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Leap of Faith: Second Chance Dance with Alyssa Bowser · Incredible Mind

• Michelle Cross Smith: No. You were made for creativity, learning, problem solving, and of course, action. On the Incredible Mind podcast, you'll hear from neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, artists, and others, whose work expands our understanding of how the brain works, where things can go wrong, and what simple everyday steps you can take to make the most of the unique intelligence you were born with. The Incredible Mind I'm Talking About is yours. Last week we explored the ups and downs of choosing creativity. But what happens when creativity chooses you? In today's episode, Leap of Faith, I speak with Elisa Bowser, founder and owner of Second Chance Dance Studios in Philadelphia. This conversation spans the origin and actualization of an idea into a business with deep dives into how dance impacts the performers and audience in ways both unexpected and very meaningful. If you like what you hear, Please subscribe and share this episode with friends and family. Let's get started. Welcome everyone back to Incredible Mind Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Cross-Smith. Today I'm speaking with Elisa Bowser. Elisa is the owner, founder, creator of Second Chance Dance in Philadelphia. This is a dance studio for adults. And we are not talking about dance fitness per se. We are talking about ballet, modern, jazz. Praise all different kinds of forms of dance. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. at Second Chance Dance, as already stated, we are adults only, which means you have to be at least 18 years old to be here. For our different genres, we have valet, modern jazz, hip hop, African, stretch, PBT, which is progressing valet technique. Praise. Praise. But we do have pop ups for other classes that Students may be interested in. So we might have a line dance class, might have a salsa class, we have a choreol lab class, and we're going to be introducing composition. So we have nine consistent genres and a cycle we go through for the other five. What stood out to me with second chance dance, and I am a student here, is that I was able to take classes in modern dance. And it is not easy to find A class for adults in modern dance where you actually learn the pieces and the techniques in a very serious way. Yes, absolutely. And I am not someone who's been dancing my whole life, but I have for a number of years wanted to learn modern dance, and this is where I came, and I've been here ever since. People don't realize how codified of a technique modern dance is, very similar to ballet. Contemporary is like a little cousin of modern that is not as codified, which is why you can find it a lot more broadly. You don't need as much training, I would say, and education directly for contemporary, but for modern it matters who you learn from, how they taught it and where they learned it from to make sure you're actually teaching the correct things. But I'm glad you found us. How did you come about this idea to open a studio for adults? So around the COVID era where everyone was at home. Many people were trying to figure out well, how do I still find community and what am I doing physically for my body to make sure that the couch doesn't become our best friend in a negative way? And so I attended a high school dance student of mine. I went to a cookout that we probably shouldn't have been having, and one of her aunts reached out to me while we were there, pulled me to the side and referenced the fact that she knew that I taught dance and that I was teaching her niece. And in doing so, she asked me if I could teach her. My immediate reaction was no, sorry, I don't offer classes for adults. And she pretty much was asking why. And I said to her, I wasn't really interested in teaching adults because I take teaching dance very seriously. So if you say you want to learn ballet, you don't get to just jump around and bend your knees twice and say I'm a ballet dancer. You need to actually have training, vocabulary definitions, and history. And if you're not in a place where you want to do that, I'm not in Place where I want to teach you. She pretty much convinced me, no, I am serious. She ended up asking the prices. We set up some scheduled dates. I told her she can bring in a few friends. Ended up being her, one of her best friends, and a family member of hers. And that first week we did one hour of ballet, one hour of matter, one hour of jazz, and they took it so seriously. They were writing notes, they were asking questions, they were so intrigued in a way that I don't always see in children. And I think it had something to do with the fact that they had always wanted to. And so when it pr presented itself to them, they did all the things that as a teacher you would want to receive from a student who's serious. That went on for about six weeks. At the end of the six weeks I was like, That was great. Appreciate you all. I gotta go back to other things that I was doing. The next summer she reached back out and we did it again. This time it was more people. I got a bigger location. The summer after that was twenty twenty two, it