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What Dance Competitions Taught Me · Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the table at a dance competition?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly what are the judges looking for anyway?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is Making the Impact, a dance competition podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: Each week, we'll cover a different topic related to the world of competitive dance from the perspective of the judges behind the table.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: For our first episode, we wanted to bring you stories from dance competitions past.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: Stories that will hopefully inspire you, motivate you, and remind you that at one time dancers were actually thrilled to receive a bronze placement.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: This week, we're here in the studio with IDA judges Ashley and Troy to talk about what dance competitions taught us.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is Courtney Ortiz.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host at Making the Impact, a Dance Competition Podcast, and I am here with my co-host Leslie Mueller.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Say hi.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Hey guys, super excited to be here tonight.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yay! This is our very first episode.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're super pumped to get this podcast going.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have two amazing IDA judges here that we are chatting with tonight.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have Ashley Marinelli.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, guys.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, hi Ashley.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: She's from New York City.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give us a little rundown of who you are, what you're up to, your background, and some of your fave credits?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: Hi, I'm Ashley Marinelli.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: Also, I go by Ash, so feel free to call me Ash if you see me on the street.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_04: I am from Poughkeepsie, New York originally.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: I started performing professionally when I was 15 years old, did a lot of work in New York City, and went to NYU Tish School of the Arts for Dance and English Literature in 2006.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: So you can do the math and guess how old I am.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_04: Then I ended up staying in New York.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: I traveled a lot, and some of my favorite credits, I have danced with Justin Bieber, Mariah Kerry, Neo, Lady Sovereign, Kira.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: I have performed in musical theater regionally, internationally.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: I've taught nationally and internationally, and I do a lot of work in the postmodern and contemporary dance fields.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: And right now, to segue into what I'm currently doing, I'm currently working on two new shows.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_04: One is the choreographer and one is the writer and choreographer, both of which blend dance styles, theater and contemporary dance, which is a niche I've found for myself, which I quite enjoy.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: So the show I'm writing and choreographing is called Fall of the House.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's about Edgar Allan Poe writing the Fall of the House of Usher, if you're familiar.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Super psyched, driving our first reading on Monday.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: Woo! And then I'm choreographing a musical being produced by Princeton University that will go on tour in January.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_04: So psychedelic.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Rock star.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: You are a rock star.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Ashley's a founding member of Impact Dance Adjudicators.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Which is so exciting.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Ashley, you're amazing.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Troy, tell us all about you, where you're from, where you're now based, and some of your background and credits.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am Troy Haywood.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am originally from Charlotte, North Carolina.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Got a little bit of a late start in dance and uh started competing whenever I was 14 at one of the largest dance studios in the country.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I uh went on after high school to dance for Royal Caribbean.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for about five years.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I traveled uh with them, based solely out of Miami, but uh working on five of their ships.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: After that, I moved back to Charlotte, North Carolina, and immediately started teaching full-time, built my own business, uh freelance, choreography, teaching, and traveling, adjudicating as well.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now I am based out of Los Angeles, California.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Moved here about a year ago, uh, just kind of looking to expand a little bit more.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing a lot of work on the East Coast, and I was wanting to come over here to sign with an agency.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now uh with Movement Talent Agency in their choreography department and their dancer department, and just auditioning and teaching and judging around the nation right now.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And me and Troy have taught together on dance conventions and she is amazing.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love both of you guys.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for being here for our very first podcast episode about our topic tonight.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so all of the episodes for the first season of Making the Impact are based on previous topics from our Judges blog.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to go even deeper into each topic and hear from all the other judges, head over to Impact Dance Adjudicators.com slash judges blog to read more.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: So tonight, our blog that inspired this episode, which is uh what Dance Competitions taught us, was released back in May of 2018.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: That blog featured IDA judges Michelle Tolson and Christina Yoder.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Michelle and Christina were competing really heavily back in the late 80s and early 90s.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a really neat blog to check out for kind of that, you know, beginning of competition era.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: And Ashley, we actually know that you wrote a similar blog post uh for the judge's blog called Three Things Dance Competitions Gave Me That Weren't Trophies.