My Space

In the latest in our series on people and their favorite spaces, Melissa Watkins shares the story - of pain, joy and body confidence - behind her dance studio. Story and photos by Gabby Ferreira

Melissa Watkins (right) leads a class at Steps Dance & Fitness.

"My senior year of high school, I was in a nearly fatal car accident. I was very lucky to be okay - no broken bones - because I was very physically fit. I had a bad closed-head injury and lots of upper neck and spinal problems. I was unable to dance at that point; I had been doing mostly jazz dance up until then. All my flexibility was gone. For years I couldn't put my hands above my head.

"College started and I failed out of a lot of my classes. I didn't really know what was going on. I finally went to a neurologist and found out that I was walking around with this pretty bad brain injury so I was unable to retain any information.

"When they first walk in the door, their head is down," says Melissa of her female clients.

I started going to a speech therapist who helped me. Once I conquered the mental part of it I was like, 'OK, well now I need to deal with this chronic pain that I'm having,' so I started going to physical therapy and really started weight training seriously. Then I found Zumba. It was like dancing again but without a lot of the stress dancing had put on my body.

"I started teaching and strangely found that I was really good at it. I never thought I would have this secret weird talent. I taught wherever I could.

"November of 2011, LA Fitness -  one of the places I taught - announced they were going to get rid of Zumba. The entrepreneur in me was like, 'Alright. There's about 200 people in each of these classes. It makes too much sense not to make something of this.' The night before the grand opening of Steps Dance & Fitness, I didn't sleep. I was so scared no one would come and 55 people came and joined that day. It was awesome. It was surreal.

"I think this business started very much about me. I found something that I was great at that I was surprised I was great at. But in the last three years, it's become so much about everyone else. Women come in here and this place is their heart and their soul. It's become a place for women - we have some male members, but mostly women - to come and be comfortable and bring their insecurities in the door with them but not feel them when they're here.

"As fun as it was to teach at these huge gyms and have these huge 200-person classes, Steps is not like that. I think we live in a very judgmental society in terms of women's bodies and I sense it with women. When they first walk in the door here, their head is down, they're terrified to walk into this space that, in terms of other gyms, is usually something that really breeds and brings out their insecurities.

"Sometimes I'll work out at another gym in town and women don't want to look at themselves in the mirror when they're there - they don't feel good about their bodies, so going and working on their biggest insecurity in a public place is terrifying.

"I think that [the car accident] shaped me to be a fighter. It taught me that when life throws things at you, you can make something beautiful out of them. I still am very much like that here, because it's not fun to run a business. Sometimes I'll start to complain and I'll remember that in 2007, I could barely lift my arms. I couldn't stand for more than 5 minutes without severe back pain.

"It's really shaped me into an entirely different person and the person that I needed to be to keep a successful business running. [Teaching] started as just my way of not having pain every day and it became like I didn't know how to live without it."

* Steps is located at 5813 E. Speedway Blvd, Tucson. Call 520 730 2279, visit stepstucson.com or like it on Facebook.