One parent, Kate Swanson, says she’s out more than $5,200. She doubts she’ll get her money back.
Swanson’s daughter, Coco, started with Frequency Dance in August 2024, back when the studio was named Kinesis Dance. Coco, now 12, was spending a couple of hours in the studio at least four days a week, dancing at the studio at 635 S. Broadway as recently as the fall, Swanson said.
But over the next year and a half, Frequency collapsed, then abruptly closed down while Coco and the other families were expecting several more months of dance. By the end of 2025, financial turmoil — including lawsuits totaling more than $133,000 in unpaid loans and rent — ate away at the studio’s viability under the leadership of Cindy Burdine, the owner and operator of the studio.
Cynthia Leigh Burdine, 50, was indicted by a grand jury on March 27, according to online Boulder County District Court records. As of Thursday afternoon, she had not been arrested, according to Colorado court and Boulder and Adams counties’ jail records.
She was charged with one count of theft between $100,000 and $1 million, one count of theft between $20,000 and $100,000, five counts of insurance fraud by claims charges, one count of attempting to influence a public servant and 13 counts of forgery of a check with a commercial instrument charges, court records unsealed on Tuesday show. All 21 charges are felonies, court records show.
The Daily Camera sent emails to multiple email addresses associated with Burdine and voicemails to multiple phone numbers, but did not hear back from Burdine.
“I would have had minimal reservations keeping my daughter at Frequency, if the doors were still open, to finish out the season,” Swanson said of the season that ran August through May. “My beef is that (Burdine) took $5,200 from me.”
Swanson said tuition fees for one year cost $3,500, and that she was out $2,100 in unreimbursed tuition. The rest came from assorted fees, she said.
As of Feb. 17, months after the studio’s closure, the Boulder Police Department was looking into Frequency Dance and Burdine, in part following Swanson’s $5,200.
Court records first reported by Boulder Reporting Lab show Burdine was either ordered to pay or accused of failing to pay more than $133,000 across four lawsuits since 2021.
Parents such as Swanson felt hung out to dry in the process. Some former business partners and dance teachers have also described a culture of toxicity and abusive tendencies that Burdine cultivated.
A young dance studio finds a foothold in Boulder
Burdine started the studio on Arapahoe Avenue in east Boulder under the name Kinesis Dance with business partner and co-owner Kirsten Leslie in 2014, according to . Burdine met Leslie around 2000, Leslie said, about a year after Leslie started teaching dance.
The studio would become a dance staple in Boulder, offering recreational and competitive dance and an array of styles.
At the start of Leslie’s seven years with Kinesis, Burdine seemed to care for her students, Leslie said. By the end of Leslie’s tenure, in 2021, that had changed, she said. Burdine would become more abrupt and competition-focused, Leslie said.
For AJ Warbritton, a former teacher who started as a dancer at Kinesis when she was 16 years old in 2016, the changed tone meant enduring regular screaming and yelling at both staff and students, she said.
“Dance needs to be an escape, especially for children,” Warbritton said. “It should be a safe place to go where you can just put all that personal stuff aside for a minute.”
Warbritton said that one time, she and Carly Knudson, a former dance teacher and administrator with the studio, glued designs on outfits in December 2019 for an upcoming competition.
When Burdine saw the outfits a few days later in the studio, she yelled at Warbritton about the costumes, and said Warbritton, who was making $10 an hour as a 1099 contractor at the time, would have to pay for any fixes, Warbritton said.
Knudson also said she was working as a contractor, and that both she and Warbritton spent so much time working at the studio that getting another gig for more money was impossible.
“I was also young, so I didn’t know better,” Warbritton said. “I totally had the responsibility of going, ‘I should have said something.’ But at the end of the day, it was also her relying on me not knowing that.”
Knudson said that during her time at Kinesis, Burdine would remain a constant force in her life, turning Knudson’s free time into more opportunities to work or talk about work. Knudson said she went on a family vacation to Estes Park once, and Burdine called her about a dozen times about a minor payment processing problem.
“She’d call me at 8 o’clock in the morning after she dropped her youngest daughter off at school and keep me on the phone all day long,” Knudson said. “I went back through my phone records at that time, and there were days where we were on the phone together for seven hours, and then I would go to the studio and I would teach.”
If she tried to get off the phone, Knudson would be berated for not putting her work first, she said.
Kinesis Dance during the COVID era
By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the studio’s finances appeared to be strained.
On April 30, 2020, a business called “Kinesis Dnce” filed for a loan and was , a ProPublica compilation of such loan records shows.