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to tell us a little bit about writing that blog?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_04: Totally.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I also think I wrote the very first Impact Dance Adjudicators blog.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_04: Am I incorrect?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: I think was that the first one?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: That was not the first one.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, maybe it was.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, I remember writing that article.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: If I'm getting the details correct, I had just gone home to see my mom and Poughkeepsie, and my mom has all these trophies, my trophies from competing in high school and middle school, like in my childhood bedroom, which is of course where I stay when I stay with my mom, because not all those trophies I think were deserved.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so it wasn't that I was so amazing or anything, but they are kind of a reminder that though the trophies are nice, they they don't mean a ton.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like 10 years later, 15 years later, the trophy I was so proud of.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_04: I won Stars of Tomorrow 2006.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_04: I was missed Stars of Tomorrow.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_04: It was up to that point the greatest thing that had ever happened to me in life.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: And that trophy is just collecting dust with the rest of them.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: So I really was grateful for my experience in competition.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: And when I did get to college at NYU, uh, it wasn't necessarily a cool thing to have done.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_04: I went to school with a lot of kids who came straight from conservatories, came from the Juilliard training program, came right from training at LaGuardia or Alvinelli or all these very prestigious kind of training programs and ballet training programs.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: And being a competition kid was not very cool.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so when we first got to college, we kind of had to deal with like, was it worth it?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like, was all that time spent rehearsing and doing dance competitions worth it?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_04: And I came to the conclusion that yes, it absolutely was, not for the trophies, but for the experience.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_04: I got to perform so much, many more times than a lot of other people I went to school with who, you know, would do nutcracker and then maybe a few shows once a year.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: I'd do, I'd perform seven numbers every weekend for for months.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_04: And it gave me more of an opportunity to perform.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_04: I was able to hone my performance skills.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: I know how to deal with an audience, I know how to deal with stage strike, I know how to deal with something if it goes wrong on stage.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_04: I I'm able to bring my personality to a performance space in a way that I don't think a lot of kids got experience doing growing up.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_04: And and I think I went on to list a bunch of other reasons why dance competitions are awesome, but it was such a good blog.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: So everyone should go read the blog.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is like so well written.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really, really fun article to read.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely head to the IDA Judges blog on Impact Danceadjudicators.com slash judges blog, and you can catch Ashley's article there.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to just get right to it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start asking some questions.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dig a little deeper on this hot topic.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you want to give your hometown studio a shout out, let me know.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, Troy, where did you grow up training?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're from Charlotte, North Carolina.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what was your hometown studio?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to say?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to say that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I danced at Miller Street Dance Academy.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's of huge business now.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the third largest studio in the nation.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was not that size whenever I was dancing there.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, Michelle Rogers is the owner, and she is just expanding her business and her studio to immeasurable heights, honestly.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really crazy.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you said that you got started late, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: You started dancing at 14.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I went the studio, Miller Street, was actually opening up about a mile away from my house.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I had been going about 30 minutes down the road just to take like a boys' tap class.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as that studio popped up, I was like, all right, maybe I should transfer over here a little bit.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had been shopping for studios and really didn't find anything that that I liked.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was kind of pushed out a little bit because I was not great.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I hadn't had any training, and I, but I knew I wanted to like dive in.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever I went to the summer classes, they kind of took me under their wing and I immediately started competing like three months after that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it it was like I had actu I had found what I had been looking for for my whole life.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like my parents put me in soccer and baseball.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'd actually never even got past T-ball.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like seven years old playing T-ball because I was like, I was horrible at it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we just couldn't find anything that I that I was passionate about that I like latched on to until I found the studio.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just started competing all throughout high school.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I started in yeah, ninth grade and competed until I graduated.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's so you started competing a couple months after you started dancing.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's insane.