Madeline Dempster, Director of the American Theater Dance Workshop

My two passions have always been education and the performing arts. Growing up in Queens, fifteen minutes by subway to New York City, my parents took me to all the Broadway shows. I studied dance at Charlie Lowe’s studio, a school in Manhattan where many professional children learned not only ballet, tap and jazz,
but singing, acting and performing
skills that I remember to this day.

Moving to Long Island at the age of ten, my high school years were dominated by my love for English literature, singing in our A Cappella choir and performing in any play I could get a part in. Two of my fellow choir members and I formed a singing group called  The Melodears, and we had a top
forty record.

Ms. Dempster majored in English at Hofstra University and continued my work on the stage. Francis Ford Coppola was a student at that time,
and I was lucky enough to be directed by him in two of his original musicals.
I graduated with a BA in English
and taught junior high school for
seven years.

When my children were born, I concentrated on volunteer work helping to form an alumni theater group at Hofstra, serving on the board of The Eglevsky Ballet Company, PTA president etc. All of this activity earned me the honor of being selected for an edition of “Outstanding Young Women
of America”. I met Lee Theodore in 1982, and along with my partner,
Sofia Semler, opened The American Dancemachine on Long Island. The Summer Workshop is an outgrowth
of that school.