Susan Filipiak is celebrating her thirteenth year as Founder and Director of Swing City Dance Studio.  She opened Swing City as a hub for the American vernacular dance styles of tap, jazz, swing and ballroom. Susan emphasizes serious fun in all her dance classes and brings the joy of dance to all her students from the smallest preschoolers, to the most advanced teens, to the simply recreationally-minded adults. Dance is physical, dance is mental, dance lifts the spirit!

Susan has intensive training in multiple dance styles: ballet, tap, jazz, modern, ethnic, swing and ballroom.  Her tap dance mentors include:  Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, Barbara Duffy, Heather Cornell and LaVaughn Robinson.  Her jazz dance mentors include:  Billy Siegenfeld, Frankie Manning and Ed Kresley.   She has choreographed for many area theater companies including Jeff Daniel's Purple Rose Theater, The Croswell Opera House and the UM Gilbert & Sullivan Society.  She continues to work as a dance educator in local elementary schools as a teaching-artist partner with University of Michigan's University Musical Society with training from Washington DC's Kennedy Center for the Arts.  She has developed training programs instructing regular school teachers on how to bring dance into their daily curriculum.

Susan is also faculty at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre and Dance.  She teaches all levels of tap dance in the celebrated Musical Theatre Department at UM.

At Swing City, Susan teaches Let's Dance for preschoolers;  Ballet, Jazz, Tap for young children, beginning through advanced Tap Dance for kids, teens, adults; Ballet Floor Barre for adults and teen; Ballroom and Swing for teens and adults.  She directs Swing City's advanced teen performing group - Swing City Teens.

"Bring the joy of dance into your life." - Susan Filipiak