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I like joined my dance company or like competition team, I guess, when I was eight.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like very different, you know?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like from 14.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I you only really had four good years in in the comp world.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Literally.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as I started competing, I fell in love with it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize how competitive I actually was, and it gave me something that I could one look forward to, two, kept me out of trouble, and three, just like kept on pushing me, pushing me, pushing me.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I it was a perfectionist dream almost.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because because I just wanted to to just keep on getting better.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as I finished competing for my first year, I immediately started homeschooling and really spent all my time at the dance studio training because I knew I knew it's what I wanted to do for my career, and I knew I had like tons of time to make up for.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember that first competition?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember not being able to sleep for like a week before because I had absolutely no idea what was about to happen.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know I solo my first year, which I didn't know what that meant.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how competitions worked, didn't really know what I was getting myself into, honestly.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like not how it is now.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go online and like Google it and see like what a dance competition is because it wasn't really available.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we just had to experience firsthand, and it was nothing like I expected it to be.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was actually talking about that, the whole like, you know, what you just mentioned about Googling and stuff with my mom last weekend because when you go to competition back when we were all competing, you didn't know what to expect, and you didn't know who was gonna be there before, and you didn't have inspiration from television shows like So You Think You Dance or Dance Moms or anything like that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Your inspiration was who you were competing against.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: That was how you learned new styles.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you saw what was cool and what was in.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my god, that studio is doing that dance.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, I want to do that dance, you know.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we that still happens now, but a lot of our influence now is from social media, is from YouTube, is from television.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's awesome that dance is on TV and has blown up so much.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it was a very different lifestyle in the competition world back in the day.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: But I also think that means trends come and go quicker with the digital age that we're in, because like you say, Troy, in the past we had to like see a studio doing something, go, that's interesting, I'd like to try that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_04: And that took a while to filter to other studios.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: But nowadays, you can see it the next day online somewhere, and then a trend takes over.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I feel like trends, especially as a dance competition judge, we see more trends that come quickly and are more prevalent and then disappear just as quick.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's interesting.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if I have an opinion about it, it's just it's just a fact.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like trying to think of the trends when we were young.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like lyrical dance was very new to the scene when we started.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: The stir-up tight and a barefoot or the lyrical shoe, the like the wraparound, I don't know what to call it in the 90s.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: But always tights.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: We always wore tights, I will say.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_04: I think we always wore tights.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know about you guys.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, we always I didn't wear tights, but all the girls always wore tights.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: I remember, as Courtney was saying, you know, learning new styles and seeing a studio at a competition, be like, I want to do that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: I remember very specifically the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: I saw somebody doing a fuete.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I want to do that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I taught myself how to do fuetes on the carpeted floor at the World Congress Center, and it was ridiculous.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but yeah, you just you see things for the first time and you're like, oh my gosh, that's that's what that's what's out there.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so it can be really inspiring, especially if you're coming to it a little later.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And another thing that's interesting is that we would actually sit and watch.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now kids just up and leave the auditorium, check their app, and see when they need to be back.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: They don't like sit and watch the dances.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I knew like based on who was there and based on which studio was at the event, I was like, that's our competition.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see what they're bringing to the table and comparing them to what we're about to bring.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then at awards, you actually knew, like, you know, who it who deserved it or not.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, that girl fell, we're gonna win, you know, whatever it is.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: But like we would sit, like we would come, the whole studio would come and watch, like with your pajama pants and your chicken fingers, because uh that's all we ate at competitions, not real healthy, but uh yeah, pajama pants and chicken fingers.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, Ashley, give us a little bit of a shout out to your hometown studio where you trained and like what it was like growing up in competitions with them.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, sure.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: My home studio, who I love, they're called JG Dance Center, and they're in High Park, New York.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: They're uh quite a small studio, but produce so many professional dancers.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's wonderful.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: I don't I love that.