Students help dedicate new $3 million performing arts center in Onalaska

Kids are usually discouraged from leaving handprints and writing on walls but not at one building in Onalaska.

Dozens of families with kids, who attend Misty’s Dance Unlimited, gathered Sunday to put their imprint on the company’s new home — literally.

Students wrote messages and placed handprints on a wall of the new $3 million International Performing Arts Center being built near Crossing Meadows.

Dance mirrors will soon cover those messages in a large studio being built by Misty Lown, owner of Misty’s Dance Unlimited.

Lown operates more than 200 dance studios around the world but is based in Onalaska.

She told students and parents when she started trying to pursue a career as a dancer, she attended a professional dance recital and realized she would rather teach than perform.

“And for me, it’s just like the weights just shifted like that,” she explained. “And I knew I wouldn’t remember a whole lot about the performance … but I knew that my students would remember my interactions with them for a lifetime.”

Her new performing arts center is scheduled to be finished in June.