Latest / Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast / The Over-sexualization of Kids In Competitive Dance

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The Over-sexualization of Kids In Competitive Dance · Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_04: Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the table at a dance competition?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly what are the judges looking for anyway?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_04: This is Making the Impact, a dance competition podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_04: 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_04: Today's episode of Making the Impact covers child sexualization in competitive dance, sex abuse, and mental health.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_04: Please take care when listening and make use of the resources provided if you need support.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_04: And parents, please screen this episode before listening with children.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_05: Hello, dance world.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to this week's episode of Making the Impact.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_05: I'm your host, Courtney Ortiz, and I'm here with my co-host, Leslie Mailer.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_05: Hi, Courtney.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: How are ya?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: I'm doing good.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: How are you doing?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_04: Good.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_04: We're both fresh off of competition weekend and excited to dive into a new topic this week.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: A new topic, a very important topic, a very hot topic, and we are here to bring that to you today with two special guests that you'll hear from very soon.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_05: But before we jump into our episode, we have a few more Making the Impact winners that we want to share with you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_05: And if you haven't heard about our Making the Impact Award, this is given out at IDA affiliated competition event.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_05: If you have at least one IDA judge on the panel, you could win the Making the Impact Judges Choice Award through your choreography, technique, execution, performance.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_05: We want to recognize you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: And one of the perks is getting a shout out live right here on the podcast.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_05: So let's hear our recent winner.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: Alrighty, congratulations from High Demand Dance Competitions Event in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: Congrats to Anna Marie Dance Studio from Wilmington, Delaware, and their dancer Will for their solo Saturday Nights.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Congratulations.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: That's really exciting.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_05: Congrats, y'all, and stay tuned to hear more Making the Impact winners throughout the rest of the podcast season.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_05: And like always, let's hear from our sponsors.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_05: Dance teachers, studio owners, and choreographers, this one's for you.
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• 2:59
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• 3:03
  SPEAKER_05: And did I mention that I'll even be attending the event this summer on faculty teaching jazz movement classes and hosting a handful of informative seminars?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_05: And I would love to see you there.
• 3:13
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• 3:24
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• 3:27
  SPEAKER_05: Head on over to their website at Dance Teachersumerexpo.com right now to grab your spot.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_05: Or click the link in our show notes.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: Join me in Vegas for the biggest Dance Teacher event of the summer at the Dance Teacher Web Conference and Expo.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_05: Alright, Dance World, we're back, and we are here today on making the impact with a very important topic and a very sensitive, triggering topic for some possibly.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I hope that you did hear our disclaimer and warning at the top of our episode when it comes to this topic discussion here today.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_05: And we are talking all about the sexualization of children in dance and specifically, and I think in all styles of dance and at dance studios in general in this day and age of 2025, but also at competition as well.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_05: And we are a dance competition podcast, so we are here to discuss this with two experts in the field.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_05: One of them is a returning guest.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_05: I'm excited to welcome our brand new guest to the podcast, who I'm meeting right here, right now for the very first time.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_05: But she is a licensed clinical psychologist and served on the advisory panel at the Youth Protection Advocates in Dance for over seven years.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very excited to welcome Dr.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_05: Christina Donelson, also known as Dr.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_05: T.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Courtney.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, nice to meet you.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: And Leslie, thank you.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, of course.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's always great to see my wonderful advocate hero, Leslie.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: So it's always great to see her and be with her on these topics.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for inviting me.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, absolutely.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_05: We're thrilled that you wanted to join us and chat about this.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_05: And uh, we're honored to have you here and all of your knowledge to share on this important discussion.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_05: So, Dr.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_05: T, if you could share a little bit more about you, tell our listeners out there where you're from, your what your what your career is looking like, anything that you'd like to share as far as how you got into uh this side of things on the dance world.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I originally hail from Prince Country, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: We love Prince.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh God, right?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_04: You can see Prince.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: We just have to have a moment.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, a moment.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: A moment.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm still devastated by his absence on our planet.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Very sad.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh currently, though, I go back and forth between Minnesota and California.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm licensed in the state of California and Montana.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so I have private practice in both places.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I have been an adjunct professor, um, teaching psychology, family systems, adolescence.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: My big passion in psychology is working with adolescents.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: I did a dissertation on adolescent romantic love.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: Currently, I'm working on a book, which will come out later.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: But it's in it's just in the early, early stages, but I'm really excited about it because I'm incredibly passionate about working with our teens, our youth.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've also done research in the area of music and how it impacts people, which is actually wonderfully how I ended up meeting Leslie is through my research of music and how it impacts just one's own psyche.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Did a two-year study.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was amazing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: I got to go to all these concerts and interview people as to why they like the music they do and how it impacts them.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_04: And I bet that probably comes into play with dance too, with hearing the music over and over and over and over again as you rehearse and what that does.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_04: So maybe we can get into that too.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that's actually how I met Leslie was through my own love of dance.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: I was, at the time, I was dancing hip-hop in a class, and somebody else that um she had met heard about the research.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was talking about the research in class.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so she said, Hey, actually, what do you think about coming in and advocating for dancers?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then she started talking about the subject matter.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I've been a dancer since the age of three.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it was incredibly important to me.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I love dance and I love all kinds of dancing, but hip-hop.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we're talking like think 90s, B-boy.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's my big love.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I've also done a lot of Afro-Brazilian samba.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've performed off and on throughout my whole life.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_05: Amazing.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_05: I love it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I can't wait to learn from you today on this chat, and we're really grateful to have you here.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_05: All right, our next special guest, who is returning to our podcast, and it's been a minute since they've been here.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_05: We're going all the way back to season two, episode 42, age appropriateness at competition.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_05: She is a performer, a and dance educator, and an activist.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_05: She was also the original founder of Youth Protection Advocates in Dance in 2012.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very excited to welcome back Leslie Scott Zanovich to the pod.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome, Leslie Scott.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Courtney.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Leslie, hi, Dr.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: T.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me back.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And congratulations to you.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, look how far this has come.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it but that's that's what happens when you have vision and resilience and hard work.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you earned it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: You earned it, ladies.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Aw, thanks.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, we did it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_05: We're here.