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's all due to the two folks that run it, Ginny and Joe Mazzello.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: They're dancers in their own right.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_04: Ginny and Joe were on Broadway in the 70s.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_04: She trained with ABT, he was Michael Bennett's assistant, just like a spectacular kind of showbiz family.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: And they were like my second parents growing up, and I know a lot of people that went through that studio feel the same way.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's kind of a magical place, and it's very, very small, and there's only two rooms, and that kind of makes it even more magical.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, I could talk all day about JG Dance, but we didn't compete too much.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: We would go to like three regional events a year and then a nationals.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: The team wasn't enormous.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: I think my senior year, there were only six of us total.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they were pretty selective with their team.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: But when I was a kid, I think the largest the team had ever been was whatever the cutoff for production numbers was.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe that's six 17 people or something.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like at Stars of Tomorrow or Starbound, wherever we went, like we had just enough people to do a production number.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: And which leads me into the very first time I did competition, I was asked to be in like 30 seconds of a production number because I was the one that bumped us up to production number rather than large group, and we wanted a production number.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: So from there on out, I started, you know, being more heavily involved in competition.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the the most numbers we ever brought to competition, uh I personally brought to competition was I was in seven numbers.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_04: So we we didn't bring a ton of numbers.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: We always kind of valued quality over quantity, and it it is interesting to me to see some of these studios bring massive amounts of dances to competition.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like I'm so surprised that they have the time to rehearse them all, but some of them really do.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: And the numbers are really clean, and I'm always impressed because I my brain could only ever hold like seven numbers at a time.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it it would be awesome to for you and me to quickly share our backgrounds as well.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like that I have a very different experience growing up in the competitive world.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in Maryland and I went to a studio.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Our dance team was called Hot Shots National Dance Team.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's how everybody knew us on the scene.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the studio was actually called Mid-Atlantic Center for the Performing Arts.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: It still exists today.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful, well-trained ballet program.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And back when we were Hotshots, we were like hardcore competitive dance.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like we did every style, every genre.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I joined the team when I was eight, and I got my first solo when I was 10.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I was like probably at a point in time, like maybe when I was 12 or 13, like in 20 dances at competition.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like crazy.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and to be completely honest, things have changed so much in the sense of how how people get solos.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I had to work my way up to get a solo.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: I started with a duo or trio first, and then my teacher was like, Okay, you're ready.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now you can have a solo.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I bumped up to having two solos at it, jazz and a lyrical, you know.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: But in that sense, we were very competitive.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: We trained all through the fall, and then after the new year, that's when we actually started learning our competition dances, and we would compete only through regionals, usually in like March, April, May, and then we would do a national.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a little bit about my competitive life.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: So one of my favorite uh parts about being friends with Courtney is that I met Courtney right out of her final competition season when we worked on our first cruise ship job together.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: So Courtney was literally like six months out of her senior year of high school.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I was six months out of my senior year of college.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: So we booked the same cruise ship, and I remember thinking, and the other two girls were so the same age as Courtney, and so they were right out of competition season.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: And my old at that time feeling college brain was like, oh my god, these girls just got done with nationals.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like they're in such good shape, they've been competing all year.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I how am how in the world am I ever gonna dance with them and look okay?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile, I'm like four years older, totally fine.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, so Courtney comes out of a super competitive studio.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: I come out of a not super competitive studio.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm from Marietta, Georgia, and my mom owns a dance studio called the Dancer Studio.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we started the first dance company when I was in sixth grade, kind of at my prodding, because I was still at that time wanting to pursue dance.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I convinced her that we needed a dance company and we needed to go to competition.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: So it's again still exists today, just like Courtney's studio, and they still go to two regionals a year.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: We've never been to nationals.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not, you know, our our kids at that studio do a lot of different things, but also very well-rounded, you know.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: I come back a lot and teach.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: I get uh instructors from Atlanta and from different places to come in for master classes and stuff.