Northeast Academy of Dance (NEAD)

Northeast Academy of Dance is a professional school of dance specializing in ballet and modern dance, established in 1997 by co-founders Giuseppe Canale and Scott Heinrich on the site of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda. With about 60 students, NEAD has attracted dancers locally, statewide, nationally, and internationally, training in two spacious studios with state-of-the-art sprung flooring.

NEAD's outcomes are extraordinary for a studio of its size: students have been accepted into summer programs at American Ballet Theatre, the School of American Ballet, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at ABT, the Joffrey Ballet School, and the National Ballet School of Canada. Alumni have gone on to professional company placements with the Royal Danish Ballet, Houston Ballet II, Sarasota Ballet, Ballet Memphis, Richmond Ballet, and North Carolina Dance Theatre, and to college dance programs at the University of Michigan and beyond. NEAD alumnus Kylend Hetherington was featured in the lead role of Billy in Broadway's touring production of Billy Elliot.