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_05: We're still we're still kicking.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, I do feel like we're making the impact for sure.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: So, and and having guests like both of you on our podcast is what makes this so impactful.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_05: So we're very grateful and happy to have you back, Leslie.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_05: So if you could remind everybody more about you.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, hello, everyone.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I, in in terms of kind of connecting me to the topic at hand, it really is because when I moved to Los Angeles and became really steeped in my professional dance career and I was meeting my goals and at the time, like being on faculty at The Edge and being on faculty at Millennium and dancing with celebrities.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I really wanted MSA to be my agent and um, you know, all of all of the things that when newbies moved to LA, you kind of, you know, strive for.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to Hollywood in my uh, you know, my my baggie, sweatpants, my dunks, my jersey, and my ball cap.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very quickly told by people that I loved that are great people, um, that I needed to be more sexual, that I needed to show my body.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to lose weight, I needed to teach to more ratchet music if I was going to pack my classes.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this would be how I was gonna climb that ladder of success.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the sad part of it looking back was they were right, it worked.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I started to get a lot of attention and I started to participate in kind of what the last part of sexualization is, which is self-sexualizing and self-objectifying, which is you actually view view yourself only really good for those things.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes with a myriad of um mental wellness impact.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when I had a lot of epiphanies and looked at what I was doing to my students, you know, I was teaching a lot of kids.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was flying around the world, I've taught in 22 countries, and I realized they are emulating me.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't feel good.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Being booked doesn't mean you're healthy.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was dealing with everything that the data shows sexualization will do.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that led me to create youth protection advocates in dance.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: That led me and amazing people like Dr.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tina and Dr.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tomian Roberts and Dr.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Carragenus, and just a group of incredible people to create um the world's first certification to safeguard children emotionally, physically, and sexually, and also the world's first division on sexual abuse.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I also co-founded um Mima Cares with Keanu and Uchita and Dr.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Roberts and Dr.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Carragenus and uh Tina was a part of that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um about two years ago, I decided to step out of the advocacy space.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I am a mom, and but it's still something that is really heavy on my heart.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I did advocacy work for 12 years, and it is uh something that is gonna take all hands on deck.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned so much, and it grew me as a person.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I am just grateful that you and Leslie and this platform have, I'm gonna call it the courage to really tackle this topic.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure we'll learn more as this time goes on, but that's a little bit about me.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_05: Amazing.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_05: And thank you for all the work that you do and continue to do that you have done in our dance community and dance world.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: It is so needed, it is so necessary.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_05: And I just want to give you a big shout out.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much, Leslie.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Courtney.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_05: You're welcome.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: All right, let's jump into this important chat.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and thank you.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Leslie, for for calling out the courage that it takes to do this because it it is a little scary, you know.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's a big topic.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's a topic that people like to shy away from and pretend that it doesn't exist, but it does.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, it doesn't always happen where sexualization of children leads to something like sexual abuse, but sometimes it can.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: And we have to be aware of that and we have to acknowledge the factors that go into situations that end up happening that way.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: Great.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_04: So, Leslie, let's start with your the definition, not your definition, the definition of sexualization and the continuum of what that looks like.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Dr.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tony Ann Roberts, first in 1997, her and her colleague, Dr.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Frederickson, created objectification theory.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really important for our audience to understand.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I know as dancers, we all have had those experiences where we feel like we're not being treated fully human.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're being treated more like an object in someone else's bigger masterpiece.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is called objectification, when someone is not treated as a fully whole person with feelings and needs and desires and agency.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you cannot have sexualization without it intersecting with objectification.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the American Psychological Association did a uh created a task force, seven psychologists around our country, one being Dr.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tomian Roberts.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things they wanted to identify is you can't just focus on sexualization because you also need to celebrate what is healthy sexuality, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is such a heavy topic, but one of the greatest things is it's actually when you flip it, it's the most beautiful thing in the world.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Our sexuality and making sure that we don't rob children of healthy, self-driven sexuality is one of the most sacred jobs and power positions that we hold as dance educators.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So a sexual health requires mutuality.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the APA, American Psychological Association, started with well, sexual health, what is it?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is when it's in its good form?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Mutuality, uh, consent, uh, cognitively understanding what's going on, uh, joy, uh, agency, uh, choice, uh, you know, uh, safety, all of those things.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is healthy sexuality, where there is uh all of those things, mutuality, respect, consent, agency, and also being able to cognitively understanding what is happening and not just in that moment, but the implications to come, right?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because sexual health has implications, good and bad.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then um sexualization, on the other hand, involves, and I'm just gonna read it directly so I get it, I get it correctly.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sexualization, on the other hand, involves valuing a person primarily for their sexual appeal or behavior.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this valuing is seen in depictions and treatments, especially of girls or women, although men and boys and all the people of all cultures, all genders, obviously experience objectification and sexualization, as just her main focus was on girls.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, depictions and treatments throughout our culture, including um leading them to mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and internalization, starting to internalize that third person view of themselves.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So self-sexualizing.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that is uh in a nutshell what the APA has defined as healthy sexuality versus sexualization, tagged in there with objectification theory.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that really sets the scene for kind of what we're talking about in a more educational uh perspective.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want to say is that sexualization is on a continuum of sexual abuse and um leading to sexual violence and sex trafficking.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: They do not live in silos, they're not separated on separate islands.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is on a continuum.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I think is really important that Dr.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Tina shares is also kind of this false perception of sexuation not having harm unless it's in those more extreme forms.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, Dr.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: T, if you want to hop in there.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Leslie.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think the thing that is really interesting in having done this advocacy work for so many years is that somehow there's this belief that some aspect of sexualization or objectification might be healthy or good or not as damaging.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: And psychologically speaking, I really want to make this incredibly clear to all your listeners out there.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: There's no healthy benefit for the child in their well-being to sexualize them or to objectify them.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: You are creating trauma and more work for them as they get older.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate you saying that so much because even before we had this conversation, you know, I expect, I expect to have pushback.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: And I expect that to be what the pushback is is well, maybe it's not that bad or it won't be that bad the way I do it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it's really, really, it's just very impactful to hear you say that no, it is all, it all matters and none of it's good.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it follows a little bit of the cycle, the cycle, which is it happened to me.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: If I haven't dealt with it, then I'm gonna unconsciously do what I was taught to me onto others.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and if we haven't even come to our own awareness of our own trauma, our own sexualization objectification that we experienced as children, naturally we're gonna just think it's okay because that's what we've been taught and trained.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, in a weird way, we've been programmed that this is normal.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: The whole industry has been programmed that this is normal and okay.