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: But um yeah, I always really enjoyed competition.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: I was always once I finally made levels in competitions, we were like boom, intermediate level.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like that is where we belong.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: We are not beginners, but we do not dance a million hours a week.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I remember my senior year, I had two solos.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: That was even very special to have two solos.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I wanted to enter mine in the advanced level because I had been accepted to college and I was like, I'm gonna do this for a living.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like, let me see if I can just make it to the advanced level in like a place, and I got a ninth place out of ten.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I felt really good about that.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it was it was always a really fun experience for me at competition.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love hearing you know, everybody's background because it's so interesting to hear.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: How did your competition experience influence your career choice and your dance education?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Don't everybody jump up at once.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's tricky.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in so many ways, of course.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like dance competitions convinced you that this is what you want to do for because you moved, you know, you went to college for dance.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that was a stepping stone into your decision of yes, I want to pursue this for a living?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_04: I think more so than the competitions was the opportunities that the competitions themselves provided me.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_04: For example, I went to a lot of convention competitions and took a lot of classes there, took classes with professionals working in the industry.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: And then from those classes, you would win scholarships usually to then pursue your education at like a really awesome, reputable school in like LA and New York.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so I was able to go to Joffrey Ballet School.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: I was able to go to Steps on Broadway when I was like 12 years old.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_04: But I then met teachers and I was taking class with people working dancers in the industry when I was 12 12 years old.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_04: I still take class from Elena Kunakova to this day.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_04: I met her when I was 12 at Steps on Broadway.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's amazing.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's really cool.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: And she like has known me my whole life almost.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's really interesting.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_04: So that more so than like competitions themselves, the conventions and the classes were the really cool part for me.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Troy.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really go to many convention competitions whenever I was competing.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I we were mostly a con uh competition-based studio.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we would go to probably four from February to May, and then we would do the DMA nationals that year.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be our convention experience, and that would pretty much be it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew whenever I graduated I wanted to continue performing.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely knew that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose that the competitions kind of prepared me for that and motivated me to go professional.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think, and different than Ashley, I don't think that that's where I got my exposure, which everybody has their own experience.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely wanted to perform afterwards.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: But after I started performing, I wanted to get back into the competition industry and kind of share with the kids what I've got to be careful saying this, what I wish I was taught, or what I wish I would have experienced whenever I was competing.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, competitions did give me something to work for and gave like ignited my passion and like pushed me to perform, but I wish I knew now that that's not the be-all end-all.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of like opportunities that competitions gave me, I feel like I need to say this because Leslie just brought up Royal Caribbean, which was how we met.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I know Troy, you worked for Royal Caribbean.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know Ashley, you worked for Disney Cruise Lines.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we've all been uh cruise line dancers.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um but my for competitions for me, since I grew up with them, when I would do solos at the regional level and I would win first overall, it was kind of like a light bulb to me when I was young because I'm like, I like to dance.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is fun, I enjoy this, I think I'm good at it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'd get first overall, and I'm like, maybe I am good at this.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was kind of like a reassurance sort of.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't really the favorite at the studio, I wasn't the star of all of the dances, and I didn't take ballet as much as my teachers wanted me to.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it was for me kind of like, well, let me see if I can, let me see if I can win.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um, this is my goal.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would win, and I was like, okay, other people notice that maybe I'm good.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, maybe I should do this for a living, honestly, because I didn't know any different.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't do anything besides dance.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what made me, and of course I loved it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, can I make this a living?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Can I actually pursue this?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which a lot of parents don't think is possible because it's a scary industry to get into.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's so many what-ifs, it's not, you don't know what to expect.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: You could audition forever and never get a job.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I actually got my first job at Royal Caribbean from auditioning at Star Power Nationals.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: You too, Toy?