To Life !

-EENS

Adam Duke: Have boom

box, Will travel.

Enterprising
Bloomfield
Hills teen
brings dance
to Atlanta
students.

14

December 29 2005

Robin Schwartz

Special to the Jewish News

f life is like one big dance, Adam Duke, 18,
of Bloomfield Hills seems to have all the
right moves.
He's the senior class president at
Birmingham Groves High School, co-captain of
the water polo team and his Beverly Hills
school's homecoming king. But, Adam is most
proud of his unusual extracurricular activity
— the out-of-state dance business he started in
the midst of an already-busy school year.
For six straight weeks, from late August
through early October, the enterprising teen
taught a dance class to 22 middle school stu-
dents at the Alfred and Adele Davis Academy, a
Reform Jewish day school in Dunwoody, Ga.,
near Atlanta. It's an idea he conceived, set up
and executed on his own.
"It was a great experience," Adam said. "The
best part was it wasn't like going to ‘vork — I'd

I

go and have a great time."
Adam's weekly "dance routine" went some-
thing like this: fly to Atlanta every Wednesday
afternoon, teach a dance class that night, wake
up at 4:30 a.m. the following morning and fly
back to Detroit just in time for school.
"I'd sleep on the plane," Adam said.
During each visit, he stayed with his aunt,
uncle and cousins, but Adam made all of his
own travel arrangements. He also developed his
own lesson plans. "I learned that it's really
important to be professional, to be on time and
to have everything ready to go',' he said.
"He was so cute,' said Teri Edelstein of
Alpharetta. Her son Alex, 12, took part in the
class. "The first night he had on a suit and a tie
and he was so professional," Edelstein said.
Alex added, "We learned how to do a few
dances
the box step, fox trot and dances you
do at bar and bat mitzvahs."
Not long ago, Adam was a dance student
himself at Joe Cornell Entertainment in

Southfield. He had so much fun learning his
way around the dance floor, he was surprised to
hear his cousins in Atlanta didn't have similar
classes. That's when Adam's entrpreneurial idea
was born.
To make it a reality, he rented the Davis
Academy's cafeteria for $50 a session. He
charged $140 per student for the six-week
course. He also hired two local students to work
asassistants."I always wanted to own a busi-
ness,"Adam said.
Even though he covered his own transporta-
tion costs and other expenses, Adam says he
made a profit. In the future, he hopes to expand
and provide a DJ/MC service once he decides
where he'll attend college. His company is called
Adam Briton Entertainment; Briton is his mid-
dle name.
Adam says the experience taught him the
most important lesson of his senior year: "If
you believe in yourself and you think you can
do it, you can." E