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: Not to mention it gets positively rewarded by jobs, Instagram, I mean, social media, just in general, uh, competitions.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that's where the hard part is is the pushback is, I think, a lot to do with the denial of what has happened to the individual, the unconscious aspects that have happened in the industry and the inability for people to actually make the change.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Leslie and I have been talking about this since what, 2013, 2013.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I started 2011.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I started in 2011.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we launched YPAD in 2012, and then I met you right there at the I met you right on the cusp of 2013.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you've you've been with me very much since the beginning.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I just want to, just to the listeners, I really just my I utmost have the most compassion because I too have been in this since three, and I also have had to really look at the impacts it's had in my personal life.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then professionally, as I've been in this advocacy world for dancers and other movement artists, to see how it has negatively impacted them and having to help them work through their trauma.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just really want to bring compassion to it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: But the reason why it continues to happen, the reason why the pushback is because people are unconscious or unaware of what's happening to themselves.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_04: Or they just don't want to address it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's part of it, you know, for from my perspective, is there there feels like there would be shame if I, as a choreographer or teacher, realized, oh no, I I have done this to someone.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: And then I think there might be a little bit of, oh, I would I have to just can't, I can't talk about that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_04: Like I couldn't step out and and admit that I'm part of the problem.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's maybe where it stops because nobody feels like they can come forward and say, listen, help me.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: I need, I needed to know this.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then that's why they go to Wi-Pad or they go to somebody.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, do you did you find that, Leslie, when you were working with WiPad?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: Did you have people that kind of showed up and said, I had no idea I was part of this?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It had to first be me.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had to be the first person that did that.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when we developed the original Wi-Pad and, you know, subsequently and you know, led to the certification development.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was traveling around, you know, the country globally teaching on Wi-Pad, I had to start first with myself because I could never have, I could never have authentically and honestly founded an organization on these tenants if I did not first come to what they call like a coming to Jesus moment for myself.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had to look at uh there was evidence.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: There was evidence of kids starting to dress in sexual ways that followed me at competition, that were, you know, dressed in certain ways that came and, you know, took my classes at edge, that started to literally dress in certain ways like me, that wanted to move like me.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there is no doubt that I was a culprit in exposing children to multiple ways of grooming self-sexualization.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways was music.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why my, you know, my my kind of meeting of the soul sister minds with Dr.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: T was so powerful, was because I used to really battle.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: I always had that consciousness there that something was like, should I do this?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Should I let these kids in my class?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: My song today is like about orgies.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's about, you know, sex, it's about all of these stereotypes that are so unhealthy.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's that other side where really my mentors didn't have any problem with it.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm also going, well, no one around here, I would even get so far as to say something to the parent, be like, I don't know.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is really adult, the parent, many times.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I did get a parent going, Oh, thank you so much.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I so appreciate you amplifying that.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of parents, you know, they're not educated.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're like, it's fine.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so in my testimony when I when I would teach for all these years of iPad is I first had to really reckon with the destruction and the impact that I left behind.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the only reason that I could have done that and been so unconscious was truly I was in my ego.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was in my ego and I was in my own brokenness because I was steeped in self sexualization, self objectification, my lack.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Was not on the wall of safeguarding children.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: My ladder was on the wall of people pleasing, my agents, my mentors.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get jobs?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do I become successful?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do I stay relevant?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: There is a very big overt push to stay relevant.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to stay sexy, you know, and you and you need to exude that.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like to stay relevant, you have to be sexy.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So a hundred percent in my years of mentoring and teaching and certifying probably thousands of educators by the time I left and that model, the model that we'd created certification on come, you know, really crumbled.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: When after that model was no more, I I will never, I will never forget.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it always gives me hope of how many people did have that.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have to, wow, I I need to, you know, either I'm unconscious about it and now I'm getting educated and I can self-regulate, or I've known something's been amiss.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know that my ego and my feeling and my reputation has been leading me to break these boundaries that I didn't internally feel great with.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's time I take my other leg over that side of the fence and I stand to safeguard children.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize I am paying my bills off the backs of kids.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you are an educator that makes money off of teaching children, inadvertently you must be consciously and ethically called to put them at the center of what you do.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_05: I completely agree as an educator, and it is really, you know, I we can see everything on social media these days.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: We see a lot of things on social media.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_05: We can almost feel like we're in different places when we're scrolling on our feed.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_05: We can be at this competition, at that event, at this studio, whatever.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_05: And some of the things that I that I see that are being presented, like it I feel like even just on social media feels like it's a reward.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_05: Someone chose to put that there and and wants to share that because they're proud of that.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_05: That's how it comes across to me.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_05: Most of the times it's a highlight reel on social media.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_05: So someone approved this.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: And then I start sitting back and looking, kind of like analyzing it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_05: Who would approve some of these moves, some of these songs, some of these costumes?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: Why are we rewarding this by praising it on online and getting likes and comments for it?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: Why are we, you know, and it's a hard thing as a judge too, because it's like, as a judge, we sit there, we don't know what's about to hit the stage.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_05: There's only so much we can do.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_05: We don't want to lose our job.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: We don't, we want to be able to use our voice on the critiques.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes we can't, sometimes we can't penalize.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_05: Like that's a whole nother issue in itself when it comes to the competition industry.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_05: But I will say when it comes to my class and my what I can control as an educator, I always try to make sure that I am giving movement that feels appropriate for the age.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_05: And I teach jazz, if everyone knows out there.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_05: Like jazz can be very sexualized.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_05: It can't, it I feel like what we see now in the jazz category is very overly.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't have to be.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_05: But that's what we see.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_05: And it's really hard for me as an educator because I obviously I'm gonna do what I do and I know what I do well and I'm proud of what I do.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, sometimes you start questioning like, wait, is this what people want?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_05: Like, this is what I see at comps.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_05: Is this what I'm supposed to be doing?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_05: No, I'm gonna stay true to what I'm doing.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I think more teachers have to believe in themselves more and stop following what they think is the trend, which then in return actually is sexualizing your dancers and you don't even realize it.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Courtney, I too.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think the other interesting fact that I've experienced, and Leslie, you can talk about this too with your experience, is we have gone and tried to educate the masses in the whole industry of dance.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: We have tried the dance owners, I mean competition owners, the dance studio owners, the teachers, the parents, the kids.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: Every and I think there hasn't been one aspect of the dance culture we haven't actually reached out and tried to educate.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I think in my just very brief scrolling, it's interesting that it just kind of there's this cognitive dissidence.