For yoga classes, invading rhythms are hard to ignore
COHASSET -- People who practice yoga like it quiet. It helps them to meditate and relax.
So, what happens to a yoga studio when a dance studio moves in next door, complete with hip-hop music and dancers bouncing up and down?
The owner of the yoga studio starts suing, that's what.
Katrina Klein, owner of Bikram Yoga South Shore in Cohasset, is taking to court her landlord, Donald E. Staszko, trustee for Cohasset Realty Trust, and Becky
The lawsuit, filed last month in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, asserts that Klein's lease was breached because of the excessive noise and vibrations coming from the dance studio, which shares a wall with the yoga studio.
Klein said she has lost up to half her enrollment in some classes, which she said often had 15 to 20 students each. She seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring the dance studio from operating next door.
"I just want quiet enjoyment for my students," said Klein, who has run her studio in Cohasset Plaza on Route 3A for two years. "No special anything, just quiet enjoyment."
But that has been impossible since Creative Dance started classes after the first of the year, said Klein, who is represented by Neal M. Brown of Hingham.
Charles J. Humphreys, the attorney for Staszko, said that Klein's complaints were overblown and that the landlord has worked hard to soundproof the dance studio.
He said the dispute was something small that has been blown into something big.
"To me, it's a bit of the princess-and-the-pea issue," Humphreys said. A yoga studio can't expect too much peace and quiet, he said, when it's located in a shopping plaza and is close to a restaurant. He noted that Klein's lease does not call for special soundproofing.
He said all parties are talking and working to resolve the issue.
David A. Kellem, the attorney for Ford who spoke on her behalf, said, "We believe since the landlord made changes to the building, the problem has abated, so there shouldn't be an issue. "
Ford, who Kellem said is a former professional dancer, has been in business for about seven years in different locations. She offers 18 classes a week, of which 15 are ballet and three are hip-hop and jazz, he said. Classes are for youths between 4 and 14, with six to 10 children in a class.
Klein, meanwhile, said peace and quiet are a necessary component of a yoga class. I n the typical 90-minute beginner yoga class, she said, students go through 26 sequential postures in a studio heated to loosen muscles. Students range in age from 14 to 67, she said.
Some of Klein's students say the noises and vibrations from the dance studio are annoying.
"I can't even put into words how disruptive it is," said Erin LaSalle of Marshfield. "Four feet from my head is a kid kicking and pounding on the wall or jumping up and down really loudly . . . . It is really unnerving and distracting and disrupting to my own personal concentration. It's like a stampede next door."
Fellow student Claire Seguin of Cohasset is used to a high level of distraction as the mother of four pre teens. But what went on next door was too much even for her when she was trying to concentrate on relaxing, she said. It wasn't the music, which was mostly blocked out, but the vibrations through the floor.
"The entire room was shaking," she said. She walked over to the dance studio with Klein one day and found a swing-dance class for youngsters in progress. "It's annoying," Seguin said. "This is my de-stress time."
Tom Black of Scituate, who has been attending a class at the yoga studio for about 18 months, agrees it is annoying to hear music and the thumping bass line and feel vibrations through the floor when he is trying to relax. "It's a distraction," he said.
Creative Dance also had complaints at its previous location at 779 Chief Justice Cushing Highway in Cohasset, where it operated above a tanning salon.
But Brianna St. Peter, owner of the Endless Summer Tanning salon, blamed the noise problems there more on the old building than the dance studio. She could hear ordinary footsteps above her, never mind dancers.
"You can imagine a bunch of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds jumping up and down," she said.
When it got especially rambunctious upstairs, bottles of tanning lotion and pictures would fall off her walls, St. Peter said.
She mentioned it several times to the landlord, but agreed it was a difficult situation.
"I was trying to run a business," she said, "and so was" Ford.
Matt Carroll can be reached at mcarroll@globe.com. 