was July. A couple of people had heard about it and I said, Well, why not? Instead of you all trying to split the calls, what if I just make it more public? So I put it on Eventbrite, which continues to be one of my close friends. Put it on social media and we had thirty-two adults show up from New York, Delaware, Jersey, and Pennsylvania. I was so amazed that these people were traveling from other states to learn dance. Some of them had never danced before, some of them had training and stopped, some of them danced all the way through college. We started from the beginning with plie means to bend. In ballet class, modern, we were doing flatbacks and jazz, we were just learning how to tandu point flex. At the end of the six weeks, this time the 32 people were like, no, what are we doing? And that was July of 2022. I had just left teaching at a specific studio. I was their director, I was running the whole school. So I had all of the knowledge I needed to open up a studio. Just never saw myself doing it. But again, I always felt like my steps have been ordered in life. Fathers tend to get behind you, you know. So I said something to my father and I was like, Yeah, it was so nice. It'd be great if I had a a larger studio. We could continue. And he said that to his wife, and she sent me this location that we're sitting in. It was the first and only location I saw. And I called them because I thought that the price for the rent was too low. It says it's this price, but you know it's five thousand square feet, so it's probably off. And they said, No, it's not, come visit. And I came and I looked and I stopped at the steps outside, and I was Home. It just felt like I was supposed to be here. That was August. I had the keys November first. We had our first class November 13th. And that's how Second Chance Ding started. I'm surprised because it's not an idea that you had been percolating at all in your head. So this idea for the whole studio came from a high school student of yours aunt, essentially. Who now goes to S E D. I bet she does. Yeah, she's here. Yeah, she's actually one of the students. She performed in the recital last year as well. That's the other thing that I find really compelling about second chance dance is that here we are, grown-ups. Some clearly have a really solid dance background. They are extremely talented dancers. But other folks like me are fairly new to dance. But Alisa gives us the opportunity to perform in a recital. And I don't mean in some back porch. Please, we are at the Annenberg Center for the Arts in the middle of Philadelphia. And I wasn't able to perform this spring, but I did attend the recital and it was incredible. Thank you. Why do a recital? Another thing that I wasn't planning on doing 2024 came and those people had been with me for a year to a year and a half. And in January they were asking me, When do we get to do a show? And I was like, Yeah, I don't want to do a show. And they're we do want to do a show. I said, no one knows how much work a show is. Similar to the dance studio, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. So we're not gonna do a rinky dink pop-up. Not that those things don't have place and purpose, but for what we're capable of, I always wanna hit the ceiling at the very least and break through it if that's possible as well. And so I said, if we're gonna do a show, that means we're doing costumes, we're doing makeup, we're gonna have uniform hair. We're doing a photo shoot, we're marketing, we're doing all the things that that you deserve to have as a performer because dance doesn't have an age, it doesn't have a body type. There's no such thing as we just need to do anything. The word just is irrelevant to me. You're gonna do a show, and you're gonna do a great show. And so I found a location and a lot of people when you say, Hey, I want to rent out your location to do an adult dance recital, when you say adult dance, you think I'm immediately Going to do something that's a little bit more sexual. Like a whole dancer. Yeah, which doesn't even have to be sexual, but it's this concept. So a lot of schools were initially turning me down because of what they thought it meant. These weird preconceived notions people have about adults dancing because we don't see it outside of professionals, right? Found a location that said yes, it it was a packed house. This show was absolutely amazing, but it really came from the dancers having this urge I think it's almost an innate nature when you've learned but so much and no one really knows what you're doing. You we have lawyers and doctors and hairstylists, cosmetologists, nail techs, teachers, nurses. These people have these very broad lives, but on the weekends you're coming and you're dancing and no one really understands what that means and you want to show the world and so we did it and we just did it in a very grand way. So that's how we came about it. I now know that the recital is so much more than the dancers just performing the show. It's also the people who get a chance to watch and it changes how they view themselves. The amount of people who stop me after a recital and they're reconsidering if they're doing enough in their life from the perspective that