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She Spent a Decade Making Other People's Art. Then She Made Her Own.

Solange Hyppolite choreographed videos for gold-certified artists and toured with two sold-out acts. At 31, she walked away and opened a 900-square-foot dance studio in a shuttered Brooklyn laundromat. Seven years later, Hyppolite Arts serves 2,400 students and does $2.1 million a year.

Solange Hyppolite keeps a framed photograph on the wall of her Crown Heights studio — a snapshot from a 2015 music video shoot in Los Angeles. In it, she is mid-air, arching over a light rig, eight other dancers blurred below her. The artist she was working for is at the front of the frame, sharply in focus.

"Do you know who that is?" she asks, pointing at herself — the blurred one.

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