It’s a suffocating April morning in 2022. Ten little girls dressed in pink or black leotards sit obediently on a cement floor painted burnt orange, inside a recreation room that measures 25-feet by 60-feet.

Circulation is aided by a portable air ventilator as temperatures outside soar to 100 degrees.

“Good morning, I am Miss Tammy,” the teacher says to parents and tots.

Today is the second Saturday dance class in the city of Gardena since COVID-19 shut down the program two years ago.

Nobody has looked forward to in-person teaching again more than the teacher herself.

Tamara Kemp, affectionately known as “Miss Tammy,” sits cross-legged facing her Dance One tap and ballet students.

She is dressed in black — from the cloth face mask and hoodie top, to her stretchy yoga pants and short boots. A purple cap is pulled over her black, shoulder-length hair.

Tamara’s sparkling gray eyes (thanks to contact lenses) sweep the room. Her effervescent smile is on generous display.

“I want each of you to give your name, your age and your favorite princess,” Tamara says.

Her dance students, age 2 to 5, respond with shyness.

“My name is Presley … five. I like Ariel,” the first child says just above a whisper.

“My name is Jayleen … (she holds up four fingers) … my favorite is Belle,” the next child, with long, black braids, says.

One by one, the other tots share their answers.

“Jasmine is my favorite.” “I like Moana.” “I like Ariel,” they say.

Tamara, with mock concern, asks: “Doesn’t anybody like Cinderella?”

In a matter of seconds comes a wave of raised hands and little voices: “I do, I do, I like her.” “I like Cinderella.” “Me too, I like Cinderella.”

Tamara claps her hands and laughs.

“That’s wonderful,” she says. “Did I miss anybody?”

Winning the trust of young students is second nature to this 63-year-old Inglewood-based teacher, who began her own dance studies at age 4 in an Art Linkletter tap class.

Tamara’s diverse dance training now includes ballet, jazz, hip-hop and contemporary dance — besides tap, her favorite form.

She has parlayed this training into a successful professional dance career that has spanned the early 1980s to the new millennium. Tamara has performed with the Lon Fontaine Dance Co., Don Cornelius’s “Soul Train,” and “The Japan — Soul Train Connection,” among others.

Her last regular dance stint was at El Camino College in the early 2000s.

Dancing has been a wonderful experience, she says, but teaching dance is her calling. Her teaching also includes the benefits of formal education.

“My intent was to always teach children,” Tamara says. “When you are a dance teacher, your objective is to create dancers. But in recent years my goal has been more about teaching confidence and instructing them to believe they can do or accomplish anything.”

Since 2001, Tamara has been the principle community dance teacher of children for the city of Gardena’s Recreation Department.

She oversees about 60 students (age 2 to 13) in three levels of dance, from tap and ballet to hip-hop and cheerleading.

Stephany Santin, who became director of Gardena’s Recreation and Human Services in 2019, quickly learned of Tamara’s stellar reputation.

“We did a survey in 2019 and many parents indicated how much they liked her classes and how they wanted her to teach even more classes,” Stephany said. “(Tamara’s dance program was) one of the most requested classes when we started reopening and bringing back sports and (fitness) classes.”

Tamara says a few of her students have even found commercial success.

“One of my dancers is in a Jennifer Lopez video,” Tamara says. “Another student is doing commercials, action and voice-overs. And I saw two twin boys in a Target (store) commercial.”

Tamara has recently registered her On Your Toes dance company as a non-profit business to pursue grant funding, and is getting help from friends to market and reach audiences through social media platforms, as well as revamping her website, she says.

“Dancing and education gives you two fueling stations,” Tamara says. “They can take you anywhere. Dance can open horizons to see bigger things.”

Tamara says that learning dance should start at age 2.

“They (2-year-olds) can be stubborn and that’s an age to break them (of bad tendencies),” Tamara says.

Danielle Brown, a clinical associate professor at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, says that teaching youngsters at age 2 might be a subjective matter.She does agree that children willing to accept dance training early in their lives will discover its benefits.

“(Formal dance training) like organized sports for children is a way to develop teamwork, skill building, self-regulation and builds a sense of community in the class,” Danielle says.

Tamara learned through her own missteps that it is never too late to go back to school.

In 2003, Tamara earned her associate degree in physical education at El Camino College (there was no dance degree at the time). From 1999 to 2001, she performed with Qui Geometer, an ECC dance theater ensemble created and directed by teacher Bernice Boseman.

“It was tough. I came in as an established dancer,” Tamara says. “They had their student choreographers and it was kinda like a clique. So you had to break into the clique. After an audition, they would pick or not pick you for the dances they were presenting.”

Tamara is considering taking additional classes at ECC to change her A.A. degree from physical education to dance.