there's more that they want that they thought up until this point has been out of reach. And now that you see these adults. who are of all ages, all sizes and demographics, ethnicities, come and do something that pretty much the world has said is no longer for them, it makes them reconsider, am I at the job I like? Am I in the relationship I wanna be in? Am I finding passion? And do I have community where there are people who want to see me on a week to week basis? And so I think having the recital All the people in the audience are changed by seeing these people go forth and accomplish something that was previously not available or thought to be for them. When I went to the recital, what moved me is seeing people from all walks of life being able to express themselves artistically, express themselves physically, and above all of that, there is an emotional expression that is going on in. Community with other people. Yes. That was so powerful. And one of the performances, I loved all of them, but the one that blew me away that surprised me was praise. I have a complicated relationship with Christianity. I'll put it that way. It brought out in its dancers, as an audience member, you could feel it. Yeah. It brought out this sense of power. And awe towards spirituality. Yes, I had not seen in a long time. If I could have gotten on my knees in Antenburg, I would have done so. Yeah. Praise has a way, they're not holding hands the whole dance, but it very much feels like they're moving as one body and they're all representing the same message. And it quite literally feels felt. There's this unseen tethering to the performance that. tethers to the audience. It gathers you in a way that although no one's literally speaking, you feel like you're being spoken to. And the audience feels that. For several of the dances they feel that, but praise for sure. I mean they they were all fantastic. And just last week I interviewed Edamar Jalon, who was studying how just listening to music, if you stop and you pay attention and you start imagining a story, the creator of that music and the performers in it are literally transmitting this story to you because it tends to be a consistent story across all listeners. And with dance, there is something similar there. Yeah. Of course, dance is almost inseparable from. For music, the movement of bodies tied to music. Yeah. And telling a story or communicating a message. Absolutely. And it often has to be at least aligned with the musical choice, but not necessarily. Yes. There was definitely stories and feelings coming at you from the stage. Yeah. When you're in the audience, which was almost as inspiring as being a dancer on the stage and being able to express yourself at a personal level, but you're also performing the course. Choreography of your teacher and your performing in company with the rest of the dancers. That kind of collaboration is something, frankly, we need more of. I completely agree. I think if you've never experienced dance in a positive setting, because that matters, then you don't fully understand the impact that it has emotionally, mentally, physically. Emotionally, quite literally, the emotions that you can receive, that you can work through, the emotions that you can experience. Experience you can pass to others, you can address, and then mentally the things that you can let go of, but the social connection is another thing that you're gaining when you're learning to move in unison with others or just in the same room as others. You are changed by it. And I don't think that as children we have gone through sometimes enough that the dance can really utilize its full impact. We're just not taking it seriously because it wasn't a decision we made, versus as an adult, when you're choosing to dance, so many people are at S C D because they have to be. Because they're better mothers because they're here, because they're better friends because they're here, they are changed. When when we're on our six week break, they are different. They're like, okay, I'm itching to get back to dance because I need this outlet. For some people it is their therapy. Yeah. It's their only outlet where they don't have to speak, but they can still be heard in a very tangible way. But yeah, there's this. I almost want to say holistic impact that dance has because it's just not focusing on one individual thing. But then obviously there's the physical. Even if I was to go back to mental, you can also consider there's a cognitive impact of dance on your body. The three primary things within your brain that we know relate to memory, your hippocampus, your temporal lobe, your prefrontal cortex, they're all directly impacted by movement, but also by the different things that happen in dance. By having to hear the word, see the word, remember the word, do the word, have the definition. That's happening. Your brain is forever altered when you are dancing on a consistent basis or really at all because you're using so much of it for coordination. So yeah, there's the cognitive impact, the cognitive load of memorizing things and then having to recall them seven days later and then improve on that recalled memory. That's its own pocket. Then there's the physical. You're