Latest / Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast / In-House Choreography vs Guest Choreography

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In-House Choreography vs Guest Choreography · Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_05: Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the table at a dance competition?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly what are the judges looking for anyway?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_05: This is Making the Impact, a dance competition podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_05: Each week we'll cover a different topic related to the world of competitive dance from the perspective of the judges behind the table.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_05: Studios across the country rely on their tried and true in-house choreographers to create all kinds of routines for competition, showcases, and recital.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: But there are also opportunities to bring in guest choreographers to give students a wider variety of styles and learning experiences.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: Today on Making the Impact, we hear from a studio owner and a guest choreographer about the pros and cons of guest choreography versus in-house choreography.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone and welcome to our next episode of Making the Impact.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Courtney Ortiz, and I'm here with my co-host Leslie Mueller.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Hi Courtney, my fur baby Charlotte says hello to you.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, hi Charlotte fur baby.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's so nice to be a podcast.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: My fur babies are good.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think one is snoring in a cardboard box and the other one is possibly sleeping on my bed.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So they're snoozing.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_05: They're not part of the podcast today.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we are here.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_05: Me and Charlotte are here to uh have a great podcast episode about in-house choreography versus guest choreography, which I think is gonna be a cool little versus episode today, you know?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_05: Just to get some some varying opinions from our awesome guests.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we love a versus episode over here, and I think all of our listeners do as well.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Guest choreography is a hot topic, but we can't forget about all of those amazing in-house choreographers that are doing a lot of great work out there too.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna talk all about that today on this week's episode of Making the Impact with two wonderful guests.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: But like always, before we jump into the episode, I want to tell you a little bit more about our Making the Impact Judges Choice Award that we sponsor at all IDA affiliated competitions.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is a plaque that is distributed to one dance throughout the entire weekend that your judges want to recognize for making an impact in the competitive dance world, whether it's through their technique, choreography, performance, execution, they want to recognize you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And this is going to a dance from solo through production, any age, any level.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: And this is selected exclusively by your IDA judges on the panel.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we love sponsoring this award at Making the Impact and Impact Dance Adjudicators.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the perks of this award, of winning this award, is getting a live shout out on the podcast.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: So let's hear our very first Making the Impact award winner.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_05: From Diva Dance Competitions event in Wilmington, Delaware, congrats to Stage Stars Dance and Accro from Hawkison, Delaware, and dancer Amelia Amelia S.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_05: for their solo Poor Unfortunate Soul.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: For this next one, how do we say this city?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_05: Segue Segwin.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: Segwin?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Segwin?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_05: It looks like Segwin to me.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: From Elevation on Tours event in San Antonio, Texas, congrats to Second Story Dance and Company from Segwin, Texas, and dancer Riley T for their solo Lose It.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_05: From Decca Dance Competitions event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_05: Congrats to Catalyst Dance Studio from Lancaster, Pennsylvania Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and dancer Alyssa S for their solo, Pretty Girls Make Graves.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And from Diva Dance Competitions event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Congrats to DDCC of April School of Dance from St.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Mary's, Pennsylvania for their duo trio, You and Me, but mostly me.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_05: Congratulations to all of our winners, and stay tuned over the next few episodes for more recent winners throughout the season.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_05: And now let's hear from our sponsors.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Coming to you from our season five premiere sponsor, Francisco Gella Danceworks, I'm excited to introduce New Century Dance Project, a festival of performance and choreography.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: New Century Dance Project focuses on teaching the craft of choreography and why it's important for both choreographers and the dancer.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Festival components include a choreography intensive for dancers ages 15 to 24, a choreography competition, concert performances and community outreach events.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: The seven-day intensive starts every day with a technique class.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: After that, participants will head into classes and seminars that aid in the choreographic process, such as compositional techniques or improv, use of props, music selection, partnering, lighting and design, and so much more.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: What sets this intensive apart is the ability to hear and see various artistic voices throughout the week, allowing new choreographers to develop their unique style.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: The choreographic competition offers three age groups, a high school, undergraduate, and emerging professional.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: The competition results in a critic's choice winner judged by a distinguished faculty and a people's choice winner voted by the audience for each age division.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you are an aspiring choreographer ages 15 or older, looking to advance your composition knowledge and display your work in an artistic choreography competition, then look no further with the News Century Dance Project, taking place this summer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from July 29th through August 4th, 2024.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: The deadline to submit your choreography for consideration is by March 1st, 2024.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Use our exclusive podcast promo code MAKINGTHEIMPAT in all caps when registering for the festival to receive$75 off.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: Learn more on their website at newcentury danceproject.org.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_05: Calling all dance teachers and studio owners, have you ever wondered why aren't my dancers getting to higher technique levels faster?
• 5:25
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• 5:29
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• 5:32
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• 5:36
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• 5:40
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• 5:46
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• 5:50
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• 5:57
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• 6:02
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• 6:03
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• 6:06
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• 6:12
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• 6:19
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• 6:22
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• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: We all know the struggle is real when it comes to getting stage ready for competition, especially when it's time to apply your eyelashes.
• 6:35
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• 6:37
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• 6:38
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• 6:41
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• 6:43
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• 6:47
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• 6:57
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• 7:04
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• 7:06
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• 7:13
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• 7:17
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• 7:19
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• 7:20
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• 7:25
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• 7:31
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• 7:37
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• 7:42
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• 7:49
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• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Alright everyone, we're jumping into our next episode, and I'm thrilled to have some special guests here joining us to chat all about the difference between guest choreography and in-house choreography in studio.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're listening out there, maybe you've had a guest choreographer come to your dance studio and teach your dancers, or you were a dancer learning guest choreography.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you've never had a guest choreographer before and you only learn from your in-house choreographers.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Both options are great.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that all dancers should be learning from everyone, your in-house teachers and choreographers, as well as maybe get a little taste of what it feels like to have some guest choreography throughout your time as a training dancer.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: But we're gonna cover this in full detail today with two guests joining us, like always, on Making the Impact.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: The first guest I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast is an IDA judge.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: She's been with us on the roster for a handful of seasons now.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: You may see her and her pink hair out on a judging panel near you.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: And she is coming back to the podcast for the second time.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: She was also with me on a QA with Courtney episode for our Platinum Premium subscribers, but you could also listen to her on season four, episode 111, adding the shock value, a discussion on triggering and sensitive themes.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Woo! That's a hot one, y'all.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta listen to it.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was such a good chat.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited to welcome back IDA judge and dance educator Amanda Nicole DeTullio.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Amanda.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited to be back on.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yay! I know I'm so excited to have you back.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that you're gonna be bringing a little bit of the guest choreographer side of this chat as well as the in-house choreographer side because you you do both.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right, I do.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Amanda, if you wouldn't mind telling the world and reminding them a little bit more about you, where you're based, your early dance training, any career credits, and what you're currently working on.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm currently in Northern Virginia, so I teach all over the Virginia, Maryland area, both in-house and guest choreography, like you said.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: I actually started in Southern California.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was a SoCal comp kid in the 90s, so you know, I know we talk about that a lot on the podcast, how different it was back then with no levels.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember competing against Tyler Peck when I was 10, and it was terrifying.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: Terrifying because she was that good back then.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: I did some time with the Richmond Ballet when I moved to Virginia and, you know, got a lot of great experiences with them.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: As an adult, I had a lot of injuries, and so I sort of turned to the teaching and choreography side of things pretty early.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: I do have a couple of couple of credits.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I loved my friend Jason Serta as a Latin recording artist.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: This time in his telephone music video, but my hair is red, so uh that's a different, different phase, not the pink hair phase.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've worked with the Washington Commanders a multitude of times at their charity fashion shows.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: My dancers have performed with them and I've been able to choreograph on a whole bunch of the players, which you'd be surprised how great NFL players are as dance students.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: They're awesome.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: But the main thing that I am focused on now is uh I've finished my Jordano jazz certification with NanJordano and certified in all five levels.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of my focus has been on guest teaching workshops in that style.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, I use it in all of my jazz choreography because it's just so much fun.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then of course, judging mostly with IDA.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yay! Yeah, and I'm sure you're about to dive in and doing a bunch of guest choreography over the summer because that's always the prime time for a lot of new dances to be created.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, for sure.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Amanda, we're thrilled to have you back and so grateful to have you on the IDA roster.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks for being here.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: All right, our next special guest is going to be bringing the studio owner perspective to this side of the conversation.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: They have in-house choreographers, and they also bring those guest choreographers into their studio space.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the guest that we've been trying to have on the podcast for a very long time.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I just have to say I've never actually had the chance to meet this wonderful human being, and I hope that changes sooner than later in person.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I have loved everything that they share with our dance world on all of those Facebook forums, y'all.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm sure you will have seen you probably have seen her post and share her opinion.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm always over there clapping on the other side of the screen.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: I am always right there with her with everything she has to say.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, we have to get her on the podcast.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited to welcome Suzanne Satara to the pod.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Suzanne.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's so I am so excited to be here.