Daniel Berney, ECC professor of dance, says dance was classified under the physical education umbrella at one time. Dance has since been placed in the Fine Arts division.

“Dance was more activity based when it was part of physical education,” Daniel says. “Now (dance) is performance-based and to get a dance degree requires additional classes, such as music and dance history.”

Daniel mentioned returning students can take independent study.

“We go to (the student’s) teaching or performing environment,” Daniel says. “Then we develop a series of assignments that they undertake which is based on their specific environment and then we observe them, monitor (their progress) and (if successful) give them those extra units of continuing education.”

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Tamara was born the second oldest of four children (two boys and two girls) to Thomas and Yvonne Kemp. Thomas has roots in Oklahoma, while Yvonne’s parents migrated to Los Angeles from Louisiana.

The Kemp family settled in a middle-class north Gardena neighborhood in the 1950s.

When Tamara was 4, she was enrolled in an Inglewood dance class.

“My parents didn’t want me to play with my brothers, who climbed trees and fences and played basketball,” Tamara says. “So, my mom picked dance and I hated it. I hated stockings, I hated the leotards, the frou-frou costumes with all the sequins, the gloves and didn’t like anything on my head.”

But she learned to love dance before the lessons ended.

Among her early teachers and mentors was the renowned dance teacher Al Gilbert, who was sometimes called the Pied Piper of Dance for his work with children. Al also taught dance to celebrities, such as Melissa Gilbert and Sally Struthers, the children of Michael Landon, Jean Stapleton and Cher, and a young Michael Jackson of the Jackson Five.

He released a popular dance-instruction series in 1971, under his Stepping Tones record label.

“His music is so fabulous,” Tamara says. “His (instructional) records were in stages. One would graduate you from one record to the next; to the performance. Some parts of my class I teach with his records.”

As with some dance students in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Tamara says she thought dance would be her career ticket. She graduated from Gardena High School in 1976, then bypassed college for the bright stage of professional dancing.

“Way back (in the ‘70s), we used to think, ‘Who needs school? I’ll just dance,’ as if that was enough,” Tamara says with a laugh.

Her first break as an entertainer came on April 11, 1978, when she performed with a dance company at the wedding of actor Glynn Turman and Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul music.

In 1984, Tamara was selected as a dancer to join Don Cornelius’s “Soul Train,” which was also syndicated in Japan as “The Japan — Soul Train Connection.” She and other company dancers were sent to Tokyo as performers and ambassadors.

She spent five years teaching English and conversational English, while dancing in Japanese commercials.

One of the areas where she and other “Soul Train” dancers spent ample time was in Roppongi, a district of Tokyo known for its nightlife, bars and late-night clubs.

“In the late ‘80s, early ‘90s [the Japanese kids] looked like us, dressed like us, had afros and danced like us,” Tamara says. “They were on top of it. It was like another world.”

She adapted quickly to Japanese culture as a product of Gardena, where she had Japanese-American friends.

“I had the edge over the other [Soul Train] dancers,” Tamara says with a laugh. “They didn’t even know how to use chopsticks. I tried to teach them.”

She returned to the states in the early ‘90s, to attend her brother’s wedding, she says.

Tamara herself has never married, but has been with her life partner, Jerry Oliver, for 28 years.

“I never had kids,” she says. “Back then I was dancing and by the time I got back from Japan, well, I don’t know. (My career) took longer to get going than it should have.”

She considers her dance students as her children.

After studying at ECC, Tamara found employment in the aerospace industry, she says.

“I had been working in the aerospace industry (for 10 years), Raytheon and Boeing,” Tamara says. “In those industries, you need a degree to move up. They said I needed more than just an A.A. degree. So, just when I applied for (entrance at a university), I got laid off.”

Undeterred, she moved on to study business science at the University of Redlands, where she earned her bachelor of arts degree in 2012. She obtained her master’s degree, also from Redlands, in 2014.

Today she divides her work days as a part-time senior project coordinator at American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance and for a non-profit group, Black Women for Wellness, in L.A.’s Leimert Park.

Working two jobs, plus teaching has been daunting.

“It’s a load,” Tamara says. “I’m evaluating my situation and will make any adjustments in the summer.”

For now the thrill of returning to classroom teaching overshadows any physical exhaustion.

Tamara concludes her Saturday dance class by distributing refrigerated Capri Sun fruit juice to refresh her young dancers.

She then spends time conversing with parents, some who have returned with their child for another season of lessons.

“I can tell when somebody walks into the room if they’ve had dance before,” Tamara says. “Just by the way they enter. It changes your posture, your attitude and you become a different person once you’ve taken dance.”

Editor’s Notes:

• Story was updated for clarity on June 10, 2022, at 7:51 a.m.
• Headline was updated and photos were enlarged on Monday, June 26, 2023.