Centerstate Dance Studio director Emma Bishop (second from right) with her adult dance class in 2013.

WESTFIELD — Emma Bishop has taught thousands of students and directed countless performances at Centerstage Dance Studio in Westfield over the past 30 years, but the story goes back much further both in terms of her personal life and her connection to the building itself.

Centerstage is located on the second floor of a 100-year-old structure at 79 E. Main St. Now known as the “Bishop Building” in the Chautauqua County Historical Society register, it was originally built as a grange hall. Bishop’s parents both belonged to the grange, she said.

Bishop attended Westfield Academy and Central School for junior high and high school. When she was in high school, there was a woman from Buffalo who came to Westfield once a week and taught dance.

“I knew I wanted to be a dancer and I wanted to go to New York,” Bishop said.

Bishop attended college in Fredonia for a year, then moved to New York City. After three years of intense study, which included tap dance with Jack Stanley and Paul Draper, ballet with Jack Pottiger at Ballet Arts, the largest dance studio in New York, and jazz with Jack Stanley and Luigi, Bishop fulfilled her dream of becoming a Rockette.

“My main goal was to become a Rockette, which I did. After three years of study, I made it,” Bishop said.

Being a Rockette was much better than she expected, Bishop said. “We worked every day and did four shows a day. We were dancing all day long,” she said. “It’s a great life. It’s hard, but you learn to live with that.”

The girls had to keep in shape, Bishop noted. She said that one year, while rehearsing for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, she had an “honest-to-goodness pratfall.” She kept dancing but went to physical therapy between shows, she said.

“It’s different for the girls now,” Bishop said. “They do the Christmas Spectacular and the New York Spectacular. We were employed 52 weeks out of the year.”

Bishop said the other Rockettes were “wonderful girls.”

“You do become like sisters. You got to know each other really well and you developed very close friendships,” she said.

She noted that there is a Rockette Sisterhood and the members experience a wonderful camaraderie when they reunite.

After Bishop retired from the Rockettes, got married and had children, she taught dance in New York City.

“I hadn’t ever really stopped dancing,” she said. It was my husband’s idea to move back here because we just loved the area.”

Since there were no dance studios in the area, Bishop was invited by the director of the YMCA to teach classes there. She then opened a small studio in her house. The demand grew, however, and she and her husband bought the old grange hall where Centerstage has remained ever since, she said.

“Word of mouth is how I’ve gotten my students,” Bishop said. Several of her students have gone on to pursue dance careers or study dance in college, she said. One of her alumni even has her own dance studio in New York City.

Bishop has also instructed many football players who take ballet in order to improve their footwork on the field. Ballet also teaches them to fall without being injured, Bishop said.

When football players or other athletes first take hold of the ballet bar, they seem awkward and out of place, Bishop said. But as they go through the course, they are transformed.

“We are overjoyed when we see them ‘get’ something,” Bishop said. “It is amazing after six to eight weeks to see what these big burly guys can do.”

The focus of dance has changed through the years, Bishop noted. Reality shows such as “Dance Moms” focus on competition and a harsh style of instruction. “Shows such as Dance Moms have adversely affected the industry. Parents come in expecting that,” she said.

This has never been the style of Centerstage, Bishop said. “None of my teachers, which were some of the best in the world, ever treated me like that,” she said. “I don’t think that art, in any form, should be about competition.”

Bishop said the joy of sharing dance with others is her greatest reward. “I get in that room with a bunch of kids I don’t think of anything else. I would not trade it for anything,” she said.

Studying dance offers many benefits to children, including how to care for one’s body, Bishop noted. Perhaps the greatest benefit is teaching a child how to work to accomplish something new, she said. “Kids work on something that is complicated and then suddenly they’ve got it. You would think you had handed them a million dollars.”