building muscles You're stretching them, you gotta stay hydrated. You're learning to actually take care of your body. Your body's able to do things that you may not have ever done before, and then you're trying to maintain that body. Yeah, dance is pretty amazing. To me, the challenge is learning the physical steps and moves. And especially when each arm is doing something different. Yes. my gosh, I struggle with that so brad. I can feel my brain is yes, it has a really hard time when we do that. And then One leg might be better than than the other at certain Yeah, absolutely. It's not even, yeah. It's been a really great learning experience. And by the way, you may think of dance class as this really strict the instructor is hitting you with a ruler or something like that. Alisa takes the dance extremely seriously. She defines each move that we make, whether it's a Ray, play back, or any of the things. John do these these other moves. But she doesn't make you feel bad when you make a mistake, but she notices and she corrects individuals. Absolutely. But in a way that is fun, that doesn't make you feel like, my god, I can't come back here. I'm so bad. It's a very welcoming space. To learn dance. I've been curious and I wanna ask you, how does a person come up with choreography? Because for me I can follow someone else's, but I would struggle to choreograph anything. Choreography it's a very specific to the person experience. I've had choreographers who are very collaborative. I have choreographers who are very regimented and very strict. For myself, I tend to be someone who likes to come up With the choreography in the moment, but I have key points that I want to hit musically that are going to ensure that the story is told. Is if I'm creating a movie, I know what parts have to happen where to get to my ending desired experience. And then I'm able to fill in based on who's physically in front of me. Because it's not just me. I have personally never enjoyed choreographers where they come in and they have this full structure and they know exactly what they want and they haven't yet learned their dancers. And then now we have to force ourselves to become the puzzle pieces to fit a picture they've already finished. I don't care for that. I prefer to say, okay, I know I want the back door here, I want a dining room table here, I want a front door here. What's my path to get to the house? How many rooms do I have? What's in each room? And that's kind of how I'm processing what I'm trying to do. I normally find music that speaks to me first, and I have a wide array of music that I'm interested in. And then when I go into a classroom When those people are in front of me, I can now figure out well what can they properly tell based on my list of twenty-five songs? What can this group of 10, 15, 20 individuals, what story can they tell? And then I'll put together the choreography. So specifically this year, I did a really long number. That included three different classes. So I had a beginner class, an intermediate class, an advanced class. It was for my modern dance. And for this class, I knew that my beginners could tell a specific story. Their story was going to be the whole dance was about displacement, but their specific portion was going to be about fighting for the land they're already standing on. And then my intermediate group, because of what they were capable of this school year, I felt like they would be best at telling the story of. What does it mean when you've been displaced so you don't have your previous history? But you're forced to go into this new section. And they were telling the story of being in this new land, don't really have their history. How do you support each other? How do you work together? How are you connected? And then my advanced group, their goal was to tell the story of I'm now thriving where I am, but I have this desire to reach back to where I've been. All I had to do was know those things, and then I created movement that signify those things. So for that first dance where they're fighting for their land they're in, there's a lot of moments where their fists are directly on their hips, their chin is held high, and they have this air of you can't move me. And the movement reflected that. They had a lot of moments where they were using their hands in a way that showed that they were defending themselves. They were looking like they were utilizing arrows and bows and weapons to defend what they feel like was theirs. Where the second dance where they're in this place where they've been moved from a new land and they don't quite know what's going on. They did a lot of reaching towards each other, a lot of releasing where their arms were going up and out to show like I've been pushed into this new place. So there's this constant push and pull. And then the next dance, their reach was a lot of we use the word contraction to imply that your belly button pulls back into your spine. It's almost like you're gasping for air. And that last dance where they were reaching back to understand where they came from in order to succeed in the future, they did a lot of Reaching while still gasping. Like I feel like I'm missing something. They did a lot of laying on