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's like when we work with people where they say, Oh, we so appreciate this education, we're gonna do better.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then the change either is so slow it's not really showing itself, or people are just so entrenched with the way that things are supposed to be or what they know to be.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's been really interesting to once you show somebody all the facts, here, this is what's going on, this is what you're doing, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: And then they're like, oh, thank you, thank you.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then they go and they do it again.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Do the same thing again.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and I mean, I do I wonder too.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_04: So, like Courtney, you have a very you have a very stylistic background in what you teach.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_04: You are able to take a song and do something to that song that is totally different to this song.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_04: But what I see a lot of competition is the same thing over and over again.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_04: And a lot of times it's just it is sexualized, it's sexualized movement.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's gyrations of hips, it's straddling the floor, it's it's humping the floor for lack of a better term.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_04: And that is all I see out of certain studios, certain groups.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_04: And it makes me wonder if, like, yes, they're internalizing that information that they're giving, you're giving them, but they don't know how to do anything else because they don't have a variety of training.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_04: Is that something that perhaps is happening?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_04: Because I mean, I see people doing different styles of choreography, but I also see people just doing the same thing over and over again.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're not wrong in what you're saying.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've seen that through a lot of decades of dance, right?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like whatever is gonna give the reward circuitry in that brain, which I I really do I want in a moment.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I wanna I wanna amplify something that you just said and kind of pull it out.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna tag Dr.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: T to talk a little bit about, you know, when we say the words like desensitization and normalization, none of it happens without brain circuitry, without our brains getting wired to see something.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and one of uh Dr.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: uh Tomy and Tina and I always say, well, you don't see red in a red room.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when the room is so red, you don't see the red flags, right?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's it's really is our brains.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now that sexualization has steeped out into branding of products onto TikTok, onto every platform.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't you can't go to the grocery store without, you know, me being confronted with the front of the magazines talking about and objectifying women and objectifying men.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I'm there with my 10-year-old, like uh, you know, and I'm it's just it's steeped everywhere.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is priming and grooming that happens to the to our um brain pathways that then helps it really hard for us to see red in a red room.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I I do think a lot of this is unconscious, unconscious duplication, just mirroring and copying and doing because we are, as human beings, we're very much in our flesh, right?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are, if I didn't have like a spiritual life, if that I would be that woman that I was back then, who just treated children as commodities and ponds and my vision, and only thinking about how this was going to benefit me and my ego.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it does take us to step out of that and really for a moment consider these moves that we're doing over and over and over again that are sexualized.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I do want to talk about the coding research study because I think it's interesting when kind of we talked about like so many people or even the dancers, like this doesn't feel right, but we don't know why.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you pinpointed like the gyration, the like legs on the ground.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times it's the eye contact, right?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the lack of smile.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot of smiling and sexualization of kids in dance.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that Courtney has honed, which I would love even just to do a little research study on the way that Courtney creates and the way she performs.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: She has some of the things we pinpointed in the coding, like the hair whips.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: She never does it sexually, though.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: She plays with her hair and does her hair rolls and does fun and touching the hips.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: She's never doing it like this.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, it's like she's never, um, calls it the gaze, you know, where you're just like looking in and and she smiles.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in this study, one of the things that came out is there's no, I know it's so funny, you should see when Tomi Ann does it.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is, there is no, there's no smiling when we sexualize children and dance.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: You the smile has gone dinosaur.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm trying to get here at is when you've got impressional young children, and because Tina specializes in adolescence, she can tell you one of the number one ways that they learn is by watching and mimicking.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: How many kids, what if it was me in my old days of teaching, hypersexualized, licking my lips, crawling across the ground, doing the gyrations, having to be sexy at all costs, no matter what, all those students versus all the students that take Courtney's class.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: How many of them would walk out of there after a month of training and then go and perform in front of judge judges?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: What would they be doing?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is their muscle memory?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: I bet you a lot that I love.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Courtney's class would be having fun, age appropriate, smiling, lots of smiles, lots of expression, lots of joy.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And my class would be hypersexualized.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Tina, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the brain wiring and how children learn.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the thing to keep in mind about brain and brain development is the brain isn't fully developed until at least the age of 25.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: 25?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: 25 later, later than I've heard.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: I personally feel like it's more like 27, 28, 29.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some studies do say that.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: That it's later that the I mean, just in my own personal, but like the research is what is now, you know, that is what the actual facts are, is they say 25.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: And the last part to get fully developed is your area of logic and reason.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: The first area that gets developed is your emotional center.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: So your emotional center is backed by the brainstem.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so it is where your nervous system, your fight, flight, or freeze.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so the reward system is also kind of inside in the center.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of times we are wired for positive reinforcement.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: So what that means is if I do something and somebody's like, oh, that's amazing, the person most likely is going to repeat that behavior.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: And the thing about children, especially this is what's so interesting about children into teens, into that young adult, is they develop a sense of self based on the external world first.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we know who we are based on what the world outside tells us who we are, until we get that prefrontal cortex.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: Then we start going, oh, wait a minute.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: Then the whole sense of self starts to develop.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then we can kind of reflect in, no, I am this person, I am separate than this.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: This is not going to be what defines me.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: But that is not naturally the progression of a lot of these kids that are in dance right now.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: They are absolutely needing the adults around them to provide them an environment where they can develop a healthy sense of self because that whole process is in the process of being made.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think one of the most important things and what really shifted this conversation for me, and I've seen a lot of aha moments for colleagues across everywhere I've been, is to really focus this conversation on don't we want our students to have healthy sexuality?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Don't we want them to know what it feels like to be respected in a sexual relationship, to have mutuality in a sexual relationship, to have agency in a sexual relationship?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can teach that to my students and I never have to say the word sex.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to emulate that I'm not self-sexualizing, use music that is not going to groom them self-sexualizing on top of it, use themes that are not then going to have storylines that then exacerbate it and cumulatively.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have movement, a song, and a theme.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And now let's go ahead and put them in a highly sexualized costume and let's put them on stage to now be performatively sexual when actually a lot of these kids don't even know how babies are made yet.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of these children have we are interrupting self, we are also robbing their parents' opportunity to have their say in that when we do that to younger children, where we interrupt that that tender relationship with between parents and children.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we are teaching them that their first relationship with sex is performative and to be judged.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just like they're not fully absorbed in the dance when you're so caught up in the external, you're not fully absorbed in the beautiful exchange of healthy sexuality when you are steeped and caught in that prison of self-sexualization.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this is huge because as the research shows, and as Tina said, this is not, these are not words.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Over sexualization is not a word.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is eating disorder, depression, anxiety, hypervigilance on what we look like.