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I love this podcast.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm huge fans.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had the great pleasure of judging nationals with Leslie a couple of summers ago.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great time.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're very like-minded, so I love that.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's always great to judge with people like that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So let's see about me.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I grew up in New York City and um I started competing.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the 70s.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was, oh my God, DEA at the Waldorf Astoria.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And every studio brought their one best number.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it was either, you know, I was in a tap group and we competed against like a ballet solo and a jazz smaller solo.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there was maybe 20 entries in the whole, because it was back in the day when convention went from like nine to five, maybe or four.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then the competition was this little part that you did at the very end.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's kind of the reverse.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, um, yeah.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So back in the day, talk about first, second, and third.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: One day I've so and then I moved to Florida.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm fast-forwarding a little bit.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for years for Club Med as their entertainment director around the world.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I got to live in Israel and Switzerland and the Caribbean and out in Colorado.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had, you know, a wonderful career doing that.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then I met my husband and we wanted to kind of not have that travel life anymore.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's very similar to working on cruise ships with contracts.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it was difficult for us to be together.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved back to New York for a short period where I actually worked in the schools.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the schools I grew up in Brooklyn is Horizons in Dance, which is still in business 50 something, 52, I think, years later.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's where like Andrew Turtletau comes from there, and Tys Tiorio, and they have a huge Geo from New Jersey from Icon.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a huge um, they have a huge roster of great alumni.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm happy to be able to join that alumni.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um taught there for years and moved to Florida in '96.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then I opened my studio in 2003.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this is Real Dance is celebrating its 21st year this year.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Congrats.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: Congrats.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, you know, I can't believe it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It flew by.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our recital is Saturday.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if I look a little haggard.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been bringing in guest choreographers probably.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I started maybe five years into owning the studio when I felt that the kids because I was actually one of those people that started with 60 kids that had never danced before.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I wasn't comfortable bringing in a guest until I had trained them for a while.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I it took years for us to get them to the point where we felt like, okay, now they can handle having some guest teachers, guest choreographers, and that's when we started.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been quite a while of doing that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited to talk about it today.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to hear all that you have to share as well from your many, many years as a studio owner and all of your experience in the industry.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you, Suzanne, for finally making it here on the pod.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: And on recital week, no less.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: On recital week, I'll tell you.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think everything's done.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I hope everything.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_05: This will this will give you a little brain break for a minute, and then you can jump right back in.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_05: Well, yeah, as Courtney said, we're so excited to have both of you here.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_05: Just I love this conversation because I think, you know, if you're a studio that doesn't bring in guest choreographers, this will be really interesting to hear, you know, the benefits of doing that and how you go about doing that and the pros and the cons.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_05: You know, for people who do, you know, it it may be interesting to hear, you know, why you should look at your people again, like your in-house people, and say, you know what, they could probably do this.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: So I want to ask first off, I want to start with Amanda, since you you bop around a lot and do a lot of guest choreography.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_05: How do you choose who to work with?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_05: Like what is your process?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, some studios seem to always bring in guest choreographers, but it's like that's your choice, right?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_05: You're the one saying, Yes, I will work for you.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_05: How do you do that?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it depends on whether or not I already have a relationship with that studio.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of stud there's a lot of studios in Maryland, DC, and Virginia.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: A lot, a lot, a lot.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: And they uh the majority of them compete.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: So there's definitely a big pool here, and a lot of us know each other because we meet backstage at competitions, or, you know, we people bring us in for just guest instruction for workshops or intensives, and and then we kind of build the relationship from there.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: But there are other times where it's, you know, dance teacher network looking for a choreographer, and I'm like, hey, I'm close to you, but I do my research before I reach out to anybody if they're looking.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: I go look at their website, I look at their Instagram if they have one, and just get an idea for what kind of a studio is it, what seems to be their focus, is this a type of, you know, age group?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: Are they all really young?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Is it very recreational?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: Are they advanced in doing 500 dances at competition and just sort of knowing what I'm getting into before I even reach out?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think for the most part, I personally, if I feel like we have a good repertoire, if they're comfortable with my contract and my rates, I will always go give it a go.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't had personally any instances where I've gone, I don't think I want to go back to that studio, but I know people who have for various reasons, which is a whole big tangent we can go on if you want to.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: But um I've I I I like to have a conversation with them.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: I even had someone recently say, I'm setting up Zoom calls because I want to actually ask you some questions face to face and get a feel.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I love that because, you know, you can only get so much from a real and an email conversation.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it really depends on the situation.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: But as long as, you know, everybody's got mutual respect for each other and you know, everyone's comfortable with the rates and the hours and all that kind of stuff, then you know, I'm usually a go.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I do know people who have had some unfortunate experiences where they're like, I'm not going back to that studio.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't take good care of me, they didn't pay me on time.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: The kids were really disrespectful and not paying attention, or they were late.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a whole bunch of factors that go into it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: The kids weren't ready for a guest choreographer, like that's a big one to kind of similar to what you said, Suzanne, where it's like you didn't even want to bring a guest into your studio space.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so you as a studio felt confident enough to allow the dancers to live up to the best that they can be for that guest because it's a reflection of you at that point.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you bring in your friend who, you know, you you have a relationship with who's a choreographer in the industry, and then they get into the room and the kids can't pick up fast or don't understand how to do a transitional step or aren't retaining the choreography or the details, you know, those things as far as like skill level of the dancer come into play, I think, as well when you're bringing in a guest choreographer.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_05: When Suzanne, when you bring someone in, do you are you typically seeking someone or are you getting reached out to?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_05: Like how do you how does that work for you?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've never brought anyone who's reached out to me first.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've always kind of brought in people, you know.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm doing this a long time.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I have many, many years of friendships with people.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I will always reach out to them and ask them after doing a little investigating, because even then sometimes you think you know somebody, you know, you you might know them casually, like say you judge with them.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then I will reach out to another studio owner who I know has already had them in and ask what they like like to work with.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Are they like impatient?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are they organized?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Are they flaky?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna cancel at the last second?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because people have had that happen too.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of do a little bit of background investigating, like you said before, just to make sure I'm not because I'm also I'm gonna this is gonna be one of those do as I say, not as I do moments.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I, in all the years of operating my studio, have never had anyone sign any contract of any kind.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it all the books are gonna tell you never do that.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And really, if you're listening to this and you're a new studio owner, I don't necessarily recommend it, but I've just always done things on a handshake.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's always emails that kind of will go back and forth.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that in its of itself can be a contract, like for example, about a rate.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: How what is your rate?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And someone will email me back and say, Oh, we charge X amount per dancer.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I already have that in writing.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think the conversations though are really important beforehand of what the expectations are.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there's a lot that can be kind of addressed before the person ever comes in, you know?
• 20:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually not unusual.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of studios don't have their own contracts for guest choreography, I've found.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, 100%.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, so I have to use my own.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And like a lot of studios don't understand the expectation of what is required.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, am I supposed to pay for your hotel?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Am I supposed to cover your food?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Am I supposed to make sure that your flights paid for?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yes, yes, and yes, you have to make sure you're hosting the guest choreographer.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if, and honestly, like, I know there's a lot of new studios out there.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: I know there's a lot of people who have never worked professionally in the real world, but like I feel like that, you know, and and as a professional, like working gigs and things, those are the expectations when you work on a job as a performer.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: So for me as a teacher, I expect the same type of thing.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you're taking me away from my home to come to your studio, then I expect all everything covered because then that's coming out of my pay.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's either like I charge you more money and I cover it, or I try here's my rate and you cover it and you determine how that is.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And like most people, you know, depending on who it is.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, most people, like reasonable core guest choreographers, aren't asking for first class flights and aren't asking for five star hotels.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there are probably some out there that do that.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's your choice as a studio if you want to be able to, and I know people.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: That bring them in, and I know what those people charge, and it's insane.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know how studios do it, but they do.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, either way, like it it shows me like that's not a red flag, but it is interesting to me when I feel like I do have to lay out the specs very clearly.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and whatever your specs are, because if you know if you're gonna be willing to work with somebody who may maybe can't fly you in, maybe can't do this, well, okay, well, what what can I do for you?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_05: Or what can you do for me?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_05: Like it just all has to be laid out because if an expectation can't be met, well, then what can you do?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_05: And then it's up to the guest choreographer and the you know person hiring you to say, okay, well, we could do this.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: I can't do this, but I could do this.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_05: And is that okay with you?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yes or no, you know?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And negotiations are allowed.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Allowed and expected, yeah.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot like there have been many times where people have personally reached out to me seeking my work.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't I didn't approach them.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that's like I think that's where it gets a little bit different here is that like if someone is reaching out to you directly and saying, I like your work, I'd like to bring you in.