the ground and reaching up to the sky to where their ancestors would have been. So every movement was interacting with what the story was that that group was trying to tell. And that's kind of how I go about the choreography. Again, everyone has their own ways. I like to find the music, compile thoughts, figure out who can accomplish what things, and then make sure I'm tying specific movements. To what I want them to express to the audience so that even if you don't read the description, you have a concept of what are they talking about. And then the choreography should kind of match the costumes. So we used a lot of orange and a lot of browns and a lot of sand and a lot of green to show earth and that we're in this location and then that location. On a less personal level, things I'm always trying to consider are we having levels? Are we up, middle, ground? Are they touching? Are they connected? Are they not? And it should imply something. Directionally, are they moving towards the audience, which feels like you're coming to their face? Are they walking away from the audience? And the speed at which they're moving all directly impacts what you're feeling as an audience member? And obviously, one of the things that stands out to me when I watch people choreograph, I got to see a total bird choreograph. Wow. He just does it on the spot. He hadn't even picked the music yet. Yeah. He listened to about five different songs. But he had a sense of the story he wanted to tell. Yes. And he worked with the people in the class. He said sometimes someone would make a mistake, but he liked what they did. And so he switched the the choreo to match to match that. To choreograph, you need to speak the language of dance. Yes. In your mind and body as well. I found where my limits were. in following choreo was that I didn't speak the language yet. I didn't know all the most common positions and moves that went into modern dance. So I would struggle to know what I was doing correctly. And I really leaned on the other more experienced dancers who would say, Michelle, lift your leg a little Yeah they would help me with corrections. Yeah. And I think some of that goes into discipline. How frequently are you practicing? But as you said, there's a break even point. I know I'm using like financial terms, but there's a break-even point between how much you know and how you can get that to translate in a way that you're comfortable. The intangible portion is there's a section on all of this where comfortability doesn't always equate to what we're visually seeing. So you may not feel comfortable, but it doesn't mean that it still didn't look great. So there's another layer to that where a lot of times my first timers, my beginners, they're like, I don't know if I could be on stage yet. I don't know if I'm ready yet. Da da da da da. But the audience doesn't know you feel that way unless you express that. If someone only saw our beginners, you wouldn't necessarily know that they started six months ago. No, not you know what I mean? So there's that gap between what you feel, yeah, which is I'm having a hard time, and what the audience feels, which is wow, they look amazing. I can't even do that. You know? And even if you don't feel like you can do it well, if you have learned the physical position, yeah, then There you go. It's like kind of a fake it till you make it. Literally. Yeah. I a hundred percent feel like dance is at least thirty percent fake it till you make it. At least only because your brain has this concept of what you should look like, how it should feel, how easy it should come to you. But then again there's this complete opposite side, which is what is the audience seeing and what are they feeling? Reality is kinny for praise, going back to praise which is what you mentioned. He combined his beginner praise with his intermediate praise, but there were tons of moments where you couldn't tell who was who. I couldn't tell. Yeah. You you don't know. But if I asked beginner praise how they felt, they might have been like, we we don't know if we're doing this right and I don't feel comfortable yet. But then when we talk about the impact you felt watching it. You know what I mean? So there's that gap between what you feel as a performer or as a dancer and then what the audience is actually receiving and sometimes you have given them a full plate even if you felt like it was empty. Like sometimes you you have done exactly what you were on stage to do and you've impacted people and changed people even though it doesn't always feel like that's what's happening. Yeah. Well that sort of takes me back to the story of how Second Chance Dance came about. Mm. You have the idea, it it grows sort of piece by piece. But now it is this thing. Yes. That has taken on a life of its own. You're the driver, but it's almost like you didn't make the bus and you continue driving. But but this studio means so many things to so many people. That puts you in a complex position that I think all creators get to once you have made the thing. And the thing is not a standalone painting that is done. Yes. It can hang anywhere and and you have to do the work of getting it shown and whatnot. But this thing that you've created