“Rebirth” is a word synonymous with New Orleans.
It’s a word that’s also synonymous with the life of LSU alumna and Passion Dance Center CEO Tamika Jett.
A year before Hurricane Katrina, Jett graduated from high school and was teaching at Benjamin’s School of Dance and Gymnastics in New Orleans.
Then the storm hit.
Benjamin’s never reopened, and Jett, who was attending University of New Orleans at the time, moved to Baton Rouge for LSU. Jett said her brother was an LSU student, and he helped her settle into the state’s capital.
Life was hard for Jett in Baton Rouge when she first arrived. She said she was going through the motions and didn’t know what she was doing. She took solace in the university after the storm, a place she never would have ended up if it weren’t for the hurricane, and she decided to fuse her old life with her new one by creating her own dance crew at LSU — the Legacy Dancers.
“I was in my apartment, and I was dying to dance,” Jett said. “I wasn’t doing anything with dance, so I thought, ‘What if I had a group and we could do something?’”
She went online and saw people on Facebook who were looking for a group to start. She contacted them and held auditions in Hatcher Hall.
With that first meeting, Jett and the other dancers, many of whom are New Orleans natives, were hooked, and Legacy was born. The team will commemorate its 10-year anniversary along with the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
To this day, Jett said she gets chills when remembering her first performance with Legacy in a packed Student Union.
“It was the hypest performance ever in history,” Jett said. “Everybody was dancing with us, the entire audience. It seemed like a stress reliever for them because LSU had a lot of people from New Orleans there after the storm.”
Jett said she and the other dancers needed Legacy and used it as a creative outlet to take their minds off the tragedy and destruction. They fed off the energy, used it to succeed and never looked back.
Legacy helped Jett escape from the destruction that was Katrina, but she said some of her losses still pain her when she thinks about how many of her dance memories before Legacy have been washed away.
“My recital tapes are gone, and they’re just all on my mind because I used to watch those tapes every day like a crazy person,” Jett said. “Twelve years worth of videos, and if I hear a song from the tapes, I can do the whole dance. I had them memorized.”
Some of the only items Jett was able to salvage from the water damage were her old dance trophies. When evacuating, she also left a dance bag on her bed, which held costumes and other items but were safe from flooding.
One summer, while at LSU, Jett interned in New York at the Broadway Dance Center. When she came back, she put everything she learned into Legacy and started setting the groundwork for her future, which was to open her own dance studio.
“I’ve wanted to open a dance studio since I was 10 years old,” Jett said. “I knew I was going to have a dance school. I’ve been writing plans down since I was a kid.”
However, her dream did not come to fruition immediately after graduation. Instead, after receiving her degree in mass communication, she went back home and worked at an eye doctor’s office.
Jett said she had $300 to her name and started considering a move to New Jersey to find a job in a communications field, when her mother told her she and her father had bought the building that would become Passion Dance Center.
“My parents saw my face every day and decided they needed to invest in my studio because I was not happy,” Jett said.
Now, everything Jett has learned has culminated in her dance studio as she teaches her students. But Jett said she won’t be forgetting her Legacy roots any time soon.
“Legacy is a big influence on what I do,” Jett said. “I feel like if I would’ve opened a dance school earlier, it wouldn’t have been done right. My whole mindset was different after LSU and Legacy.”
Jett is sharing this experience with her friend and fellow Legacy dancer Olga Gale. Gale now works at Passion Dance Center as a dance teacher for the studio’s junior dance team.
Gale said she is in constant disbelief of how far she and Jett have come.
“In college, I would always tell Tamika after she said she wanted to open her own studio that if I ever moved back home, I would help her with it,” Gale said. “Now, every Saturday when we do rehearsal we just yell and jump and scream in joy, and our students think we’re crazy.”
For Gale, her memories of Legacy are dear, and she credits the crew for creating a venue to use their pain constructively. Gale said Legacy served as an outlet and something she could do instead of sitting at home watching her family cry and be depressed.
“I don’t think that I would’ve been able to go to school and then come home and be as strong as I was for my family if it wasn’t for Legacy,” Gale said.
Through all the devastation the hurricane brought, it also created lasting bonds among the dance crew, and the original Legacy dancers are still close with one another and keep in touch.
Jett and Gale both experienced great losses, but ultimately great gains as well. Their friendship was born out of the misery of the hurricane’s aftermath, and it’s one of the things for which Gale is thankful.
“It’s pretty awesome how one devastating situation brought so many people together, and now we’re all best friends and obsessed with each other,” Gale said. “Honestly, I thank Katrina for it. That’s the one good thing that came of it.”
Jett echoed Gale’s sentiments.
“I know Katrina was bad, but I’m glad it pushed me away,” Jett said. “I would’ve went to UNO again, and I would’ve just been wasting time when I could’ve been at LSU dancing with Legacy.”
Gale, like Jett, is a New Orleans native and had to evacuate to Baton Rouge during the storm.
“Everyone lost materialistic things, but my family lost a piece of their souls,” Gale said. “Though most have recovered, some family members still won’t go to the [Mercedes-Benz] Superdome because that’s where they were for days.”
Gale said she tells people Katrina was about the emotional and mental loss that held everyone back for so many months trying to rebuild.
Gale likens the dance group to a sorority created in a huge time of need.
“In commemorating the anniversary of Katrina, we just try to remember how far we’ve come and how our friendship has only gotten stronger after every year,” Gale said.
Gale came to work with Jett after they both graduated from LSU. Jett told her she was opening Passion Dance Center, and Gale offered to help manage her first recital.
In recalling her time with Legacy, Gale said she will always remember that first performance in the Student Union and the standing ovation the group received.
“The standing ovation wasn’t because we were the best dance group in the South, it was because we gave them a piece of what was missing for them,” Gale said. “You saw everyone who was so down and depressed come alive all of a sudden.”
Gale said the crew danced like its members were back home, choosing not to do traditional ballet and jazz but rather New Orleans hip-hop, which she said the crowd enjoyed immensely.
Now, Gale and Jett give all their energy to the students at Passion Dance Center. Gale said she’s still in awe of all they’ve accomplished, going from such a dark time to the present and that she couldn’t be prouder.
“We’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into this,” Gale said. “I mean we used to practice in the classroom at LSU. That’s the only passion that we had during that time.”

Gallery • 4 Photos

Ronni Bourgeois

Dancers (Left to Right), Yahaira Rodriguez, Alexis Rolle, Abigail Duhon, Sydney Clark, and Julia Lemann practice during class on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015, at LSU alumna-owned, Passion Dance Center in New Orleans.