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: What are your rates?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Then you tell them your rates and then they ghost you.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just kind of like, uh, you've reached out to me.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: What's going on?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh this wasn't hard and fast.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I guess maybe you just because I've had that happen to me too, where it was like, even a friend, you know, I said, Well, this is what I would need to do that.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_05: And she said, Okay, well, I can't do that.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_05: Like, well, okay.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_05: Also, you're my friend.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_05: You could have just said, well, Leslie, I can't do that.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: But what could we, what, you know, do we make another offer?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_05: Like, yeah.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had that happen with um Ivan Kumeev Kumeev?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to pronounce his last name.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: My kids were obsessed with him and they begged me, please, please, can Ivan come?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Can I come?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I messaged him and I was like, Ivan, we love you.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: What's your rate?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just something that we couldn't meet.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, it's just out of our price range.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for getting back to me.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I would never not communicate that to him.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's so unprofessional to me.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, finish, finish the conversation.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't leave the person hanging.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, was it something I said?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, it's not every studio can afford every price.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so it doesn't mean that the person should change their price, but you know, it's it's you don't have to ghost them.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not that's not okay.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's about half the time that happens to me, that they just stop responding.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Or hey, we'd love to talk to you.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: Here's our email.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Can you send us some info?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then I'll follow up, you know, after a certain period of time, I'll follow up.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then if it's something I'm really interested in, I might follow up one more time.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're not getting back to me, especially when you reached out to me and you were interested in me, and it wasn't just a general blast of we're looking for people, right?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: Then it's it's frustrating because you know, I start penciling things in on my list.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I heard back from, you know, I want to make sure I don't overlap gigs that are, you know.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it happens, I think, half the time.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: And there have been times where people have said, Yeah, we just can't afford your rate.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, what are you what are you looking for?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: Is there something that I can do?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: And they're so far off.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, okay, yeah, we're we're really and I there have been times where I've, you know, people have said, you know, this is kind of what we're looking to do.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, you know, to be honest, the area you're looking in, that's below the standard for just a regular teaching gig week to week, not even a guest gig.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: So you're gonna be hard pressed to find someone who's willing to make a trip and spend a day with you that isn't right in your radius.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's, you know, if that's what you can do and you're trying to bring your kids opportunities, I hope you can find somebody.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes there's just no way to get past that point.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: I have had times where people have said, well, it's a little, a little higher than what we were looking for, but we want you to do a lot of hours because we have this whole system.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so they say, Would you be comfortable with this slight adjustment, knowing that you're gonna get more than an hour or two?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, you know, that especially if I'm driving and it's not, you know, it's just for the day, I'm not having to spend the night anywhere.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: There have been times where I've said, you know what, I would be willing to do that for this first go-around.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: In the future, if you want to bring me back, I would ask that you honor my rate.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that's happened a couple of times where I've come in and things have gone great and I've been happy with the rate, but the next time I come, they pay me my full rate because they were happy with what I did the first time and they understand that it's worth it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: But that's not that you're establishing that connection and you're looking at your future of like, okay, I'm making this little bit of a sacrifice because hopefully this will continue.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: This I'll create a relationship that will continue to bring me more business as a guest instructor later and a choreographer later down the road.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, that's really smart businessing right there.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: And like, I do think that there is always wiggle room in the negotiation, and it's just a matter of making sure that both sides and both parties can come to an agreement that works best financially for both.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of times people just kind of like see the number or see the rate and shut it out and say, oh my God, I could never afford that or whatever it is.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: And again, like if the studio is approaching the guest, I think that there needs to be a little bit more negotiations on the studio's end because they approached you.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you are approaching the studio, I think that the guest needs to be able to accommodate a little bit more because you know, you want to both parties want to make this work, but it's a matter of how do we make this work.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it does depend on like the channel of communication and how it was approached from the beginning.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm curious, Suzanne, speaking of like, you know, obviously I don't know how your studio works.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_05: I know many studios do this very differently.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_05: So if you're using somebody, an in-house choreographer, a teacher that regularly teaches your kids, are you paying a separate choreography rate versus their teaching rate?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where the money thing I think gets tricky when you're like, okay, where is this money coming from if I'm bringing in somebody outside versus keeping my in-house person and then I'm not paying this extra fee, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, because the way it's set up in my school, the contemporary teacher, for example, will compete her contemporary piece that she would have been choreographing anyway for recital.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no and plus, you know, she's working with them every week.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: So just like any other dance studio teacher, the expectation is by the end of the year you're gonna have a piece of choreography ready to go for performance.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we use to compete.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not getting the only time that changes that's different, is if they do something outside of a group.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So solos, duo trios, small groups.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they take that on, then they obviously are paid extra for their choreography, whatever their fee is.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Their weekly rehearsal fee.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So even though they're in-house, they're still gonna get, you know, they're still going to be paid.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's only for groups, really, that where it's included in the salary per se.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like if they if it's the class dance, the class, the dance for this class that we take weekly, and that ends up competing, then that is lumped into their regular hourly rate.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Great, yeah.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I feel like I've heard, and I could be wrong, but I I feel like I've heard that studio teachers might not get their rate in-house choreographers might not get their rate for setting solos or small groups or duo trios or like those extra dances, but instead the maybe I'm what I'm trying to say is they don't get the rate they want.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: They get their rate, their regular teaching rate, if that makes sense.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, choreography is choreography, in my opinion.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So whether the teacher who happens to be in-house is gonna set a solo on my kid one of my kids or a kid, you know, from some other random studio, they their work is still worth the same amount of money to me.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh I I can't really kind of make that logical in my head.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like that it shouldn't be less just because you happen to teach that kid every week.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: The work is the work, you know, you can be paid for the work.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you're getting paid for their skills as a choreographer.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, before I opened my school, I taught for other people for many, many years.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've only been teaching for 40, but I've owned my studio for 21.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I just try to put myself in that person's shoes and understand what the expectation I would want, what I would expect.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my solo choreography is X amount.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you happen to be in my class every week, but I still have to do all the work to prepare the solo for you.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, no, it's not it's it's separate.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's great to know.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: I like hearing that.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: Was that has that been your experience as an in-house choreographer, Amanda?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: I've had it both ways, actually.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've taught at a couple different studios and there's been different systems.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the like solos, for instance, especially with the younger kids, have had weekly rehearsals from the beginning of the fall all the way through the end of the season.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so mathematically, when we add that up, it's a specific number.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas some of the kids, either because of their schedule or because of my schedule and when I'm available, plus the studio availability, cannot meet weekly or don't want to meet weekly.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so we'll do the upfront model where it's like a guest choreographer would do, we have like four hours.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: This is the flat rate, which is what I charge outside the studio.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then they know that they need to meet with me at least a few times as often as possible.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's not always consistent, you know, hey, I'm not judging this weekend.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I've got a Friday available.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the slots first come, first serve.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: And some kids will take every available slot they can.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: And there are other kids I don't see for two months because they're busy and they know that it's on them to get in the studio.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I I've I have both experiences.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I did the math when I first started doing more of the upfront model and figured out that the way that I could charge that upfront model versus the weekly model still balanced out for me by the end of the year.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and in some cases, you know, it'd be a little bit off.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, we discussed at length what that math looked like with the director and with the parents and just making sure that it was fair, even though some of the kids couldn't meet as often.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I've definitely had both, but I prefer the upfront setting for the most part for me just because I'm so busy.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just a a drain on me to meet weekly at this point in my career.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I do know some of those kids need that weekly slot to just keep slowly building.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: They don't learn fast enough and they don't necessarily have the ability or, you know, time or understanding of how to work more on their own and they need someone checking in with them more often.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, pros and cons to both.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: But as long as the math evens out, I was always good with either one.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like that you made a perfect example of like some of the pros and the cons of having a guest choreographer versus an in-house choreographer.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you have an in-house choreographer, if Amanda teaches at your studio and Amanda set your solo, regardless if it's that, you know, four hours at the beginning of the season or spread out throughout the week, you still have access to your choreographer.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a perk and a perk and a bonus of having an in-house choreographer do your material.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna understand it better, they're gonna know the musicality better, they're gonna be able to help you with the style and the transitions 10 times better than the uh the teacher who's cleaning your guest choreography piece.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: A hundred million percent.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm not going to lie, half the time when I see solos that I've done as a guest choreographer and I see videos of them, there are so many things that like maybe little things have adjusted and and shifted and and whatever.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: But primarily the biggest issue is the musicality.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: It has completely gone out the window because the teacher wasn't in the room when I taught it.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: So the and the k if the kid doesn't have strong musicality to begin with, and if they're not cross-referencing the video of me doing it with them, screaming the counts from our one rehearsal five months ago, then the choreography is gonna get the the musicality is getting thrown out the window and they're just kind of guessing as to what it's supposed to be.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it depending on the choreographer, like my style doesn't work if you're not connected to the music.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just gonna look like a generic jazz dance.