is made up of many many people. What is it now? Someone kind of gave me the seed, but they didn't have the soil. They didn't have the watering. They just had the seed. They just passed me seed. And then I was responsible with getting it off the ground or through the ground. And it started taking on leaves. And I think at this point I'm more the caretaker of SCD. Yeah. And I think it's what I care about. But it is its own baby who has grown its own legs that is now walking. And it is not an extension, an extra arm that I have. That's not the case. S C D is its own physical being in a roundabout way. You gave birth to it. And it's just its own thing. So it's been a blessing, but it is heavy as the head that wears the crown. I feel like I'm in this space where I'm trying to figure out the next best steps. But it's not purely what I want. It's what do the people want? Because we're Truly a grassroots community-based program and f maintaining that I think the toughest part is maintaining people's expectations. Because we are community centered, I care about what everyone says. However, a lot of what people say they want may conflict with what others may want. There are people who want a recital every year. There are people who would love to not have a recital every year. There are people who want more snacks. in in items and there are people who like what about a smoothie machine and I'm like my gosh a coffee machine smoothie machine it's so many different parts and I can't do everything but I try to stick to the primary things. We're a dance institution that focuses on education that wants to always maintain a healthy community based environment where you are wanted, seen, supported and encouraged. And that's what SCD really boils down to. If I took out the plants And I took out the snacks and I took out the recital. Are you getting dance education? Are you still having community where you have people who want to see you, who care about your growth, and are paying attention to you? And while you're here, are you feeling encouraged and supported? I think as we've gotten larger, trying to maintain what community means has been the toughest part. To me, community is somewhere where you can safely go. Relative, you should know the people in some capacity, they should know you. You should have the freedom to be who you are. But everyone in S C D is not me. And I think that the h the harder part this past year is as I've hired new teachers, every teacher isn't going to do the same things I do. Everyone doesn't give hugs, but that doesn't mean they don't care about you. And then as I've introduced new beings to our staff and leadership. So we have our staff, our actual instructors, but then we have our volunteer board who has very specific roles and trying to make sure that their feet aren't being held to the fire in the same way that mine are. Because their role is to run social media, they're not customer liaisons, and not putting so much on them that they no longer enjoy volunteering for free and supporting SCD has been one of the bigger factors as I've added new people in. Trying to make sure that there's not clickiness. Because in some capacity I want there to be some form of click, but I don't want the negative connotation with click. There are clicks because there are people who are mothers and they get along with people who are mothers in the sense that they're taking their children and they're spending time together. There are people who are nurses and they spend time with the other nurses that are here. There are people who are principals and educators and administrators and they're focusing on that and trying to properly maintain people's expectations that we are community based and I feel like people get love here and they get friendship and many people get family and they get lifetime friends here. The longer you're here, the more people you get to know. People see that and if that's what you're looking for, it's the first thing you see. Wow. Yeah. You know what I mean? So i if if your eyes are on that, it's like, immediately. But I'm like, actually I want you to plie and tandu and flatback. And then through that, through almost the grueling process of your back burning because you're on your sixteenth flatback, there's someone who connects with you. And so then when you go into the bathroom and you are flat back in Then you're like, girl, my back hurts. me too. And then there's this bond that builds. And it doesn't always happen immediately in the lobby when you first walk in. So I think that maintenance-wise, that's been one of the harder ones to maintain people's experiences and maintain their expectations for what this community provides and what our real heart is. I think this past year, another thing with juggling the community intention with making time for dance classes. We have Family Day. That's free, but that takes up time when we have a full schedule as a dance studio. We did an event at Third Good Marshall Elementary School where we did an African American History Month African performance where we taught about African cultural dances, where it comes from, what we wear, the language we taught the children songs, but that takes up time from dance classes. We go