Owner Jeanine Nielson has been teaching dance since she was 17 years old. She began her training in 1975 at the age of three and loved it from the beginning. When in 9th grade, she began training at then SUSC with Gwen Grimes and the college students in their classical ballet classes. For the next 6 years she trained with Gwen and Burch Mann taking all the dance classes available at SUSC. During that time, she was a Drill Mistress (Captain) of her Dance Team at Cedar High for the two years she was on the team. She competed in the “Miss Dance/ Drill Team Utah” her Junior and Senior years where she placed 3rd attendant and 2nd attendant respectively.
She went on to the National “Miss Drill Team USA” Competition where she placed 11th her first year and 4th attendant her Senior year of High School. She went on to Nagoya, Japan where she placed 3rd attendant and received the Broadcasting award at the “Miss Dance/ Drill Team International” Competition. While she was a Junior in High School, she began teaching at “Dansworks Studio” here in Cedar City. She taught there for 11 years where she was able to teach many wonderful children in tap, jazz and Performance Teams. She was the assistant Mohey Tawa Advisor at Cedar High School for two years and then moved to SUU where she spent the next 4 years as the Waukeenyan Dance Team Advisor. Jeanine has taught “Coaching Dance Teams and Drill Teams” as well as other classes at Southern Utah University for many years.
Jeanine began her own studio (The Point) in Enoch in 2000 and expanded to Cedar City in 2007. Jeanine is married to Ken Nielson (also from Cedar City) and has 5 children, she also has 5 grandchildren. She loves her students and strives to give them a wonderful, positive experience at The Point/Elite Cheer. Because of her early teaching experiences, many of her students are children of her former students. She feels blessed to be able to share her love of dance with children and knows what an important part she and her staff play in a student’s life. Good Role Models are more important than ever these days and she strives to hire a teaching staff that will not only teach your children to dance correctly, but to be outstanding students, friends and citizens as they grow and develop. Jeanine’s roots are here in Cedar City, she has been here since the age of 8 and loves Cedar City. Dance is a huge part of her life as she is was able to share her love of dance with her two daughters as well as all of her students. Her philosophy in teaching is to give a positive for a critique so her students know what they have done well and what they can improve on. The Point always has age appropriate routines and costumes, while still keeping in with current dance styles.
