Total Eclipse Dance Studio

Total Eclipse Dance Studio is a dance studio in Needham, Massachusetts, located at 1132 Highland Ave. It holds a rating of 5.00 from the customers who have reviewed it. The studio was founded by Alicia Santamaria and her daughter Gemma Joyce, both students of Radio City Music Hall dancer and studio owner Paulette Harwood. After years of learning and teaching, they founded the studio so that Harwood's spirit and knowledge would live on after her retirement. Classes serve students of all ages, with instruction in styles including tap, jazz, jazz funk, lyrical, contemporary, ballet, modern, hip-hop, acro, and pom. The faculty includes Taylor McLaughlin and Ricky Cushing, an industry-experienced dancer, choreographer, and teacher who began training at age nine on the North Shore, studied dance arts and choreography at Marymount Manhattan College, and has been featured on television shows including Pretty Little Liars, House, Criminal Minds, and Gilmore Girls. Frankie Manzon has been teaching at the studio since 2019. The studio runs numbered seasons and offers summer sessions, including June classes open to both its own students and non-students, with separate sections by age for acro, pom, and skills. Dance portraits are also arranged at the studio.

The studio sits on Highland Avenue, about a tenth of a mile from the Needham Free Public Library, the Thomas McGuiness Memorial, the Needham 9/11 Tree of Life, and the Needham World War I Memorial. Needham Pediatrics is roughly two tenths of a mile away.

The studio's founders built it around the belief that being part of a dance studio is like being part of a family, and they aim to give every student, at any age, joy and high-caliber training in an uplifting environment.