Showcase scheduling at Fred Astaire East Side Dance Studio

The Fred Astaire East Side Dance Studio in New York City holds ballroom dancing showcases at least twice a year to provide its students with an environment for socializing, practice, and improvement. The most important part of organizing a showcase is constructing the dance–presentations timetable. The number of participants is increasing each year; thus, this task, which has been performed manually, requires a great deal of management time and effort. To construct its summer 2007 showcase, the studio's management expressed interest in using a computer–based tool that would significantly expedite the schedule construction process and deliver a more coherent and efficient showcase program. The tool we developed is rooted in the coding of algorithms and integer–programming optimization models. Because it is Excel–based, it is user–friendly; however, it also considers the various constraints and requirements posed by the dance studio's management, instructors, and students. We successfully implemented the scheduling tool to generate the summer 2007 showcase timetable. The management spent considerably less time preparing this schedule than it had in constructing previous schedules manually. Therefore, it was able to allocate more time to other important activities, such as teacher training, dance instruction, sales, marketing, and client communication.