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why are people getting Botox at in their teens?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they getting lip fillers in their teens?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Plastic surgery, choosing partners, not off on mutual purpose.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I love their laugh and we both love to save animals.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, but choosing partners because society says what makes me valuable is my girl's a dime.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what makes me valuable is my guy's hot.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it so it's like this has long, long-term, not just short-term, long-term, far-reaching implications.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I have talked to people that literally left dance because of this.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so this is a very, it's an important topic, but I I hope you can also hear that.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I realized I could actually do now be a part of helping my students have healthy sexuality instead of being in the culprit group that was egotistical, very much narcissistic, me minded.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: That really excited me actually as an educator.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it should excite everyone because it's it's again that focus on sexualization, sexualization.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: But what about healthy sexuality?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're all sexual beings, you know, all of us are sexual beings.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it has nothing to do with intercourse.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the research says.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's like literally written in a paper I have right here from Toby Ann.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Healthy sexuality is not intercourse.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I just, as you can hear, I'm passionate about it because I just I it's the reframing of it, I think, is what makes this conversation not to feel like scary that you're gonna get that pushback.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, ah, Leslie, I just I so feel you on every you've said that and before when we were prepping, like we we're ready, we know we're gonna get the pushback.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, sister, I've been there.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I just wanna say, like, I have been there.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I it is scary.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I lost a lot in the beginning.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I lost so I I lost I lost.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I lost all the in quotes, listeners.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I lost all the people that that that were just, you know, and you know what?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I lost some really good people just because it takes a lot of courage to be outside of the spiral of silence and to stand up and say this knowing your agents probably not going to engage with you for a while.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: People are not gonna invite you to the party.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want this top this topic because if they're not engaging it, they certainly are witnessing this happen and they don't feel ready.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is hard.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't feel ready to speak up.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a spiral of silence.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Tomy Ann's word for it that happens.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I would be dishonest if I said that there is not a price to pay for protecting children within a billion, multi-billion dollar industry that is predatory on their cons their number one consumers being kids.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we have research that shows highly that Tomy Ann Roberts did in the coding on research that shows highly sexualized videos.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, we did a research on this.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: The average views of the most popular highly sexualized videos by the same choreographer was 27, nine, 27.9 million views versus that same choreographer's videos that did not sexualize children, 2.2 million views.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sexualizing children is lucrative.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is lucrative.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_05: That's crazy.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 38:27
  unknown: Wow.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_04: I'm thinking about the parents.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_04: And like obviously, all parents out there want to do right by their kids, right?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_04: They want them to be happy and healthy and grow up.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm not, we're not parents, Courtney and I, but you know, we see enough kids that we we know that.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like parents are not the bad guy.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_04: However, how how are parents allowing this?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: And Dr.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: T, do you feel like this is just something that they don't, they just don't know any better?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what is because I feel like there's gonna be a lot of parents horrified listening, saying, Oh my god, oh my god, how have I let this happen?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: And how how have they let this happen?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_05: So normalized, I feel like they just don't even think and they're trusting the professionals a lot of time, hoping that they're doing right by their kids.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_05: That's the only thing I can think of.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me a complicated situation because sometimes you have a kid that is so passionate, so passionate of dance, and they really they love it, they love their group, all of this.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then the teacher has this reputation of winning, and the kid really wants to be a part of the winning team.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: What parent is gonna go, actually, no, you can't be doing that because of this, this, and this?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's a really hard stance for parents to first of all recognize that the teacher might be doing something inadvertently that's harming their kid, or overtly, they just may not be aware of it unconsciously, because they are trusting that individual as the professional.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think what's really challenging for parents is they want to give their kid the best of the best.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: So they they put their faith and their trust in this individual, and yet they also don't quite recognize because if they look around, everybody's doing it.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: They go to these competitions.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: You don't, it's not like there's that one where everybody's like, ooh, yeah, yeah, it's everywhere.
• 40:17
  unknown: Right.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it is, Courtney, what you were saying is it's normalized.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I think really the way things are gonna actually change is it does put more responsibility on the parents to be very aware and to have this awareness.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: But for most parents, they think they're putting their kid in dance.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: They're, you know, they don't think about, oh my God, is my kid being objectified or sexualized?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: Because their kid is six.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: Who would think about sexualizing a six-year-old?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's not in the healthy form of the psyche.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: But the reality of the dance culture is it's been in that culture psyche for decades.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you you don't know it, you're just in that red room.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is, is just like educators and advocates that try to change things and speak up, and there is a level of punitive pushback that you will experience the parents up until um WiPad switched leadership and we switched from a nonprofit and then we and it got um into a for-profit.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: In our nonprofit years, we ran an incredible seminar called Support for Parents in a Day's Dance Culture.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tina helped me develop it and I would teach it everywhere I go, everywhere I go.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was like you could not have me in if we were not gonna, if you were not gonna give me two hours with the parents.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually my earliest days before I actually developed the nonprofit.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: I started to kind of uh leverage whatever um popularity I had as a guest artist then to start to say, I'd love to teach.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can I could I also though spend some time talking to the kids?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Could I spend some time talking to the parents?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: But once we got the advisory panel with people like Tina, we really were like, you know, we created a full-blown seminar.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I I will say the there's a lot of fear.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are parents that have tried to speak up and there has been a punishment.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's on their kid.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's their kid, sometimes it's like the kid is no longer asked to do a solo.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: The kid is switched to the back.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: The kid, the parent is labeled in all these wonky, weird stereotypes.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're there, the parent is just extreme modest.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're into purity culture, like all these shutdown, really like derogatory terms that shut people down because you just really can't, you don't know what sexualization is, or you don't want to stop sexualizing.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to shut it down by calling the parent high maintenance, or they're, you know, they're too needy, or they're controlling, or they're a helicopter parent.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, this parent is the only advocate that this child has on the front lines between you and this child and their passion that will at some point become more influential over them than the parent, because as Tina will shared, that's natural childhood development, right?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Where at some point my 10-year-old is not going to think I'm the bee's knees.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty, and we're already kind of right there.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Her gymnastics coaches are who she bows down to right now.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm seeing this play out in full time in my own life.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I think that we have a lot of just like within the educators, there's a lot of different demographics.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: In the parents, what I have seen is parents, sadly, and I was just talking um to there's an organization called um Dance, Dance Awareness, No Child Exploited.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Mary Bowden.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we were just talking a little bit about the parents and how many parents decide number one, I'm not putting my kid in dance.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: How sad is that?