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Your in-studio teacher probably could have taught this exact same choreography than then paying me probably whatever more money.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: It costs more money possibly to have them do it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I think that that you really have to think about what am I getting out of this uh guest choreography that my in-house teachers couldn't deliver themselves?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because something that I say often, like I teach straight jazz dance, and I know there's a lot of fantastic jazz teachers out there, and most studios have a fantastic jazz teacher.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: I am sure that they could probably choreograph something identical to what I did.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't feel like my work is any more special than any of the in-house choreographers, but sometimes people just, I want to say that Courtney or T's choreographed my solo or whatever.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I think there's this whole mentality now of like, if we're gonna go to this nationals, we have to make sure we have these guest choreographers because we want to win more trophies.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to tell you that I've never, ever, ever hired somebody based on that.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's the trophies and the the competition winning aspect of it has never been on the list of priorities or the list of reasons why bring in a guest choreographer.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and half the time being a judge at these competitions, you know, we don't usually know the choreographer until you tell us at awards when we've already given you the award.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_05: If we're even at awards.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_05: If we're even at awards.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_05: So, like for me, you know, and yes, at a nationals or at a high, a higher level, it usually is a higher level competition where you're like, you see something and you're like, and if you've done this long enough, you know you know some of the big players out there and you're like, oh, yeah, that's that's gotta be so-and-so.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_05: And then later you find out it was so-and-so, and you were like, that makes total sense.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_05: But I don't, I don't care.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_05: I don't care.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_05: I I would rather see a dance where I'm like, oh my god, that was amazing, and turns out it was so-and-so's in-house choreographer.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_05: Amazing! Oh my god, your person in Nebraska did that?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_05: Like, fierce.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_05: I'd rather hear that than so-and-so who choreographs for 17 studios, and it's the same thing on the good dancers over and over again.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I'm bored now.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen that.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Our season five premiere sponsor, Francisco Gulla Danceworks, is thrilled to introduce New Century Dance Project, a performance festival for the aspiring choreographers.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Throughout the seven-day intensive, you will learn the craft of choreography from the perspective of not only the choreographer, but also for the dancers.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: New Century Dance Project hosts many components during their event, such as a choreography intensive, a prestigious choreography competition, concert performances, and community outreach events.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: The intensive starts each day with a technique class, followed by classes and seminars that will help you hone your choreographic skills, like compositional techniques, improv, music selection, lighting design, and so much more.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Submit your work into the New Century Dance Project Choreography Competition, which offers three different age groups: high school, undergraduate, and emerging professional.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: The competition results in a critic's choice winner and a people's choice winner for each age division.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you're an aspiring choreographer 15 years or older and looking to advance your composition game, then head to the New Century Dance Project, happening this summer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from July 29th through August 4th, 2024.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: And don't forget, if you want to save$75, use our exclusive podcast promo code, MAKING THE IMPATINAL CAPS when registering for the festival.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: Learn more on their website and register now at New Century Dance Project.org.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've yet to meet a judge that scores something higher just because this person Corey Grafton.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: No one cares.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't care.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't know exactly.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: So how can we know?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like exactly.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is like it is political for sure.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think that a lot of people think that oh I'm gonna hire the entire convention faculty to do my all of my dancing.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna win everything.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's like what?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: And just just because somebody's a great, fantastic, Emmy award-winning choreographer doesn't necessarily mean that they're the right fit for your dancers either.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's true.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: There, I mean, there have been times where I have gone in because they specifically want a certain style that they either know that I teach, or like I've had people who've taken my convention classes and said, hey, we really enjoyed your class.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: We'd love for you to choreograph that genre for us this year.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: But then I look at the kids that I'm working with and they're not always necessarily the most well-trained in that genre.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not a hit on their teachers.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's just sometimes that access isn't there, or you know, they're really excited about it and they're really excited to work with me or whoever else.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: But then I have to find a way to marry what I do with what they can do.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's not just like, oh, well, if you hire XYZ superstar, then clearly you're gonna be amazing and you're gonna win.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's not always gonna be the case if your dancers can't handle what they do.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for that.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I saw on that dance mom, there's that dance mom group and Facebook, the competitive.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And a mom posted, like, I really need a for my son solo because hip hop at my school is not very strong.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And my response to her was, Well, who's gonna work with them when the choreographer leaves?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not something you if you don't have someone in there who's gonna be able to take this, see this through to the end, you might want to rethink that style because it's you know, like you said, you can't just in-house, you know, you have to have the backbone be in the studio that's gonna sustain the work once the person leaves.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not to say, like, I know one of the best tap corrections that I ever got on a critique came from Scott Jovovich, who is technically a ballet teacher.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's like it doesn't, it's not always that way, but still, if this is a child who is still in the in the learning stages of hip hop, like you want to have somebody who knows what they're doing to work on with them after.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that all of those points, putting those all of those points together and speaking from being a guest choreographer, it and you hinted at this, Amanda, it is extremely hard on my end to make magic happen when the dancers aren't at a level that I need them to be to execute the work that I'm planning to set.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: And granted, yes, very smart choreographers can make that magic and blend and disguise and do the thing.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes when we do that, if I if I kind of not under choreograph, but kind of, you know, play it a little bit safe because maybe I don't know these dancers, maybe this is the first time I'm working with them, maybe you as a studio owner told me that they were high-level advanced all these things and they can't do a pivot turn and a triplet step, and I have to go backwards and scale this down, then the core then the studio might get upset and say this is too easy and that they need to add tricks and flash and all the things because I didn't deliver up to the state.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and then you turn around six months later and see a video of this dance that is no longer your dance because somebody at the studio said, Well, it needs a tilt jump here, and you really should turn that into this.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_05: And you're like, Well, then that's not my dance.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_05: So can you stop putting my name on it?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_05: Like 100% happens.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_05: That happens sometimes, and yes, it's just that's why I'm like, Oh, guest choreography is so tricky, so tricky.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_05: Makes me uncomfortable.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like that with that, I I think it's important to stress to all of the studios out there, and even like parents who think that you need a guest choreographer for your dancer solo who's nine.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: You're in studio in-house teachers know your dancers the absolute best.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they're gonna have enough time to sculpt and mold that choreography to make it look the best it possibly can.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: If they're trying to tweak and adjust and finesse someone else's choreography to make it work for your dancers, it's gonna be, it's not gonna turn out as great as something that you possibly could have created yourself because you know the strengths and the weaknesses of your dancers better than that guest choreographer does.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's really like for me, I'm at a point now where I'm not going to studios that I don't have a previous relationship with because I can be a little bit more selective.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: But also if I am bringing on new studio clients, I'm probably not working with the lower level dancers because I I just can't, I don't know.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: I I have to get to know you as a studio when and even the high-level dancers, like you should be creating a blank slate for me as a choreographer.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: They should be able to do anything that I ask them.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: If they're not at that level, they're not ready for a guest choreographer.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because my to create something in 10 hours, a large group production in 10 hours, that is a hard job to do, even if you know your dancers.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: So to expect that from someone who has never worked with them before is a really hard challenge.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you're in-house people, you better make sure that they don't have like I am so fortunate.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of my best friends and uh teachers on our faculty, his name is Michael Taylor, who danced actually with Giordano when he was dancing I know that name.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Michael was a former uh rehearsal choreographer for Royal Caribbean and he's worked, you know, rehearsal choreographer at Radio City.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: The man knows how to clean and it doesn't matter what he is, he knows what he's doing, he takes care of the work really well.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And but if you have a teacher that you're just gonna throw this number at them and you know, and say, here, this guest set this piece, just clean it.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole skill in of itself.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not everybody likes to clean, not everybody can um really look at someone else's work and have that vision and match that vision.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they just can't help it.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: They start to morph it into their own vision.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_05: He takes care of the work and that's it.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_05: Somebody has given birth to this work of art that you've put on these people.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_05: And it is nobody's job to do anything to it but take care of it and maintain it and keep it consistent.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_05: And if, like you said, if your if your in-house person just doesn't have that skill set or desire, right, because listen, again, cleaning, like you said, people don't like it, they don't want to do it, it's hard, you know, it's a skill set.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so if you are just happening to throw it to somebody who doesn't want to do it, like good luck to you.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_05: Good luck to that person.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've also heard stories of like super competitive teachers that don't want they want their own stuff to do really well.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that the guest stuff goes on the back burner a little bit because they need to focus on their own piece, you know.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm curious too, Suzanne.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_05: Speaking of that, so you know, you've got your own people that you've hired.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: You vetted, you love them, they're yours.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_05: You know, is there ever that like unfortunate moment where they feel like their work isn't being as valued, or you know, or do you feel like you have a really good balance of of the two?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm lucky in that the faculty I have now are really they're grown adults, they've been doing this forever.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have these like fragile egos where they're concerned where if the because I will tell you the truth, over the last, I want to say since COVID, we go to competition and the overall high score of our groups will tend to be a different one every time.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's nice.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wild.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always the same one over and over and over that does well.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's very telling too.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's very telling how different um conventions and competitions have different sort of flavors, things that they prefer, I think.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that being said, you know, they're just really mature about it.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like they they don't take it personally if it isn't their number that is the overall high score winner.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: They might have a moment like something up, there's something wrong with my piece that it's not quite doing as well as their other pieces are doing.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, no.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: For the most part, they're pretty adult about the whole thing and they don't really get too upset about things like that, where they're worried that you know the guest stuff is doing better.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: That you know, it's it just varies too with what will do better.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_05: It's always three different judges, three different opinions.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_05: Always.