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Star Power.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Shout out to Star Power.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Star Power.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Mine was Ocean City, Maryland, Star Power 2007, I think it was.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: It would have been.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And they called me up after, and they were like, yo, here is a contract.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, hey, I have to go to college.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to college and I was like, I don't like this.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go do a cruise ship.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: So then I called up Royal Caribbean and I jumped on board with Leslie and we were roommates.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And crazy.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's like really how it works.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So even though competition might be about first place, which for me it was an achievement, I didn't care about the trophy.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I cared about, you know, just having something to work towards and reassurance more so.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: But then it led to my first professional job, which is so unbelievable.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe that.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Especially now how the industry has changed, like Troy, I was my studio was the same.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: We we didn't really go to many convention competitions.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And to be completely honest, back in the early 2000s, there weren't many options to go to that were convention competitions.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Tremaine, maybe West Coast Dance Explosion, NYCDA.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: The DMAs.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those were like the first ones in the industry, and now it's all about convention competitions.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is where it's at right now.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to go to those.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot more opportunity for exposure now.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can get in front of agencies, you can get in front of casting directors, you can get in front of a lot of different people.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a good thing about how our industry has shifted a little bit.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I so highly approve of that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: Things that I was just thinking about as we were all discussing this, you know, I I needed to go to college for dance.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: I could not have stepped out of dance competition season and taken a job.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't ready, I wasn't professionally ready, I wasn't technically ready, all the things.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: But I remember like in high school, knowing that I wanted to dance professionally, but knowing I didn't want to do the modern BFA contemporary.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's the track I was not interested in that.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to be truly I wanted to be a commercial dancer.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to, you know, be on cruise ships, be in commercials, be in that sort of more fun, you know, exciting atmosphere.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: But I but the only place that I really understood how to do that was at a dance competition, you know, because I didn't see at all the BFA programs that I was looking at, like anything like that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so I remember like hearing from a judge at one point, you know, they were still writing at this time, you would be perfect for a cruise ship.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like that was a comment that I got under under somebody's critique score.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I was like, oh my god, like I think I could do this.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's the first time anybody had told me that because most of my training was from people from a modern and ballet background.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I don't look like that, I don't dance like that, I don't feel passionate about that.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, getting on a stage in an afro for Boogie Wonderland on a rural Caribbean ship, that was it.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like that was I that was it was most fun of my life.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I think being at a dance competition and hearing from somebody that I had a place in the industry was awesome.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: Piggybacking on what you said, I do remember times where, you know, in classes or in critiques were which were taped or written or whatever.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_04: They certainly weren't video recorded back then.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: But people telling me I had potential and that I could do this as a career, that was it's not the first time I had considered it, but it was validation.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_04: It was, oh, I'm not crazy to pursue this.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: You you think I have talent?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so let me try even harder to be good enough to go to school for a dance or to dance professionally.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_04: So it certainly it gave me a kick of confidence that I needed.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: Same, same as you, Leslie.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and it came from an outside source that wasn't your teacher who loves you.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know, this is an objective person who has had a career who's sitting there looking at you after seeing 400 other dancers and seeing something in you and calling it out.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think, I mean, for me, that's you know, that's I think Troy, you mentioned this too.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you wanted to get back into the industry as an adult to give back the hello, like here, this is what we all do, is because somebody at one point told us you could do this.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to tell somebody now that they can do this, you know.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_04: And I try to do that as a judge, and I'm sure you do, Troy, as well.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_04: That like when I see talent, when I see potential, when I see that you could go further with this, I try to say it out loud.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_04: Because some kids, the the most talented person that I see on stage sometimes doesn't hear that back at their home studio.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_04: And often it's not the person that's featured in every dance.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_04: I sit right during competitions and watch this one person that gets featured, and I'm always watching probably the girl third from the left, going, She's the she's the most talented person on stage, or the boy in the back.