Rikud Studio opens in Prospect Heights, reimagining dance education through street and club dance and challenging the long-standing assumption that ballet must be the starting point of children’s dance education. Rikud Studio focuses exclusively on street and club dance forms including breaking, hip-hop, and house. Located roughly a ten-minute walk from Barclays Center, the studio has enrolled more than 165 students in its first two months and now offers 30 weekly classes serving children, teens, and adults. Rikud operates on an intentionally alternative model with no mirrors, no ballet, and no recitals.

Rikud was founded by Caila Moed, a former Goldman Sachs professional who spent more than a decade working in finance and philanthropy. Her new venture reflects a growing trend among millennial women toward entrepreneurship over corporate careers. Moed credits her dance training with shaping the discipline and high-performance mindset that informed her professional career.

“Most dance studio education in the U.S. still starts with ballet and works towards recitals,” said Moed. “But historically, hundreds of distinct dance traditions emerged from cultures around the world long before ballet became the norm in European courts. Hip-hop, house, and breaking are complete dance forms with their own techniques, histories, and pedagogies.”

Instruction draws from the established foundations of street and club dance–such as bouncing, rocking and grooving- and including breaking fundamentals such as toprock, footwork, power, freezes while bringing your own unique style to the table. The studio offers classes for all ages. Their most popular class is “Littles,” a caregiver-and-child dance party that introduces young children to the foundations of street dance.

Rikud’s philosophy reflects a broader movement within dance education–refocusing training on foundational movement principles, improvisation, and cultural context rather than performance. Many dance educators have grown concerned that social media is making dancers focus solely on short-form tricks, acrobatics, and visually sensational choreography, sometimes at the expense of musicality, groove, texture, and emotional expression.

All classes are taught by working professional dancers and choreographers, and the studio prioritizes instructors who remain active performers within their communities. Rikud’s Master Teacher is Andrew Carter, well known in the dance community as Dr. Ew, a professional B-boy and choreographer.