Tucumcari native opens dance instruction studio

link Hannah Mericle shows her students how it’s done. From left, the students are Alayna Sena, Haisley Huffman and Celina Ashcroft.

QCS Managing Editor

On Monday, the first day of business for her dance studio, “Hannah M. Dance with Me,” Tucumcari resident Hannah Mericle enrolled 33 students.

Mericle is teaching classes in ballet, jazz and hip-hop styles to groups of girls grouped by age.

Already on the studio’s first official day of business , she had taught a prescshool class and class for five- to eight-year olds in the morning and conducted a class for eight- to 11-year olds in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, she said, she was starting a hip-hop class.

Mericle has received a lot of support from her family in this venture. Her mother Dena has helped with organizing and spent Monday helping to register students, all girls so far, for classes. She has also helped Hannah obtain a zoning change and a business license.

Her father, Curtis, is doing the carpentry required to turn one room in the old church building that houses into dance studio space, soon to be complete with barres and mirrors for ballet.

Her brother Christian helped promote the new studio at the studio’s booth at Rockabilly on the Route. He wore an Elvis Presley wig and rode with Hannah and his own daughter Maleah in the Rockabilly event’s “Wheels on 66 Parade. They set up a 1950s diner scene on a flatbed truck and accompanied vintage autos on Historic Route 66 Boulevard before tending to the studio’s booth in the Tucumcari Convention Center.

Mericle said she took lessons in Tucumcari for several years as a child but since has learned dance moves from websites and any source she can.

On Monday afternoon, she guided three students through basic ballet positions and showed them several posture, strength and flexibility exercises.

Hannah and Dena Mericle were both surprised at the number of students they had registered on their first day of business.

Dena Mericle observed, “There just aren’t that many things for kids to do in this town.”