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_05: There always is.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious to know what have been some of the reasons you do bring a guest choreographer in.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I know you hinted at this, Suzanne, that it's not about winning first overall at the competition.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: There could be other reasons why.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, to give the kids more versatility and to have the opportunity to work with different people who set choreography different ways.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have everybody from Scott Fowler who comes in with his notebook and everything is plotted out and every formation is written down.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have Casey Castellano, who's like this free spirit who comes in and it's like whatever comes out of her at that moment.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's to give the kids the opportunity really to do that, to have those experiences.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's networking.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: They graduate and they've had now this, you know, we usually wait until they're in high school to set them up with guest choreographers, but now they've worked with this choreographer for four years in a row and they have like an existing relationship with them when they step out into the professional world, which is really nice.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: But one of my favorite things about bringing people in are the stories that they tell in between.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Marianne Lamb, who I know you know, Courtney and Love, and you guys, yeah, I'm sure everybody knows her.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: She teaches at my intensive every year.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I swear to God, the woman doesn't even really need to teach a step, she just needs to talk.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_04: Bring her in for a lecture class.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, like the kids are just enthralled with everything she has to say.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much to be learned by the it's it's you know, you have, I understand that when guest choreographers come in, there isn't a whole lot of time to chit-chat.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta set the number, you gotta make sure the kids have a rough idea of what's going on before you go.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: But those little tidbits that they throw in and those little stories and those little hints, like whatever it is, you know, uh Marianne went one day, she's in the middle of, you know, working on a combination, she's teaching who got the pain.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: She was talking about Fossi Verdon when she was working on that show.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: And she whipped her head around.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Girls, don't get tattoos.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Don't fall into this thing about getting tattoos.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna hire you to get tattoos.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just little things, which I don't not to mention, I don't mean to bring up a open a pan of worms about tattoos.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of thoughts about that stuff.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not what this is about.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: But just the little things that their life experience, what they bring to the room when they choreograph on a a bunch of kids.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, with teachers that they have on a regular basis, there's this sense of familiarity.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: The teacher knows what works on them, what doesn't work on them.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're hired for a professional job and that choreographer wants you to chine in on the left, and you just that's not your good side, you know, there's little things like that that it makes them more adaptable once they leave the studio.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it it doesn't always one thing I really want to say is that I know there's a lot of studios out there that are either new or don't have the funds really, or the parents don't have the funds to bring in guest choreographers.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Look within your own school, look within your own senior class, the juniors and seniors.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Put on a little choreography showcase because one of my best up-and-coming choreographers is a young woman by the name of Isabel Marshall, who just graduated from my school two years ago, and her voice is really a powerful voice.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: She's going to be, she's headed unfortunately off to CLI in the fall, but don't leave us.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't leave us, don't leave us, Isabel.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have to set some more work.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there's some of those older kids, 17, 18-year-olds.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know I loved to choreograph at that age.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to kind of start somewhere.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you might have somebody in the studio that you never really thought about who might be able to do some really interesting and cool work for you.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's there's it's just about working with someone new that they're not used to having on a weekly basis.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody who's gonna bring out maybe a gift in them that their regular teacher never really recognized, but this new fresh pair of eyes walks into the room is like, wow, you know, you're really your musicality is outstanding.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and you know, as a teacher myself, sometimes you have kids week after week after week and you think you know them, and then somebody new comes in and suddenly you make all these discoveries about them that you never knew about them before.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_05: That's really what it's a place to allow a young choreographer to try out what they want to do.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_05: Because I mean, nothing's scarier than like, okay, she's going to CLI.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_05: You don't get an opportunity to choreograph in that program, really.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_05: You get to learn from other people.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_05: So that if she wants to start teaching in two years or however long that program lasts these days, she's coming back to you probably to say, Miss Suzanne, can you please do some choreography?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_05: But like, how great to let her do that while she's still here under the supervision of people who know you, care about you, want you to succeed.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I think that's great.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I had growing up too, because I the last couple of years that I danced, I um after an Achilles injury, the the program I was in was too rigorous and I couldn't get back on point.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: And ballet was honestly not my thing anyway, as much as I respect and love it.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: And my teacher opened up a studio and she was very, you know, okay, Amanda, what should we do for these next two eight counts?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: Just in the middle of rehearsal, would just look at me and say, What do you think we should do?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: And at the time, you know, I felt as a kid that really bolsters your confidence.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also, you know, I look back now and I didn't even realize that she was indirectly kind of fostering my ability to choreograph because she knew that I had it in me before I did.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: And without directly saying, Hey, I think you should consider this, she just found these little moments, these nuggets to kind of give me the opportunity to step into that role.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then I got to college and ended up starting a whole separate dance club because there wasn't a huge dance program at that college.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I just there was nobody else that really could teach the weekly classes.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I was just sort of, okay, well, I guess I'm teaching jazz this week and the contemporary next week and hip hop the next week.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so having those safe spaces to explore like that is really important.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: And thankfully the dance department head at the school I went to was really supportive and said, Yeah, do whatever you want.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: I got you.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'll oversee, let me know what you need.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, it takes teachers and directors recognizing that and opening up the space for that for kids to realize that that's something that they can do.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: And like you said, now you've got someone who was in-house that I'm sure you'll bring back and what a special relationship that will be for them, but also for your students to say, hey, they were brought up in this studio.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: And now look at what they're doing.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's true.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_05: That's how you develop that's how you keep programs going, you know?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's like I feel like there's so many studios out there, and probably every single studio, like uh the mark of a successful studio is when you have a former student bring their child to you.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_05: Like my mom's in her 36th year, she's had just countless people where it's been generation after generation, and it's like, okay, well, you're doing something right because the studio wants to keep going and keep people here.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_05: And which choreographers and faculty like that, you know, if you keep your faculty for a while, you know you're doing something right.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know I love those competitions that offer that young choreographer award too, where they recognize the choreography of the up-and-coming new kids that are out there.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it inspires a lot of kids to try.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: Try.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: We just had that at an event recently where it was there was a live feedback portion at that competition.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the uh one of the other IDA judge that was with me at that event was the student choreography judge.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: And the feedback that was given to that dancer was so inspiring and so it was a moment for the entire room.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: You could tell that the kid was just filled up with so much confidence and it wasn't ego at all.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: You could tell there was a humility about her that clearly she was a confident kid, but the way that that interaction happened, it was such a special moment for everybody involved.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_03: And we're all sitting there like, we can't wait to see what you're gonna do.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna write your name down.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and sometimes those interactions don't get to happen often, I think, in the competitive side of things.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: So when they do recognize student choreographers, I love that because there are some kids out there that are just on another level.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: I love that too.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: I wish that more um competitions did that uh in their options for registering and letting everyone know this is choreographed by a student or the soloist, because then on our and as judges, we can actually cater our feedback to help us dancer improve as a choreographer versus just as a dancer.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's often sometimes a lot of times we get online critiques that are seeking that type of advice as well, which is really helpful.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I love that.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the only way that you're gonna learn how to be a choreographer is trying it out and knowing it, throwing, getting thrown in and figuring it out as you go.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: There is that weird gap where it's like, okay, you're a dancer at a studio and then you might want to become a teacher, but now like with that, you're you're expected to become a choreographer immediately at the same time.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: But like, what if you've never done you're already learning the ropes as a teacher and now you have to become a choreographer too?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's two different skill sets.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: The same thing that we we talked about when it comes to be choreographing a dance versus cleaning a dance.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Two very separate skill skill sets, especially if it's not your own work that you're cleaning.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'm gonna do it.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it might not be like the strongest kid in the group either.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe her leg isn't behind her head, and maybe she's not doing eight turns, but boy, does that girl know how to put together a phrase.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's helps like kind of recognized talent within the own the group that maybe doesn't always get the spotlight because everybody's got their gift.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of gifted choreographers that maybe they weren't necessarily like always the strongest person in their group, that you know, dance-wise, but they had a great voice and great vision.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's so important to look within your own crop of kids that you've been bringing up all those years to see what's in there.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, give them a shot.
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• 56:31
  SPEAKER_02: Something that I want to mention in regards to the in-house versus guest, another point to bring up is the fact that a lot of studios might feel obligated to bring in guests, possibly because they're a really large studio and maybe they don't have enough in-house teachers to fulfill the need of all the different dances that they have to bring to competition.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I I've definitely been to those mega studios where they just kind of always have a handful of guest choreographers and they go, Okay, you're gonna get this, this, this, this, and this uh during your visit because we don't have, you know, you gotta do the mini dance over here, you gotta do the teen small group and the large group production, you know, and they're just kind of just checking off those boxes of okay, that dance is done, that dance is done, type of thing.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_02: So like that's another thing that I notice often.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: But on the flip side of that, there have been times as a judge where I'm sitting and I and some studios, you know, will fall into the they're this type of studio, and they're a that type of studio, and they're a this type of studio.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes I'm sitting there thinking, like, man, I can tell that all these dancers are choreographed by the exact same person.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: Exact same person.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish that became like remember in COVID when we were doing blocks?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_05: Oh god, that was you could really tell them.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_05: You're like, there's that phrase again.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, that way the side you can start predicting what the kid's gonna do and how they're gonna transition out of that turn section.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that's so true.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you have a big body of work, you have to get 150 pieces of choreography, which I still shout out to all the teachers that are managing to do that.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, right?
