At the age of 12, in the 50's, Helaine was an apprentice at the largest dance school in Atlanta, Georgia, Jack Eppley Dancing School. She worked her way up to the Head Assistant to Mr. Eppley who was a past Vaudevillian who worked with George Burns, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Sammy Davis, Jr. and other celebrities of that show business era. She is a “trained to teach” dance teacher.
Helaine taught her entire teen years every day after school and all day on Saturdays tap, ballet and modern jazz. She then opened Helaine’s Dance School. As life took her in another direction she did not teach for many years and then sometime after retirement realized how much she missed dance. She started line dancing, choreographing and quickly began to be asked to teach. Before the pandemic she was teaching as many as nine weekly classes. She teaches at Sunrise Lakes Phase IV, Sunrise, FL, Tamarac Community Center, Tamarac, FL, and in Plantation, FL (a total of six classes a week).
Helaine Norman has choreographed 287 dances, of which 7 have been co-choreographed. Their first published stepsheet on CopperKnob is Dancing Queen from May 2014, with their most recent stepsheet of I Like It, I Love It When I Can Rumba in January 2025.