At the time, businesses could only apply for one PPP loan until the second round in 2021, according to the . But the next day, a business called “Kinesis Dance, LLC” , that time for $16,722, which was granted. Both businesses were listed as Boulder fine arts schools with two reported employees, records show.
The next year, Kinesis Dance was granted a third PPP loan.
Knudson said she helped Burdine apply for the first and third PPP loans but did not know about the second, adding that Knudson knew only two loans per business were allowed.
“She called me and said, ‘I didn’t want to tell you because I knew that you’d be upset,’” Knudson said of a call she received after learning of the third loan. “She kept that part from me.”
Knudson also contributed to the studio’s finances in 2021 by taking out a personal loan of about $14,000 and securing a $75,000 loan to Burdine from one of her family members to renovate the South Broadway studio.
Both loans were paid back, she said. Burdine kept berating Knudson and kept her on call round-the-clock, Knudson said, despite the personal financial support.
“I was the person that was supposedly closest to her in the world, and she just treated me like dogs,” Knudson said.
That same year, Leslie received a letter from a bank stating she needed to pay a credit card bill. The credit card was in her name, but it wasn’t hers, Leslie said. It was the studio’s, and Burdine had opened the account, she said.
Leslie knew when the account was opened in early 2019 but thought it was for the business, she said. Leslie didn’t know the credit card account was under her name and information. She said she believes it was fraudulently opened.
Burdine had told Leslie to stop using the card later in 2019.
But in 2021, between $500 and $1,000 in dance and office supplies showed up on the statement for the credit card, which Leslie thought had been left in a drawer in the studio, she said.
After that, Leslie stopped directly communicating with Burdine and left the studio.
“That was a hard couple of days,” Leslie said. “I didn’t want to be fed any information that wasn’t accurate.”
Burdine would eventually pay off and close the credit account after the two negotiated a deal through attorneys, Leslie said.
Later that year, in a case filed in December 2021, Burdine failed to appear in court and Kinesis Dance was ordered to pay $23,419.16 to Pearl Delta Funding, which had sued her alleging $22,800 in unpaid loan payments, show.
Still, one of the studio’s partners during the pandemic reported a good relationship. Chuck Palmer, executive director of , said Kinesis was a good partner during a time that made it hard for children to see friends.
The dance studio offered dance classes at the Avalon from 2020 until April 2021, when it moved into the South Broadway location, Palmer said. It took Kinesis a little longer to pay off its bills than expected, but that happens sometimes, Palmer said.
“(It was) actually a really good arrangement for both of us,” he said, remembering a bunch of kids happy to have fun during a pandemic summer.
More lawsuits and losing the old guard
Leading into spring 2022, more unpaid loan lawsuits were filed against Burdine, and multiple organizations ended their relationships with her after, they said, she didn’t pay her bills.
On top of that, Kinesis Dance dealt with a break-in in February 2022, according to a Boulder police report.
Burdine reported $3,340 worth of stolen property at the South Broadway studio, the report states. The case was closed after police found the surveillance footage didn’t show anything that could have led police to seek charges, the report states.
Later that month, a Florida-based dance studio founder, Lorraine Aubin, was out $16,695 in Kinesis Dance’s competition fees, she said, after a check sent from Burdine bounced. A provided image of the check lists the account name as Kinesis Dance.
Aubin still hasn’t been paid, she said.
That March, Burdine would be party to another unpaid loan lawsuit, this time out of Kings County, New York. Burdine was ordered in that case to pay $26,668.47 to Fox Capital Group, which alleged she and Kinesis failed to pay $24,489 in unpaid loan payments, according to .
In August 2022, Boulder Parks and Recreation stopped trying to collect the roughly $10,000 it was owed from recreational dance programming provided to the city, according to Boulder Communications Program Manager Kate Hernandez. The city takes a cut off the top of certain programming revenues, Hernandez said.
Kinesis never paid, despite three attempts to collect the money, Hernandez said. Hernandez said the city didn’t pursue legal action because it would’ve cost more than the $10,000 to get it back.
In May 2023, the ended its relationship with Kinesis and Burdine after the district wasn’t paid for a weekend event that April, which included renting space at Manhattan Middle School for a dress rehearsal and two days of dance performances, district spokesperson Randy Barber said.
The district spent nearly three months trying to get the $4,931.50 it was owed, according to Barber, who shared a copy of the timeline and the .
Burdine tried to pay the school district bill in February 2025, according to Barber. But the account didn’t have enough funds and was frozen, he said.
Shortly after the district ended things with the studio and Burdine, Kinesis was reportedly broken into again.