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they do it.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they clean all of that stuff.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it does help everything from looking the same, you know, it just gives you more variety.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's when I do wish that I and and and again, like even with in that example, it doesn't necessarily have to be a guest choreographer.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know the situation at the studio.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: You might only have two teachers at your studio that do choreography, or you might have ten, or maybe the studio owner doesn't trust the other, the other teachers to choreograph, so they just do it all themselves.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like whatever, whatever's going on outside of competition, from what I'm witnessing, my impression overall is we need some variety here.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because the jazz dance looks like a contemporary dance and the lyrical dance looks like a contemporary dance, and the contemporary dance looks like the same contemporary dance I just saw in the jazz and lyrical category.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, we need to vr change up the variety and spice it up, whether that's through your in-house choreographers and giving them more options to change and like also, and we've talked about this on other podcast episodes, but like looking cohesively at what you're presenting at competition and make sure that there is that variety that's needed within the genres.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: So if you feel like something looks too similar, like maybe we gotta fix that next season.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: And either whether that's a different choreographer or maybe you as a choreographer are changing it up and giving a different style that's not your signature.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you're giving your kids variety because I think that is the benefit of having a guest come in, is it's gonna be something, hopefully something different than what your teach your in-house teachers are teaching you on the on the weekly or the regular.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and a guest choreographer doesn't have to be someone you're flying in from across the country.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: You just read my mind.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's where I've found the biggest, the biggest changeup has happened recently, is you know, I know when I was competing in the 90s, there wasn't crossover happening between studios.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was very, I mean, at least in SoCal, everybody was very cutthroat and very self-focused.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: There was no hanging out, meeting people backstage now as a as a teacher.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'll talk to anybody that's willing to talk to me.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_03: Not everybody wants to make friends, and that's fine.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, there was no, hey, I'd love to bring you in, even though you're an hour away from me.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: That wasn't a thing when I was growing up.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now there's so much more of that happening.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: So bringing in a guest choreographer doesn't mean you have to spend thousands of dollars flying in someone from LA.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: There's like I said, where I live, there's such a huge pool of really talented dancers.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many talented choreographers in the area.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_03: I just did last summer, I was at a studio that had two weeks of choreography camp.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: Nice like dawn to dusk, eight million routines.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_03: And they had their in-house choreographers there who were fantastic.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_03: They had guest choreographers that have a very long-standing relationship with these studios that work with them year after year after year.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then it, you know, it was my first year working with them and kind of weaving through all of that and and getting an idea for how they did things.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: Thankfully, they were really talented technicians and performers.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_03: They got both sides of it.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I got the opportunity to actually stretch myself as a choreographer in that regard because not only did I have dancers that could handle it, I was looking around at what these incredibly talented choreographers were doing, going, man, I need to, I need to step up too.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a refreshing thing as a choreographer to be able to be inspired by and stretch yourself going to other studios.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_03: But like I said, it doesn't have to be someone who's far away.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's where people get stuck in that mindset sometimes.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and I think, you know, if with your mention of the it was cutthroat in in California and nobody talked to anybody, and like it's still like that in a lot of places.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's very, you know, some studios just do not want to share anything and sure do you.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_05: However, I think also a lot of towns, a lot of towns, a lot of places have robust college dance programs.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_05: If you need a choreographer that's probably not teaching at another studio, check out your city's college dance program.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_05: Grab the junior or senior, you know, to to do the because that's not only giving them an opportunity, but it's giving you an opportunity that somebody else might not have thought of.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_05: And there's a whole pool of people who are probably hungry for this opportunity, you know.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: And aren't gonna be able to charge as much just based on experience.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_05: And are right there, you know.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, you may have to maybe they don't have a car, or maybe they're not local, maybe, or you know, from they're sitting at the dorm or whatever, but like yeah, it's it's something you could probably think about and work out as just another option to give everybody a new opportunity that's not gonna infringe upon anybody else.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: One final thing that as I'm listening to y'all that came to mind, just speaking from the guest choreographer perspective, and we touched on this as well, is I think that as an industry, we if we're gonna bring a guest choreographer in, you have to really let go of the fact that you think you're paying for that win and just look at it at for all of the benefits that we discussed, like Suzanne said, like Amanda said on this episode of why we're bringing in this guest.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is it more of an educational experience and a learning experience, or is it about the competitive win?
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know that when I'm under pressure and and feeling that as a choreographer, when I'm walking into a studio with the expectation of I need to deliver greatness and I need to deliver an award-winning dance, that pressure comes through in the way that m I run my rehearsal and the way that I end up choreographing the dance, and I'm not often satisfied with the final product because I feel that lingering over my head.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, who knows what it's gonna turn out to be, and then I look like the bad guy at the end of the season if it doesn't deliver because y'all didn't clean it properly and y'all didn't know how to didn't have the technique to back it up, and all those things we talked about.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that it's in important for all of the studios out there to to really look at it more of an educational experience and opportunity for their dances, their dancers at the studio versus if I bring this choreographer in, they're going to make us win first overall.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, no.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one thing too that I wanted to mention before for studio owners that are new to bringing in guest choreographers.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: The obviously the communication is everything.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to communicate, like you know, the rate and how much time they'll have to do this, and you know, is it extra if you have to have a custom mix made or is that included in their price?
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: One other thing is be really clear.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like I my uh guests know I don't want any piece of choreography that you've already set on another studio.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ding ding ding point.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good point.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't really repeat pieces, you know, we don't do that, like how some schools will redo the piece two or three years later.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really do that.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: So once we're done with it, I don't really care what you do with it, but I don't want anybody's recycle choreography.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there I have, you know, there's that private Facebook group that's for studio owner only.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we I've read a lot of posts from people because hello, we're in the age of YouTube.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's really hard to set a piece, and then this video's floating around, and then your kids are like, hey, our dance was done four years ago on a studio.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: So be really, really clear about that stuff about how you know, even reusing a piece of music, the choreographer, some choreographers can dance, can you know, choreograph to the same piece of music and have completely different work every time.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: But 90% of choreographers, if you're gonna reuse a piece of music, it's the same step that you hear on that one point.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like really, it's really, really hard to make it look totally different.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: So just be really clear about those expectations as well about repeating stuff across the country.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yet we've all seen it.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've definitely all heard the stories, you know.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: We have seen it.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I judge, I happen to be judging.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I was judging, I was like, oh my God, this I've seen this number before.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're sitting with this moral dilemma like, do I call that studio?
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I say on the state?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I've seen this before.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because there could also be an agreement, like we did.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: A number once that Casey Castellano had set on a school in New York, the school where he came from.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was this incredible piece about the Titanic.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then years later, like literally seven or eight years later, I was like, Would you reset that on my kids?
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm obsessed with that piece.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we got permission from the studio owner.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: We got permission from, you know, the group of kids because it's their parents that paid for it.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I definitely got emails from people like, I don't know if you know, but that number was done already years ago.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, no, no, we're all good.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're all we all.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've covered your bases.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: But cover the bases is the point for sure.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and a lot of times that becomes a quantity versus quality situation with guest choreographers too, not necessarily setting the same piece, but kind of setting the same piece over and over again.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_03: I hear so many people talk about how they do X number of pieces or a number of pieces.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I mean, good for you, but how on earth do you customize as a singular person?
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think any creative potential is that very especially people who are kind of within one or two genres.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, right.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_03: How are you customizing and really giving people their money's worth?
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know it's one.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_05: It's not two dollars.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so even with my in-house kids, I have rules about okay, well, what we did last year was kind of heavy and intense.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I know you want to do contemporary again.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_03: So if we're gonna do the same genre, it's gotta be on a completely different spectrum from last year.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_03: You need to stretch yourself and learn something new.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think sometimes we get into that a little bit with guest choreographers setting stuff across the country, and then you're judging and you're like, this feels familiar because it's kind of the same formula.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I that can be also another dangerous territory that we can sort of tread in.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I think I know Courtney, you said you limit who you're going to now because you want to have a previous relationship with them.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: But that's, you know, another thing for guest choreographers to think about and studio owners is is this somebody that is literally just on a plane every day setting hundreds of pieces?
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let's make sure that it's worth it for them to come in.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_03: Because are they just sort of regurgitating the same thing to a different song with a different costume?
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_03: Is that really worth it for you as a studio owner to go through all of that?
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it sounds like a knock, but I just when I think about the fees that people pay, you know, if I'm being brought in to set a piece for someone, I am making that piece for that kids.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_05: For those kids, exactly it's one time only.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like and there are times where we don't always match up.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I had a kid last year that we just could not, you know, with solos, I want them to have some say in the song because they're the only one on stage.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_03: We gotta agree.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_03: And we couldn't find the right song, and finally we found it.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_03: And the second we found the song, we worked really well together.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: It like there were times where she would continue a phrase that I had done with something, I'd go, Oh, that looks great.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to do that?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the other kid that I worked with at the same studio was very, tell me what to do.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_03: There was she she didn't want to contribute because that wasn't something she was comfortable with.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_03: So being able to adapt to that and and work with different kids is is another way that you'll be able to vary your choreography.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, every piece that I said at the same studio shouldn't look exactly the same, even though I have my own signature.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_03: You shouldn't feel like you're paying for me to just slightly tweak the same dance for six different solos.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_02: And those are red flags, like what you kind of said.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I completely agree, Amanda.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I feel like, you know, we we hear and we know a lot of those choreographers that are just kind of like you said, shipping out, going out, their whole summer's insanely booked.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_02: Boom, boom, boom.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_02: They can they can bang out a solo in an hour.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're just pros at this, but also it's a little red flaggy for me because I'm like, what?
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean you can bang out a solo in an hour?
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like, who can even do that?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_02: What like this is a two and a half minute dance, and you can you only need an hour rehearsal with this dancer.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't really believe that you've put your blood, sweat, and tears into this.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess not every choreographer needs to put their blood, sweat, and tears, but like I know that I really care about the work that I'm delivering and I care about the final product, and I want to make sure that I am delivering what is expected when I'm getting paid X amount of money.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there's and and with that, I want the same thing returned back to me with it being well maintained and well taken care of for the next year.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if if you don't really if you're a studio that doesn't really you just want somebody to choreograph this dance and you don't and it it can take them two hours, it can take them eight hours, and you're gonna probably change it anyway, and that studio and that choreographer doesn't really care about it and they're just taking the paycheck and leaving, then I'm glad you guys found each other.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_02: But that's not every choreographer, you know, that's the hardest part.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it can be.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, I know we've talked about this.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_03: I just I am a I am a cleaner.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_03: I love cleaning, and I'm known for that at my studio where I teach in-house, that I will do a rough draft as quickly as possible now that I've done this for long enough rather than doing bit by bit.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then I go back and edit.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because if I can just get it, it's like writing, you know, if you can just get something on the page, then sometimes it's easier.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_03: And not everybody works that way, but that's just me.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I just I can't get past some of these red flag situations.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think too, I want to fit high big recommendations before I set somebody up with a solo, I've already had them do a group for us because I kind of need to see how they work.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because certain kids, like you said, you had that experience with that one dancer, you couldn't really agree on music.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you've got some kids that you just know your own kids.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you've really got to see how that person is.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: We've had everybody, you know, from coming in and being super friendly and funny and kind to being really like a dual sergeant.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you've got to make sure you match personnel because solo choreography, they're working so closely together.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot of money to just scrap it if it doesn't work out.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_07: Totally.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of really need to get a little bit of time.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in a perfect world, every guest choreographer would have a little time with the kids to just give them class before they start setting the piece if they've never seen the kid before.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's a requirement for me now.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is it that's great, Courtney, because I don't know how people do it.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like just walk in a room, it's like okay, it's hard.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like how do you even know what they can do?
