Norma Jeanne (Thaggard) Bochette spent her earliest years dancing barefoot along dirt roads in the Fort Myers of the 1930s. As a teen, she showed both artistic and athletic prowess, winning state championships in swimming and diving. She led the Fort Myers High School marching band as drum major—the first girl in Florida history to do so. A top-tier student, she won a scholarship to Rollins College where she formed a campus dance team, joined service clubs, participated in sports, established an equestrian center and tutored local children. While in college, she met and fell in love with L.D. Bochette, Gainesville’s football captain.
Following their graduations, the young couple was led to New York where L.D. had been drafted by the New York Giants and Norma Jeanne landed a coveted spot among the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. They made plans to return to Florida so that L.D. could attend law school, but the Korean War interrupted their plans. L.D. was seriously injured while serving as a fighter pilot. Jeanne brought him and their first-born baby back to Fort Myers and, without other means of income, fought to establish one of the area’s first women-owned businesses. She transformed a greasy machine shop beside a railroad station into the region’s first dance school. No bank would give her a loan, so she learned to survive by trading classes for goods.
From that modest start, Jeanne grew her studio into a pillar of Fort Myers’ cultural scene. She was a founding member of The Community Concert Series; served on the board of the Southwest Florida Symphony and the Lee County Alliance for the Arts; and started her own nonprofit Gulfcoast Dance Inc., to further dance-related opportunities to area students, regardless of which studio they attended.
Today, 75 years later, Dance Bochette remains a family-owned enterprise, run by Jeanne’s daughter, Alyce Bochette, who enjoyed an international performing career with the May O’Donnell Concert Dance Company and the Mark Morris Dance Group before returning to Fort Myers to put her own stamp on the studio where she learned her first steps—from her mother.
Alyce is joined by a roster of dance professionals who uphold the spirit of excellence and family-like warmth that have defined the organization from the start, while continually evolving to stay current with dance trends, expectations, and demands.
ClassesA Lifetime Love of the Art
Dance Bochette was practically the only game in town when Jeanne Bochette founded it in 1951. Today, prospective dancers have lots of choices.
Our training focuses on technical, artistic, and personal development in a supportive, nurturing environment. We pride ourselves in the culture of our studio, placing as much emphasis on the development of dancers’ characters as we do the characters they play on stage. We serve generations of families, a testament to our studio’s strength. Our year-end performances are carefully curated with well-defined themes and frequent use of guest artists and choreographers. We offer dancers supplemental experiences, including Florida Dance Masters workshops and dance competitions, carefully screened to ensure they are compatible with our training philosophy and principles. Our faculty includes members with professional dance experience, including Alyce Bochette, formerly of the world-renowned Mark Morris Dance Group.
You may be a skillful, effective employer but if you don’t trust your personnel and the opposite.Frank Sinatra