In July 2023, two people were seen on surveillance footage breaking into Kinesis. Police estimated more than $100,000 in damages, according to a . The pair had spray-painted all over the interior, shattered mirrors and damaged furniture, the release states.
A source familiar with the investigation said that the Colorado Attorney General’s Office has been actively investigating Burdine for fraud following that burglary report, which culminated last week in the grand jury indictment.
The 21 charges filed against Burdine as a result of that indictment were being handled by the Attorney General’s Office, according to court records. Those charges are dated July 29, 2023, the day after the reported break-in.
The July 2023 burglary was also still under investigation by the Boulder Police Department as of March 9, according to Kya Beyer, a Boulder police records and compliance specialist.
Frequency Dance shuts down and gets evicted
Heading into the last year of Kinesis Dance’s existence, Burdine was party to another unpaid loan lawsuit and would later be accused of not paying her rent.
In a March 2025 case, Burdine failed to appear in court and was ordered to pay $39,587.53 to Grid Funding, which had sued her and Kinesis, alleging she failed to pay $37,888 in loan payments, according to .
Just 11 days after that suit, Frequency Dance was incorporated, and the Kinesis name was retired. This time, the business was registered to Maggie Burdine, according to .
Maggie Burdine is Burdine’s daughter, according to Knudson.
However, Cindy Burdine continued to run the business, according to Swanson, who described Burdine running parent meetings and facilitating payments.
In May, Swanson’s daughter, Coco, started dancing competitively with the studio, which meant spending more money and time at Frequency. Dance became so important to Coco that Swanson would likely have kept her at the studio to finish out the season, she said, despite Burdine’s behavior being less than ideal.
Swanson said that Burdine was a bad communicator. Planning for dance became difficult because Burdine would be inconsistent and untrustworthy, Swanson said.
Nevertheless, Coco still loved dancing, and Swanson had paid for the season. Swanson’s frustration is that she’s out $5,261.68, she said.
A list of unrefunded payments provided by Swanson shows $2,100 in tuition payments and more than $3,000 in choreography, costume and other fees prorated to account for the four months of dance Swanson paid for but wasn’t given.
After paying $3,500 for the whole year of tuition up front, Swanson started getting charged for more that summer. She was charged more tuition payments for the months for which she had already paid. She was charged for costumes she didn’t buy and for competitions months in advance, too, she said.
Those payments were ultimately refunded when Swanson made Burdine process the reimbursement while she watched, she said.
In November, the studio started canceling classes, Swanson said. Then, parents got an email on Dec. 8: The studio was closing its doors immediately, according to the email.
“When the closure finally did come, (Coco) was really, really affected. She was very, very sad. She had sort of made dance her identity,” Swanson said. “To have that just taken away overnight was really hard for her to process.”
Swanson said there were only eight or nine families left at the studio by the time the studio closed its doors. In 2018, the studio had more than 100 dancers, Warbritton said.
Three weeks after the studio closed its doors, , alleging she didn’t pay over $48,063 in rent and other charges for the South Broadway studio. On Jan. 13, a Boulder County District Court magistrate from the building.
As of Feb. 26, the no longer had an eviction scheduled for the studio. Earlier in February, it had an eviction planned, according to sheriff’s office spokesperson Carrie Haverfield, who said the sheriff’s office can’t confirm whether evictions happened.
As of March 25, the studio’s former location could, through the windows, be seen gutted, without Frequency Dance branding or equipment left.
Boulder police were also still investigating Burdine as of Feb. 21, after parents, including Swanson, said they weren’t paid back for promised services when Frequency closed, according to Sherly Rech, a records specialist at the police department.
Boulder police spokesperson Dionne Waugh confirmed on Feb. 17 that the department is looking into new information. Swanson said she’d spoken with a Boulder detective on Feb. 11 about the $5,261.68 she says she’s owed for four months of dance and fees.
Amid the investigations and the studio’s closure, some of the children who danced at the studio have been finding new places to dance, like the new, albeit temporary, , run by Leslie.
Boulder’s city-run dance program offered displaced dancers a chance to finish out the normal season despite Frequency Dance’s abrupt closure, according to city spokesperson Hernandez. The program is expected to end before this summer, she said.
For Coco, dancing at the new Parks and Recreation studio, under the former Kinesis co-owner, has been a huge help after a painful split from Frequency.
“Itap interesting to hear (the girls) commenting, as we’re driving home, about how great the new dance director is and, oh gosh, she remembers Cindy and that was awful,” Swanson said.
The grand jury’s indictment was not immediately available upon a records request to the Attorney General’s Office.