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I don't know.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel I try to mention that when I can, because sometimes people don't hear this.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've definitely I've said things like that.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've literally told kids that I've watched at competition, like, please look into this summer program, please please look into this college program.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be perfect for this.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I always love talking to the senior dancers that are like 17 or 18, and I'm always like, I'm not sure if you're a senior in high school and if you're graduating, but if you are looking for colleges, please.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I try in that three-minute critique to give them some knowledge and give them some information on what would be appropriate to them from my experience and my.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: Because I didn't know when I was 18.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like as informed as I thought I was, I really I picked my college because I was looking in a book of like best dance colleges, and I liked the picture the best.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_04: It was and it was out like I mean, like I did end up getting wonderful education, but I I had no idea what I was looking for, and I assume that many of these kids don't either.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: Or whether you need to go to college, or whether that's not your path, or you know, whatever the case may be.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: How have you translated your skills that you learned at Dance Competition into real life skills?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: What did Dance Competitions help teach you?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely two sides of this, since we are working professionally, definitely persistence, learning and being okay with standing out.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Especially like in the professional industry.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I see so many kids today that have like so and and we've said it already, and we've all heard it, have so much potential, but it's almost like they're too afraid to like step into that space.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_04: One of the coolest things that I think my studio did at competitions is when we were given a solo, we had to choreograph it ourselves.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_04: Like that was the role of solos.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_04: The yeah, the policy was you were chosen to do a solo and you had to choreograph it yourself.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: And once you did that, the teacher then came in and said, maybe instead of doing this, you could do it this, and this song is too long, maybe we could cut it, and and we'd get a little bit of help when we were younger.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_04: But as we got older, we were forced to choreograph.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: We were learning to choreograph, and we often, you know, would score a certain way and we'd get a certain choreography score, and then we'd know how to fix it next time.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_04: So honestly, I do a lot of choreography now and a lot of associate choreography, and I I credit dance competitions for helping me start doing that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_04: I know that my first few things that I choreographed were not good, they weren't even, they weren't even passable, but like competitions gave me the opportunity on a very like low-stakes kind of arena to go, oh, that was really terrible.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_04: How do I not make that happen again?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe this would be a better way to translate this idea.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_04: And then I got to college and I got even a deeper education into like what that meant and and composition classes and choreography classes.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_04: But I think I do a lot of what I do today because I was forced, not forced, because I enjoyed it.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_04: We all we all kind of thought it was a fun challenge, but I we were encouraged, I should say, to start choreographing really early.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_04: So my first solo I choreographed, I was nine, and then from the age of 10 on, I was choreographing solos.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have to relate it to like where I'm at now and where I went with my career, which I am now a professional dancer.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the competitions like prepped me to pick up choreography super fast because I like I said, at one point in time I was in like 20 dances, and like that's insane.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: How do you remember all that?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was it was like all different styles too.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I mean, I think in terms of real world quote unquote like normal what I call normal people skills, like not dancer skills, because I am now in the real world.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um I work for Capezio, I work in the corporate office, and having translated, you know, being able to work as part of a team, being able to shift your focus immediately.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if something has if something has gone wrong on stage, if a person is out one day and you have to re-block, I mean, anything that happens on the fly like still translates into any other sort of real-world job experience, teamwork experience, collaboration experience.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: And like Courtney said, you know, that the whole aspect of not winning or taking critical feedback, you know, and we were I feel like we were a little bit lucky because we did sort of kind of get into that period of competition where we did have a critique tape.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like there were the actual recordings we could listen to in our generation, whereas like slightly before it was really just they wrote down a couple words and that's all you got.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, being able to listen to a tape and and hear some things that like you know were hard for you to hear.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's it's hard to hear that you need to work on something you thought you were doing well at, or that you know, maybe you shouldn't have tried that skill or that choreography didn't work the way you thought it would.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, to be able to take that feedback as a dancer and then move forward with it in a positive way.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think being in a competitive atmosphere, like a dance competition, you know, just helps anybody in any sort of situation like that where you do have to take critical feedback and move forward with it.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I wish I knew whenever I was competing is or I wish I had a different kind of a mindset, is instead of trying to be perfect or trying to perfect everything whenever I'm going out on stage, be more focused on the progression of everything rather than this is the ultimate, this is the ultimate goal.