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: They just say no.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that yeah, it's terribly because of what they see online and what they see on TV.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: How sad is that?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: And two, they are just like Tina said, like they really don't feel like they have power in the space.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're trusting.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess no one's saying anything.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: I guess.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's okay.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're dancing to put in the thing and doing this, and I'm scared.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Three, I have tried to speak up and it didn't go well for me.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I got punished and it and it ended up we had to leave the dance studio, and now my child is devastated.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a lot of different experiences that and then you do have another camp that I've dealt with, and I know Tina um has dealt with is you have just like the educator, just like who I used to be, the person who is working out their brokenness vicariously through their child or their student, and they're unconscious of it.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: They have not figured out their own childhood trauma.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't healed it yet.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're not educated, and they're just and they come in contact with these kids.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, it's a great way for them to build this identity.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're building it on sand, but they're building this identity using these children as objects, pushing these children's boundaries.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I saw it all the time in LA in Hollywood, where you know, a kid would show up at Edge or a kid would show up Millennium.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: The mom would be like, Hey, I left three kids back home with my husband and we just relocated here to Hollywood.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I would always like my heart would be like, you know, like, and you know, at the beginning, so many of these parents would say, you know, I'm not gonna let my kid do this.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I would slowly see the red room start to creep in.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: All because of the promises of jobs, of notoriety, of booking.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it is it's kind of almost the same for all of us.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even though the demographics we're talking about, it does come back to like our wholeness, right?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like our whether it's a parent commodifying and exploiting a child or an educator, or if it's a child doing it themselves or a competition, like almost comes back to like if we're whole, we're willing to take a risk and we're willing to sacrifice.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know what I lost?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: I gained in people like Dr.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tina in coming on your podcast.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: How knows, you know, like I gained my conscience back.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: I gained clarity.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have been able to be a part of healing and and reframing, and I got to be a small part of that.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: That that is creative.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: You want to talk about creativity choreographers?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right, that's creative.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's making an impact on those kids.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, you were talking about like the, you know, your promised jobs, and there's all this stuff that you might miss out on if you don't subject yourself or your students to this kind of sexualization.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: And it brought up some of our guests that we had a few seasons ago, Costin Mayer, Austin and Meredith, who are TikTok sensations.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_04: They're a couple who and Meredith was very honest in her in her conversation with us that she didn't want, she wasn't somebody who was gonna go around in a bra and hot pants and go to the audition.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_04: She she wears sweatpants and baggy clothes, and that is her her line where she draws it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_04: And that's if you look at their choreography, it is it is stunning because it is so creative, and they use not a single sexual movement or music or anything.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like right now, they're choreographing to nostalgic 90s sounds, like the AOL dial-up sound.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like they do so many creative things.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: They're they're famous, they're they're people yeah, they're working professionals.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like they have great career, they're social media influencers, like they've they are a good example.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_05: And with that, they are also adults.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_05: And granted, I think that one of the th one of the layers of this that is like I kind of observe from a distance is the fact that yes, adults are teaching children, and yes, the children look up to the adults as the influence and admire what they're doing and emulate, like we've talked about.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_05: But it is definite I I feel like there's the lack of awareness from many adults who are in a space with children to realize that you're no longer working with an adult anymore.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_05: You're no longer teaching another adult any longer.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_05: This this child is 10 years younger than the student you had in class at Millennium or the student you had at class in Steps on Broadway, or wherever these professional teachers teach.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_05: And this is more in the world of guest classes and convention classes and things like that.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_05: So it's, I think it's hard for some people in this space to separate that because they've gotten big, similar to your story, Leslie, they've gotten popular based on what they've done with the work of adults.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_05: And how do I now bring that into a space with children?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_05: Because are you hiring me for this what feels like a little bit more sexualized movement that is okay to do with consent because people are choosing to come to these classes based on what they're seeing, based on what they're hearing?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_05: They're choosing to come to these classes because of what you do and they like your style and they want to experience that for them as an adult and a working professional.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_05: But is that the same thing that we should be giving to a child that's 13 years old or even 15 or 16 who's in the senior level?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_05: I feel like everyone's like, well, they're senior, so it's okay.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, I don't know if that's really okay still.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I I think there are plenty of ways to do a hip isolation without it make making it sexualized.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_05: Like that is a part of dance.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_05: We can act, we can absolutely move our pelvis.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_05: We should be moving our pelvis.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_05: We can use our hips, we can touch our body, but do we need to be like like pulling up and slapping our thigh?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_05: And like the amount of times I say in class, like, if I want to do like a hinge like passe and I want the arms that be engaged and throw down, immediately everyone slaps their thighs.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't do that.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_05: And they think that you do that.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I was and I'm like, I don't want to audibly hear anything.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_05: I don't want to audibly hear you touch your body because that that takes it to the next level, that takes it to an uncomfortable place for me.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_05: When we do like a flat back up and the dancers skim up their the front of their legs, and I always say punched behind behind you.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_05: So we're not making contact with their body at nine years old and sticking your tongue out and giving me eyes and a kissy lip because you don't even know what you're doing.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_05: But that but somewhere you saw that movement done by someone else and it was applauded, or maybe an adult.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly enough, that is where the applause gets the loudest is when we see, and we've all seen it at competition, it's really heartbreaking that when the child does the most hypersexualized movement, whether it be in the face or it be in the body, the crowd goes wild.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, yeah, that is problematic.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is problematic.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_05: That is attention, all dancers.
• 50:22
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• 50:28
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• 50:31
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• 50:36
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• 50:43
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• 50:49
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• 50:53
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• 51:00
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• 51:03
  SPEAKER_05: Click the link in our show notes or visit our website at Impact Dance Adjudicators.com slash online critiques to learn more and submit your dance today.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to also kind of highlight an interesting thing that is actually happening actively, or just recently happened actively in the larger um cultural context, is Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: He did a piece on social justice.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: There was a huge backlash that it wasn't performative and people were not dressed in sexy costumes, and what does this mean?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: And this was the worst halftime show ever.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, if you took the time to do a deep dive, which turns out I went full flag.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_03: You had the time, dove into the rabbit hole and was like mind-blown.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: Kendrick Lamar has my utmost respect for what he did creatively on so many levels because that was so deep.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_03: And here was somebody on a national stage that went against the culture, and he still got backlash.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: But the brave, the courage that it took, that's what I think it's gonna have to take is there's so many more important stories out there that kids are absolutely needing to actually in real time process and deal with.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where dance and music is so powerful because it can change the course of their life by absolutely being immersed in that kind of reality of what is going on, and it can actually give them tools to help them down the line.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's so many more themes to choose from.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: There's like the creativity hasn't even been like dove into because everyone is just replicating this one tiny, tiny part of a person's and then justifying it with things like you said, Courtney, like, well, they're almost adolescents.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how many other things that they could benefit that you actually want them to act out and express that is truly relevant?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: And also adolescents are having what's called a second wave of brain malleability.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: So in adolescence, what they are, what is coming into their brain and the neuropathways that form are actually incredibly impactful.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're dealing with the demographic of people that are going through puberty that are starting to have sexual attraction.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we then saying it's fine that us as dance teachers, who literally we're dance teachers, why are you saying that we have any type of expertise in coming in and helping them be sexual beings?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very confused by this.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's actually at the adolescent time period needs to, I really feel that the adolescents do not get advocated for enough.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of times it's like the little kids being sexualized.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: The adolescents being sexualized has real in-time impact.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that also with our experience with the sexual abuse division.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so many of these young assistants and these young, you know, when you get picked to travel with the competition, and then you're being sexualized and then all the boundaries are being crossed.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, and you're being treated like an adult where you're actually not an adult, you're still a minor, and you do not have a brain of an adult.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your prefrontal cortex is still 15.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that is a really underrepresented demographic, is the adolescence and doing these really kind of low-level um, it's not a well-thought out argument to say, well, because they're an adolescent, we're okay to sexualize them.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't, I think under a little bit of scrutiny, that really falls apart.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that just really falls apart.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted, I want to ask about something.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that I think like nothing, nothing's gonna change without accountability.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just say that?