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know sometimes choreographers will ask me to send them videos of the kids ahead of time.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be helpful, but there's nothing like getting in the room for that teacher to see how quickly the kids are going to pick up, yeah, to see really what their skill set is like, if there's anything that you kind of need to disguise with this particular group of kids.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's you need that time to get acclimated a little bit with each group.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously as the years go on, you come back, but the first time out, there's all those things that, you know, just unfamiliar that could really go south if you're if you don't have a plan.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we try to make sure that before you do a solo, like let's see how you well, let's see how you work with a group.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_03: It can be helpful as a teacher too.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_03: There might be things there that you didn't anticipate were there that you can work with.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I've had situations where I've been a teacher for an intensive, and then a month later they call me and say, Hey, my teacher for tomorrow canceled.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_03: I know your driving distance.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Any chance you're available?
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, I'm available.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_03: What do you need me to teach?
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, your advanced kids are really advanced.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't really have anything prepared right this second that I think would benefit them.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Are you okay if I workshop something new with them and try something different?
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, that sounds great.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_03: Next thing I know, we finish class and they're like, this would be a great piece.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_03: And they go to the director, do you think we could make this a piece this year?
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Can you come back next week and set it?
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Next thing I know, three days later, I'm editing music like a crazy person over the weekend and trying to figure stuff out.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that all just stemmed from having a very organic situation with these kids where I was teaching a class with them and playing and seeing how they responded to it.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't just, hey, come in and choreograph something.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a really smart idea that I've been wanting to implement as you know, every year you think of something new that you want to add to how you do things and you change your contract and tweak it.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've never worked with them, being able to teach a class is is so important.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something that I definitely want to start doing.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_03: I really like that.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge like game changer for me and that I've learned because I can ask for a video and you're sending me a video of a finished product.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_02: I have no idea if they know how to pick up fast.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_02: I have no idea what other things that they can do.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I can go into a class and I can teach I can I can learn a lot about them on how they warm up.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_02: We can do one progression across the floor, and I'm I'm gonna know if this is gonna be a really long rehearsal process or not.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then I can teach them a little taste of the choreography that we're gonna do, a little dance break that's gonna happen in the choreography.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then I can already pull out, I can already see who are the who are the most strong dancers in this group, who are the weak links in this group.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know what your test is, Courtney.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: My test.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's a pretty good one.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have a we have a program um at the studio where because in Fort Lauderdale, I'm in the Fort Lauderdale area, we always have all the national tours that come through here.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So what I whenever national tour comes through, I always get somebody from the cast to come in and teach.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like the month, the theater's dark on Monday night, so we'll always have this like guest class series where they come in.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Almost I want to say 95% of them, what the very first thing they make the kids do across the floor.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Walk.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yes.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Walk.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just walk.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't, I don't know.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, is this a thing?
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys all just move to do this?
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that all of you do this with the kids?
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, Courtney, what do you do in class like to see if the kids are gonna adapt to your style?
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you give them?
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it obviously depends on the style.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And like, especially if we're doing like a heels, like I know you work a lot in Laducas and things.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if a lot of people will come to me and say, hey, we want a heels style theatrical jazz dance or a musical theater in heels, I need like, and they might be like, this is their first time working in heels.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, well, I need to know if they even know how to walk in their heels first.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: So like that is definitely a test.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: But even if it's not, if they're not in heels, I'll always start with jazz walks, pivot turns, triplet steps, potabarets, just to see if they understand directional changes, if they can stay in time with the music, if they can, if they know how to travel, if they can stay grounded.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_02: What's their style look like with that?
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can do it very generic and fine.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Or you can do it like with power and fire and spice and you know all the things.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Or the punch walk.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_02: Or the punch walk punch, you know.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I if I have to like retrain them on, okay, well, you want a salt tree jazz, but you're bouncing through your jazz walk.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_02: We don't you don't really have that style yet to understand how to deliver this.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna have to figure out like how to make this work, you know?
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it just Because you don't have time to teach them that.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have time to teach them the style because your studio owner wants this style of dance from me to you, but your technique and your execution isn't right, isn't there yet.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_02: And who knows, maybe it will get there by the end of the season.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that's always the goal when we're bringing in trying something new and putting that onto the dancers because it has six to eight months to evolve into that final product.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_02: But it does make our job at in that moment's time really hard.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if I should go like hard with them and like have it f go over their head and walk away with like a sloppy hot mess of a dance when I leave and trust and hope that it's gonna look better, or do I like play it safe?
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm like, I see its potential, this is great because there's always style things and technique that they can work on, even if it feels like a safe dance.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think that people need to get that out of their head because at the end of the day, if I see a stylized dance, like it's and I'm speaking jazz, but if I see a stylized dance hit the stage, I'm thinking about that style and how great it is, more than the flash and the tricks and the axles and the aerials and the all the other things that everyone thinks they need.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_02: So there's nothing wrong with like a low-key, relaxed dance, as long as it's well executed.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_03: One of my favorite pieces that I'll never forget judging a couple years ago was a house dance trio.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_03: And they clearly had the training.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_03: They clearly had a great teacher choreographer, even their outfits were the right vibe.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_03: They understood how to use their jacket, wasn't just something where somebody kind of forced the style on them.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_03: You could tell that these dancers were in the style.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember even the other judges that had no training in it were like, that was the best thing I've seen all day.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_03: You can tell when it fits and when it's sort of being forced.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_03: I even, as I think we talked about this a little bit on the QA too, but I as a young choreographer had a judge say, I can see what you're trying to do, and I appreciate that you're pushing these kids out of their comfort zone because this dance is very different than anything I've seen them do this weekend, but they're not quite ready.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_03: They they weren't quite ready for this dance.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_03: So kudos, but you know, be mindful.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it was the first time that I had heard that as a really young, fresh choreographer.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember thinking, okay, I need to choreograph for the kids that I have, which I know we talk about all the time, but right.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then something else you said made me think about too.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_03: We were talking earlier about how there's so many local choreographers that you could be bringing in.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_03: I think some of this cleaning stuff where we kind of get caught up with how do I walk away from it and leave it and not get to touch it again and hope that it goes well.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think, especially for studios that maybe don't have kids that pick up as quickly or aren't as advanced and stylistically aware, that's another great option to bring in people who are closer to you because then you can bring them back.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_03: I go back to studios to clean all the time, and that rate is different than my initial choreography rate.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_03: But those situations, I know that teacher, that director is gonna bring me back later a couple of times so I can be a little more adventurous in that initial choreography setting and go, okay, we're gonna start here.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then when I come back, if it's not working and you've been working with your rehearsal director on it, I'm gonna tweak this, I'm gonna bring this down because I want you to look good on stage.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just do you ever ask, yeah.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever ask to see or hear the critiques of the work after during the season?
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would love that.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: But nobody send them.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I s I send them to all the guest choreographers.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, if you don't have time, it's fine.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would love that.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm setting a piece, like I want to know what the judges had to say.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well and but it also gives the choreographer a chance to see how the piece has evolved over the students.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll even give additional notes, which is so generous of them.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I and I I, you know, I'm so fortunate that they were still willing to do that.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I also, as a studio owner, feel such a responsibility to these people that we bring in.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they do for a living.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Putting their name on it, I can't very well, you know, take a Courtney Ortiz piece on put it on stage and tell people, Courtney did this piece, but then I didn't take good care of it because I couldn't do that to her.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just from integrity, like I just couldn't do that.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I often wonder, like with guests like for yourself, do you even like I know that it's things get really busy, probably don't have a whole lot of time to listen to all of it, but is that something you would like that?
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You do a I would.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_03: I know a lot of people don't have time, or maybe there's some ego involved and they don't think they need to hear the feedback.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I even I have to bug choreographers or um studio directors all the time to be like, hey, can you send me the high quality videos so I can never see the dance?
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know what they're wearing half the time.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_03: I have to like sometimes I will have a dance parent that I know at the studio or a different teacher who will like text me, hey, here's when they're competing this weekend, here's the live stream, here's the entry numbers.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because if I can watch them, I wanna I wanna watch them.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_03: I want to send them, hey, tell such and such they did great, love this, love that.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_03: There have been times, even there were two or three competitions this season where pieces that I choreographed for other studios were at the event that I was at.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I got to kind of bounce around and and watch them and be there when they, you know, did well and be there to grab them when they came off stage and say thank you so much for you know taking my work and making it look like that.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_03: That was so cool to get to experience.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I would love to hear the feedback because that's only gonna help me.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_03: But again, I know studio directors are very busy, so I don't want to be hounding them either, being like, Can you send me the feedback?
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_03: Can you send me the feedback?
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Are your dancers struggling to understand proper body alignment during training classes?
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_02: As a teacher, are you finding it difficult to explain exactly what muscles throughout the body should be activating when executing that specific skill?
