As the founder and artistic director of Positive Image Performing Arts in Winston-Salem, Porter works with dance students ranging from preschoolers to high schoolers. She and her staff of 11 other teachers offer ballet, cheerleading, hip hop, jazz (her personal favorite), tap, combination classes and tumbling. For advanced students there are competitive dance teams, an effective way to hone performance skills.

To provide opportunities for low-income students, the studio is one of relatively few to offer scholarships, a total of $14,000 last year. Some are small -- $45, for example, can pay the competition fee for a dancer. “That’s a major, major thing for some of these kids,” Porter says. “Anything that these dancers can get is appreciated.”

Some of the money comes from supporters in the community, including former students who have grown up, graduated from college and are starting their careers.

Dance, especially competitive dance, can be very expensive, so Porter uses a variety of strategies to keep costs down. Other studios, for example, require students to buy costumes that may cost as much as $300 – “a costume that they’ll wear for one season and never wear again,” she says. “We have costumes that are just a nice and just as cute that are maybe $200 cheaper than that.”

Pictures on the studio’s website show students of a wide variety of ages and sizes, but one type of dancer is in noticeably short supply.

“We don’t get as many boys as we’d like,” Porter says, “but we do offer classes free for boys because it’s so hard to get them interested and invested in dance.” Hard, but not impossible. Porter has had male students who also played for their schools’ basketball or football teams.

Success in Winston-Salem has made it possible to expand. Porter will open her second location in June in Charlotte’s booming university area. That opportunity came about when a fitness club owner with space available invited to her to use it.

In addition, Porter is renovating a new facility in downtown Winston-Salem. And if she can find a good opportunity to expand into Greensboro, she’ll take it. One thing both artists and entrepreneurs need is the ability to handle risk.

“Someone else can give you a million reasons why not,” she says. “I’m a problem-solver. I’ll find a reason why I can.”

Dance has been a constant in Porter’s life. She began at age 5. By high school, she was teaching as well as dancing. She supported herself as an undergraduate by teaching at two dance studios.

“I definitely wanted to be in close proximity to the place where I was teaching in Kernersville so I could still make money and so I wouldn’t have to leave my students,” she says.

She majored in broadcast news, mass media and electronic communications. “I actually got hired even before I graduated,” she says. “I worked in radio but always still taught dance on the side.” She still uses the media skills she learned at A&T, but now they promote the studio and give her students experience performing and speaking in front of a camera.

After teaching at studios owned by others for 10 years, Porter opened her own studio in 2005. As big as dance is for her and her students, it’s about more than dance.

“I’m a really big advocate for having great character, and I believe in service. We teach kids from a very young age to use your talent but also to use your talent to help people and to go beyond what your talent is to help people any way you can.

“We have our kids volunteering in the community, doing lots of things that have nothing to do with dance,” Porter says.

She and her students are frequent visitors to A&T for youth-oriented events and programs. She says it’s one way she “indoctrinates” her students in the importance of higher education and careers beyond dancing.

“I always encourage them, ‘Be a dancing doctor, be a dancing lawyer, be a dancing business owner.’ You can dance along with anything through your life.”

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