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have been on, like I in the in the submission uh paperwork, it asked me how many podcasts I've been on.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even remember, to be quite honest.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's been so many.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter was on um 104 airplane rides by the time she turned four, all with advocacy work.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we like I could talk about this, and so could all of us for days about the research, about the impact, what are we doing, what am I doing?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if there is not a model of accountability, and if we continue to have conflicts of interest in organizations that say that they're trying to protect kids when there is major biases, major conflicts of interest happening, where people can only center, prioritize the North Star of safeguarding kids until it might influence you know, impact their bottom line, their bottom dollar.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna get anywhere with this.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just, I mean, I mean, and I mean sis like systemically.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get, you know, I have always, and Tina and I have always done our original wipe pad work with the starfish analogy.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the all the hundreds of starfish are up on the shore and the little boy is throwing them in one by one.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the man comes up and says, What are you doing?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna get all the starfish back in the ocean.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the little boy goes, but it matters to this one.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like that is that that is beautiful work.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that is never to be minimized or put down at all, what you all are doing, what team is doing all the years I did this.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: But if we're talking about the jogger not, you know, I I could do a whole podcast as to why, because of all my experience, why, why right now is is it still not working?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've got all this education.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you not know about it?
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you not know about the coding, uh, the coding research study?
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you not know about the social media study that we took dancers off social media and in three days they lowered their body surveillance, they increased their self-compassion?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why do you why is it why did this come to a halt that Tina's incredible work on how she did work on music and she did work on themes and how it affects the psychosocial wellness and the brain development of children?
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Tommy Ann did a whole thing on costuming.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's it's because it comes down to accountability.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh me and Tina were leaders who were willing to give it all up.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was willing to give it all up, but that's what it will take.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: We are until we have organizations that are leading this guard that do not have money coming in, that is bought money, captured money, until the leaders are not captured to have their biases and their relationships with organizations that actually are harming children, but pretending that they're not, like it is even in the field of child advocacy and dance, it's become quite a mess.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I think that it's like we need to really, when we talk about this, look at accountability.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, you know, I can speak to accountability when we were in charge.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what did we do and what was our oversight?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not a big believer in a governing body.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like I, but I do believe in accountability.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that a governing body is way over there, but accountability can still be here.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: It can still be something where I'm not having the government in telling my dance studio you need to have this many bathrooms.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you, I mean, all the building code's gonna do that.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what I'm saying?
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there is an and-and.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like the discussion has become so wonky and and in like black and white almost in like if there's accountability, well, it has to be a governing body.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: But let's just I think the problem with the accountability that came in when you and I were really trying to advocate for this is people made the assumption or they used punitive or punishment synonymously with accountability.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: Really, the truth about accountability can be like, for example, Courtney, if you have a goal and you're like, I really want to make this goal, I really want to make this goal, and you ask Leslie, hey, can you hold me accountable?
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because this is so important to me.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: I really want to do this.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: And Leslie's gonna be there and be like, okay, what do you need?
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_03: Do you need a check-in once a week?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: How can I help?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: How can we support each other?
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_03: This is the kind of accountability shift that needs to happen instead of you sexualized this, you did this.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's more like recognizing one, we need help, and two, we need each other to help each other and not in a punitive manner.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I think in dance, a lot of times, you know, kind of with the objectification and sexualization, forget the romantic relationships, even how we relate to each other.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I think what's been so hard for a lot of us, well, I'll just say for me, and then you all can chime in if this has been your experience, is my relationship with women, with girls, was challenging at the very beginning because of the competitive nature of the industry.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's always one spot, or God forbid I did really well and I'm shining.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: Then all of a sudden, my friends, uh, you know, there was a point in my life when I was shining where I had no friends.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then I had to go, oh, maybe if I make myself smaller, I'll have friends.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so I I adapted, I learned.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a cost.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so I feel like how we can actually relate with each other as, you know, as women, as friends in relationship, where we can actually support and lift each other up and know that maybe one time you'll get the solo, but maybe another time I will.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's a temporariness with being on top.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_03: There's also a temporariness about being on bottom.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_03: But it's just, you know, as far as like not getting picked.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I just feel like on so many levels, the accountability piece needs to come in as like, let's work together because as a community, we can move mountains.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that I think is the hard part is because when people go, oh, I don't want to be accountable, it might cost me money.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's where it gets to be a problem.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: And accountability from an organizational standpoint, it has to be married to transparency.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot have accountability without transparency.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that was, you know, when when we did this as a nonprofit, wow, we were extremely transparent.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you needed, you got to know how are, you know, what are our check-ins with our certified studios?
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: What, you know, you didn't, everyone didn't get certified.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: You had to go through, you couldn't just buy it off a website.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: You had to go through a stringent interview process.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you really ready to do what it takes to actually walk this out?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and so I think the standard and the integrity of what you're working on.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the reason why it was so important is because we had to teach people how to think in this way.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas before if you're just if you're gonna take something in a course, it's like, okay, I mean, you know, it's like you read something, you answer question, but well, you study for the test, not for the experience.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: You don't understand how to change your lens a little bit.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what the difference was when we first started doing it, is we were trying to teach people how to approach this and think of it differently.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: So then that way it would be like obvious, like opening.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and it that sounds hard.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like, to be honest, it's that sounds hard.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes people don't want to do hard things, think they can't do hard things, would rather just keep doing the same thing they've always been doing because why does it matter anyway?
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like that is, I mean, yeah, that's a tall order.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: And I absolutely agree can see how it would have been very challenging and you know, amazing job for the people who were able to do that and follow through and stay WiPad certified and stay the course of what you know the change is.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_04: But like I definitely I can see the challenge that y'all faced and that we all faced.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what was so interesting about it though is it when you actually do the hard work, the payoff is like it is just so big because you actually get to see things in a way that is separate from ego.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then you start, it amplifies and it it turns out, Leslie, it makes your relationships with yourself better, your body better, with other people better.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just like this amazing when you actually do and commit to the work, you can impact your community.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can do so much.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that just sounds like therapy.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like that sounds like exactly why you go to therapy.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_04: It is so I can recognize the leg and like shout out to Stephanie, my therapist, 10 years strong.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_04: Stephanie! When you when you can zoom out of the ego, and like we talk on the podcast about ego all the time, because that is what drives a lot of us, obviously, into to be performers.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_04: I want to be on stage, I want to be front and center, I want to be recognized.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_04: But then you have to zoom back to why do I even do this for the future of dance?
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_04: I want to give these children what I didn't have.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_04: I want to give them more than I've had.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's should be becoming about them.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_04: But it is hard to see that what you could have.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like if you're only encompassed in what you have right now and that's all you know, like to be able to step outside yourself and say, wow, but it could be better.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_04: We could be better.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's a f feels like a long way away if you're not there, you know?
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: But the suffering that you have though in the moment, though, the suffering that goes on in the moment about the I'm not enough, that is absolute suffering.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, people, I think that's what's so they're just used to their suffering.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_03: They think it's normal, and that's normalized.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, gosh.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_03: Totally normalized.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is the thing I never understood in the time where I was advocating even for competitions.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_03: This is the piece that I didn't understand is that judges don't really have the power to say, you know what?
