business, whenever the time is right.