to IBD, which is a international dance conference, but that takes up four or five days. So trying to balance I wanna be community centered, but I also want to provide consistent dance classes. Right. Has been another tough cookie for us. But it doesn't tough doesn't mean that we stop doing it. It just means that I have to find time to revisit, make it more efficient and try again. Each year I have the grateful opportunity to do so. S C D definitely has a mind of its own. I get tons of feedback in the surveys. I'm grateful people are honest with me. I try to figure out how to incorporate it. Praise dance came as a result of the survey. It wasn't something that I had initially said is something we would offer. It was listed in a survey and me and Kenny are close friends and he was a great addition to the family. So I'm glad he's here. But when we take that and we take three hours to do that, it takes away from something else. So just finding the balance has been the tough part. I think we're scaling. Now we see about two hundred and seventy people a week. Wow. Which is nuts because for the first six months I only had thirty-two. But we're in the same studio in the same building with the same twenty-four hours in a day. Above all else has been a bl I wouldn't change it for the world. I'm just learning to move with the current and keep paddling, keep figuring it out, staying afloat and figuring out how to be more efficient and and serve the community. It's not actually the story I expected. And I kind of love that. Yeah, it it it had it truly had a mind of its own. And you wanted to be and it picked you and you're the one who had the skills and the ability to make it happen. That's so cool. Well, is there anything else you want to say? My statement is when something is calling you, answer it. So many things in life are not for everybody, but they're for you. So many things in life are quietly calling out to you. It might be a faint conversation you're continuously having. It might be this thought that's in the back of your head constantly, and you may have a million and one reasons why you're being told not to. If you have a thought, this is my gene belief. And you're spending time trying to convince yourself why you shouldn't do it, you probably should be doing it. If you have this thing where it's like, I kinda really want to start this business, I don't see it. It's not out there. It's probably for you to do because if it wasn't, it would have already been done. And even if it is being done, if you have another way of doing it or a different group of people to serve, I pray that you do it. It's the weirdest thing in the world to me today to think that adults who are not professional dancers have not previously had the opportunities that S C D provides. That for centuries dance has been a form of entertainment. And if you didn't fit a specific size, color, shape, make model, pretty much, it's not for you. And who's to say that? And I'm one person in this huge pond, but I know that it's impacted so many. We get emails and mail from across the country. I get mail from Florida. There's people who are in prison who donate to SED to make classes possible for others because They wish they danced. my god. Like a a to only to only make, I don't know, seventy five cents an hour and to still give eleven dollars a month means something because someone is that impacted. We have people who send mail from Ohio who found someone on Craigslist who teaches tap dance to them once a week. And she's in her late fifties, but she always wanted to, and because she saw S C D on a podcast, she decided to take it up. You never know whose life you're changing. You never know what impact you're having. I don't know what it is about S C D and what's in the water, but the amount of people who have been pregnant since coming to S C D that previously struggled. We've had fourteen babies at S C D in less than four years. Wow. My biggest note is just do the things that you're meant to do and pay attention to your steps because they're probably being ordered for you. That's all. And I appreciate you. Yeah. Because a lot of times those things the most profound that we can each do as individuals, in my experience, come as this quiet voice in the back of your head. Well, why don't you try this? And and you can give it a million and one reasons why you don't. But what if you just did it? What if you just try? It's one step at a time. Yeah. Yeah, you don't know who is going to be impacted by it in a positive way. It's a wonderful thank you so much. That was a great conversation. Thank you. I'm appreciative. It's been great. This episode is dedicated to all the dancers I've met at Second Chance Dance. Your kindness has meant a lot to me as I embark on new skills and navigate lots of change. Incredible Mind Podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Michelle Cross-Smith. Peter Aronson is consulting producer. Angela Ferrero designed the cover art, and the music was created by Alex Grohl. If you're enjoying this content, please like and subscribe to Incredible Mind Podcast wherever you're listening. Extra credit if you share an episode with friends and family. For more information, visit incredible-mind.org.