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Go to the competition, win first place if you don't do that.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is my old this is my mindset then, then you aren't good enough or are a failure.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than now, if I was to go back and if we were to go back to compete now, all of us, we would kill it.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing what we know now.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Knowing what we know.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like just like going and being okay with just putting your best out there on the stage and listening, like Leslie was saying, to constructive feedback from these judges and then taking it, leaving some stuff that doesn't work for you, and then putting that into practice, and then showing up at the next event, doing it even better that time, without so much added pressure of trying to be perfect and trying to win that first place trophy.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: Are dance competitions a positive influence on today's young dancers?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_04: I think they are.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_04: I think they are, and especially if they are approached from a mindset of I'm not trying to win this thing necessarily.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_04: I am trying to be a better dancer.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_04: I'm trying to be inspired.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_04: I'm here to gather as much information as I can.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a sponge, I want to learn from the judges, I want to learn from the teachers, I want to learn from my fellow performers, I want to make connections.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_04: Honestly, I now work with a bunch of people I met competing, especially if you want to go into the professional world.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like, that's where you start to make connections.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like if we're if we're gonna be very pragmatic about it, it's very true.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's networking, really, from a very young age.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: And like, I work with so many people I competed against growing up.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_04: And so be nice, right?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think if it's approached from that mindset, not if I don't win, my life is over, then absolutely positive effects all around.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say the same thing.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to go into it with the proper mindset and and focusing not on just that one event, and if it's not life or death, this is a dance competition.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this is something that we love to do.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: If we love to do it, it's going to continue to be there for us.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: It and even if we aren't the best at it, it's okay because the our love and our passion is going to continue to take us to where we want to go.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's definitely hard, especially whenever, and we said it before, in this day and age, to see all of these different competitors right in front of your face all the time and and always comparing and comparing and getting angry whenever we when we don't win.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's a rational, emotional response.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it seems to be the the kids that are there to quote unquote work, to be better than they were yesterday, who go into class and don't say anything and just are there in with their tunnel vision, just working on themselves.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the dancers that are going to have a career that's going to last them for the rest of their lives.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for tuning in to our premiere episode of Making the Impact.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Shout out to our special guest judges, Ashley Marinelli and Troy Haywood.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can follow Ashley on Instagram at ALM433 and Troy at the Troy Haywood.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have a question you've been dying to ask a judge?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: Now is your chance to submit your questions.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: We might answer them on the show and give you a shout out.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: Submit your questions to us on the website at www.impactdanceadjudicators.com slash podcast via audio or text.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not only do we staff pre-screen judges at competitions at Impact Dance Adjudicators, but we also provide an exciting and unique service to dancers and teachers.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: IBA Online Judges Critiques are a perfect way to have an in-demand judge view and critique your dance before you hit the stage this season.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's super easy to send us your video.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just record your dance in the studio or send us over a video from competition directly on our website.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can include specific requests on what you want us to look for, like technique improvements, performance quality, transitions, and more to make the service completely personalized to you.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: You also have the option to add additional feedback to your critique, which is one of our best-selling services.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Your judge will not only provide a standard critique similar to what you would receive at competition, but they will go back through from beginning to end and elaborate in even more detail for an extra 10 to 15 minutes post-critique.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Within 72 hours, you will have your brand new critique back with you with detailed feedback to work on in rehearsal.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Our service can be used from solos through productions.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: We even offer a bulk studio discount to studio owners who want to send over an order with five or more routines.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Critiques start at only$30.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what, podcast listeners?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: We are offering a special promo just for you.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Visit our website to submit your video now and enter the code Podcast10 in all caps at checkout to receive 10% off your first IDA online critique order.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can find us at www.impactdanceadjudicators.com slash online critiques.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: We can't wait to see your dance.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: We have some exciting hot topics coming your way soon on the podcast, like lyrical versus contemporary, boys in dance, tips for competition cleaning, and age and level expectations.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify and tune in every Monday for new episodes.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for tuning in.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you guys next time on Making the Impact.