• 1:21:55
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• 1:21:58
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• 1:22:04
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• 1:22:11
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• 1:22:21
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• 1:22:25
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• 1:22:37
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• 1:22:46
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• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have to send them to the teachers anyway, and the soloists and whoever's coaching them, so I just put the choreographer on the email and I can send them the link.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's really easy.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I like and this will be my final thought and then we'll wrap up.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I completely agree.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I would like to be a part of it, and I am extremely busy and I wear a thousand million hats, but still I like to feel included.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I don't want to just like pop in and like roll out.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's not like I don't like that feeling.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_02: It just feels very transactional, and that's not me as a guest choreographer.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's many guest choreographers that never want to hear from you again and want to take that paycheck and don't care how your dance does and doesn't care what they wear.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_02: But like I want to be a part of the the the idea of the costuming.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_02: I've put so much energy and thought into this concept and this choreography.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what if like I could have delivered an amazing dance that I'm proud of and that that you're proud of and the dancers I've worked hard on, but they're wearing the wrong costume.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that could truly be a make or break of the vision that I had in my head.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I understand like budget and things, but like let's try to honor it again.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like you have to like fully commit to the guest choreographer and not just be like, I'm putting them in whatever I think is best because I'm the studio owner.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I understand that.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_05: But that's the equivalent of you as the guest choreographer bouncing when you're done, never hearing from it's the same thing, just on the opposite side.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_05: Like if the if the in-house person or the studio owner is like, okay, thanks, bye.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_05: It's ours now.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, I don't want to hear from you ever again.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_05: Like, no, that's that's just as bad.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the whole creation.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's all the whole big picture includes the costuming.
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_00: How that conversation can't doesn't take place.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I sit that choreographer down and say, What do you envision?
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are we gonna spend 700 bucks in rhinestones?
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely not.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you see for this?
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we've always had a meeting of the minds.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the process.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's a part of the process, it's part of my contract.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_03: I put in there.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_03: What my rate includes.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Costume consultation is in there, music editing is in there, you know.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then if I have to drive a certain distance, I start adding mileage to that because now I'm spending a lot of gas money and stuff.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_03: All those details are in there so that you know what my expectations are when it comes to how we're gonna put this together.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that includes even, um, and I know Courtney, we've had a lot of conversations about this.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_03: When you want to take your name off of a piece because you feel like the integrity of the piece isn't compromised.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_03: And granted, choreography ownership is a whole nother can of worms.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it's yeah, and it's it's really, really complicated, but you don't want your name to be attached to something that doesn't reflect you.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_03: And if they're going around changing half of the dance, we should have the right to say, please don't say my name on the mic, or don't submit my name with that choreography anymore.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_03: All due respect, it's not my piece anymore.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's when you know it's a red flag.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_02: When I like I I feel like I we're all busy, but also like as a studio owner who brought in a guest, I would at least think that at the very minimum you'd want me to see it on stage on a video.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_02: At a very minimum, I shouldn't even have to ask.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_02: It should just be like you said, Suzanne, sent whether it's a judge's critique or not.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_02: I want to see the final product and how hard you worked.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_02: And like the amount of times I have to ask and never get it is usually a red flag for me because that tells me that you've probably changed it and you're embarrassed to share it with me and you're hoping that I never see it.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_02: You're hoping that it never gets into my hands because you've probably adjusted the choreography.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's also hard for me to market myself for future studios when I have nothing to show them because no one shares me the videos of the work that I've created, good or bad.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_02: I can choose at that point what I present out to when I pitch myself.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_02: But truly, I can't out of all of these years I've been doing this, I don't have maybe more than like four videos ever.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's crazy.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I'm telling you.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I get a lot of mine by screen recording the live stream just in case I don't get the video.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then I have to crop out all the stuff that's written on the screen to make it work in my reel.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's like almost flattering for that guest choreographer to share our studio on their like, oh my god, it makes me so proud that you think we did such a good job that you're willing to share this to your potential customers.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I do want to say though, in the beginning, very beginning, when we talked about contracts, I don't have a contract, but I would never refuse to sign one that a guest came in with.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you I I actually was even if it's someone knew that I don't know, it's appreciated that you've got it all spelled out for me.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sure, uh, I'll if I want you, I'll sign anything.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's I I do think that's a really good.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want it that to come off that contracts are a bad idea, but they're not they're an excellent idea.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, because I have, I guess I kind of misspoke at the beginning because I have had a situation where I was with the studio for a very long time, had a long term relationship with them.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then as I was on my way out because I was moving and other things were happening, the last pieces that I choreographed, I did not have a contract because I hadn't.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Needed one previously.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And the way that things happened over the course of that season, they took my name off of the pieces and put the rehearsal director's name on it because they made so many changes.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I found out via the students.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then I went online to where some of the awards postings were, where some of my pieces had won significant awards and my name was not on them.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_03: It was somebody else's name.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that was the first, okay, done.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_03: I will always have a contract on because you know, even if as a studio owner you don't feel you need one, that is totally fine.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_03: So long as you and I are on the same page and something is in writing to protect me.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_03: Then I'm good.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Smart.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_02: We could chat all day, y'all.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we could dance all day.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's just how it always is on making the impact.
• 1:28:44
  SPEAKER_02: We just love the chat dance.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_02: And y'all have shared such great advice for so many studio owners out there, for so many dance teachers out there, in-house choreographers, guest choreographers, the dancers, the parents, truly everyone in the dance world.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that you learned a thing or two about our expectations from guest choreographers and in-house choreographers at studios as we're heading into the summer months when a lot of guest choreography and those choreography camps are going to be happening.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you to Suzanne and Amanda for joining us on this fantastic episode.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_02: What a great one.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_02: And one of our last ones of season five of Making the Impact.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for being here.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yay.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, great job, you too.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_02: And how we always have our guests lead us out is with one final thought on the topic today.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_02: So anything in regards to guest choreography or in-house choreography, if you want to talk to other studio owners, other guest choreographers, in-house choreographers, whoever you want to speak to.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_03: Why don't you go first, Amanda?
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think overall, when it comes to both sides of this communication is key.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a great selection of in-house choreographers and they're all different and they're providing your kids with that well-rounded education and you don't feel the need to bring people in, that is so awesome for any studio that has that.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_03: If you feel like you want to bring guest choreographers in, just be clear about your expectations.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_03: Communicate clearly.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure that you are responding to those guest choreographers and letting them know what your needs are, or if something doesn't feel quite right and you need to work something out, that's on the studio directors to communicate.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_03: When it comes to the choreographers, you being clear about what you need, what your expectations are, and remembering to always meet your dancers where they are, you know, getting a clear indication of what they are capable of doing and not just walking in and saying, I'm here, you need to rise to meet me.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_03: I personally like the approach of I see where you are, I'm going to meet you there, and we're going to go on this journey together.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that can be such a beautiful relationship for students to have with guest choreographers.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it's our responsibility as educators, whether you're a studio director or a choreographer in-house or guest, to just always remember it's about making sure these kids get the best well-rounded education they can and setting your ego aside and doing what's best for them.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's see.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_00: My outgoing thought, I wanted to say don't do it if you can't take care of it.
• 1:31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get in over your head.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you bring these people in, it's a big investment.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've got the time on the schedule to devote to cleaning it.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't make it an afterthought.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that you've got someone there that's really going to bring it to fruition.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's too much of an investment to just slap it on the kids and walk away and cross your fingers and hope it comes out well on stage.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's your studio reputation, it's the uh kids' experience, and it's the choreographer's reputation that are at stake here.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think when there's this little misdirected view that people think this is something they need to do to win more trophies, it's not going to happen for you.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to just be overall negative experience if you can't see it through to the very end.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that includes having the people there that can make that happen, that can really clean it, rehearse it, even if it means communicating with the choreographer after they've gone to clarify any questions that might have.
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Be really, really careful about that stuff because it could go south quickly if you don't, if you're not prepared.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_02: We hope you enjoyed our latest episode all about in-house choreography versus guest choreography.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Special shout out to our two guests for joining us on this fantastic pack.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Don't forget to follow them on social media.
• 1:32:18
  SPEAKER_02: You can find Amanda on Instagram at Amanda Nicole underscore D.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_02: And Suzanne at Suzanne Seter.
• 1:32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Also, don't forget to follow Suzanne's studio on Instagram at RealDanceLHP.
• 1:32:32
  SPEAKER_05: Don't forget to follow Making the Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, and pretty much everywhere you listen to podcasts.
• 1:32:39
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• 1:32:46
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• 1:32:54
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• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Looking for some outside expertise to fine-tune your dance before hitting the competition stage this season?
• 1:33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Then check out IDA's Online Judges Critiques.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Our seasoned judges will provide you with a video critique of your routine, just like you'd receive at competition.
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_02: But with IDA's online judges critiques, we take it one step further with our post-critique additional feedback.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_02: Your judge will go through your routine again, pausing the video to give you even more detailed and personalized feedback.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_02: You can even request a judge that specializes in your style of dance.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_02: This game-changing service has helped countless dancers prepare for the competitive stage and is available year round.
• 1:33:38
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• 1:33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Click the link in our show notes or visit our website at Impact Dance Adjudicators.com slash one line critiques to learn more and submit your dance today.
• 1:33:51
  SPEAKER_05: Season five of Making the Impact is almost over.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_05: Stay tuned for upcoming episodes, including a chat with current college dance majors and season five takeaways from your IDA judges.