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_03: I saw that you all are amazing dancers, but that piece made me feel so uncomfortable that I don't feel comfortable even judging this.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's no way you can do that, is there?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: I've said it.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_04: I've I've said that before.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's more often for something more triggering, like a school shooting dance that has happened to me before, where I have put the microphone away and I I I can't say anything because it's it's too much and I found find it inappropriate for the venue, for the kids, for me.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_04: In terms of like sexualization, once I realized it was the entire studio, the entire weekend, every single dance, I realized that is their entire culture.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't a one-off, it was everything.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_04: And they're here the whole weekend, and I'm gonna see them the whole weekend.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_04: So if I said it every single time, I I you know, and you don't know either.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like, are they just playing that tape immediately when they get home to the students without pre-screening the tape?
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_04: Because then I don't want to have the kids hear me say, basically shouting their teacher out and saying, Well, your teacher's, you know, not doing appropriate things with you, and that's your fault.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like I obviously I'm not saying that, but it it becomes a really sticky situation where I would like to say something, but a lot of times I don't feel empowered to do so because it is that's that's the that's the And that was 75 routines out of an entire weekend.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_04: That's a huge chunk of money for that comp.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_04: That was a big investment for the studio.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like there's so many, like you said, conflicts of interest.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_04: If if it were up to me, if nobody was making money or brought money here, I would tell you like it is.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_04: But I can't do that because it all in this industry works together and it's a business.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_04: So so all I can say is I would I would love to see a different song choice.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_04: I would love to hear an edited version of that song.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_04: I would love to see some foundational jazz technique in your jazz dance for your seven to nine-year-olds.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right now, all I'm seeing is stylized walking and hip shakes.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's that's all I can really say because if I say more, I will get fired and they will never come back to the competition.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: And and there it is.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_03: Do they lose points if they're not if they're just hip shaking versus a technical style?
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_05: Well, not really, because like oftentimes where the industry has gone is that no one wants us to comment on anything out of the dancer's control.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_05: That is where the industry has shifted.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_05: What?
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_05: Soutlandish, right?
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think everything's the total package.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_05: There's a collaborative effort to get these dancers onto stage.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_05: It's an educator, it's a choreographer, it's a studio, it's a parent, it's a dancer.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_05: We're all coming together, and here's the final product.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_05: All of that should receive criticism and feedback and go into the total outcome of how it is scored and placed and rewarded.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_05: But that has been taken away from us as an industry because of the business aspect of pleasing customers.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_05: Let's be real, a lot of studio owners, a lot of teachers, a lot of choreographers cannot handle constructive criticism.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_05: They don't want to hear it.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_05: They're the customer, they think everything they're presenting is appropriate and fine.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_05: And we should only be talking to the dancers because it's about them.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_04: And only judging what we're presented with.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_04: So I don't typically get the opportunity to say, I'd like to see a kickball change or a jazz square or a Lindy or because that's criticizing what you've choreographed.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_04: I am supposed to tell you what I think about what you just did.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_04: And if all you did was walk, two, three, four, shake my butt, seven, eight, okay, well, you walked on tempo.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_04: Great job.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_04: You had a great big smile on your face.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_04: Nice isolation.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_04: That's all I can say.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_04: I can't, you know, whereas me as an educator would like to say, well, seven to nine-year-olds in the advanced category should absolutely be doing A, B, C, and D, but that's not what's being presented.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I I I do as much as I can.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_04: I think we all do within reason to present things like that respectfully.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I would suggest, and it would be great if, and not bashing the fact that all you did was walk your children around and shake their butts.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_04: But it's really hard.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_05: Our jobs are I use my voice a lot on my critique.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_05: If anyone's ever listened to my critique, some people love them, some people don't love them because I'm very, I'm very real in my critiques.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_05: And um, I think a lot of people do appreciate that.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_05: And there have been instances in my time as a judge where I've had the opportunity to be the teacher critique, which is starting to be that change where we can talk about choreography, where we can talk about the song choice, the theme, the appropriateness, the all of that, all of the things that are in the dance, in the the teacher's hands, I got to talk about.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_05: And I loved that job because I really felt like I was helping change the industry whenever I'm presented with that.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_05: Because I'm not just saying point your feet, lengthen through your leg, open up your hip and your granjete.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_05: Like we're not, I'm not saying technical things that the teacher should already be teaching their dancers.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_05: You know, now we're now we're educating the other side, the people behind the dance, the educators who are helping training, is it safe practices and training?
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_05: Are we training, like, is it is it dangerous?
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_05: Are you doing knee slams?
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_05: Are you uh using too much hypermobility and exploring that?
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_05: Are is there too much much repetitiveness in the choreography?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_05: Like those things are damaging to dancers, and they should know that as well.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_05: Is this theme appropriate?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_05: Is this song appropriate for a nine-year-old?
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_05: Do they even understand what they're dancing about?
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_05: Like all of those aspects that we typically can't talk about because the majority of the competitions are afraid to upset their customers.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_05: And if they don't have customers, there's no competition, there's no judges, all the things.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, it is it does put us in a very sticky position.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_05: I oftentimes, you know, if I can score on choreography, if that's if that's a part of my score, I will take off a few.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_05: But we're we typically like we aren't able to like completely penalize them in the lowest award range.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_05: We oftentimes aren't able to completely disqualify, you know, unless it's like absolutely like, you know, really bad, then that will be a conversation.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_05: But oftentimes our hands are really tied at the judge's table and everyone will point fingers at the judges, judges, judges, judges.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_05: All morning on Monday.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_05: But it's really, you know, I do think that the studios need to do a better job at making sure what they're presenting is appropriate across the board for a family-friendly event.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_05: And then also the competitions need to do a little bit of a better job of really letting us do our job to protect the kids a bit more and not reward things that are inappropriate.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and that's that's the hard part is that, like Courtney, you were talking about being the teacher critique judge at a competition.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_04: Information that I've heard around the block is those critiques don't even get listened to.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_04: They don't, nobody opens that critique.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_04: Nobody's places are stopping doing it because it's like, why am I employing somebody to to run their mouth all day long if nobody is going to listen to the end result?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_04: Therefore, you you just you tried to do your job, you tried to be the change.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_04: And then nobody listened to the change.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_05: And the ones that need to listen don't.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, even if everyone's not, but like especially the ones that need to listen, they don't.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_05: And they don't show up to the discussions on site at conventions where we're talking about these things.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_05: They're the ones that are a part of the problem because they're not willing to educate or change or even hear another opinion about it.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's too bad there's not a psychological like appropriateness category in your competitions.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We we uh dealt with this front hand when we tried to do the competition certifications.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh god and the rap and the wraparound.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when we made, and Courtney, you know about when we created the rubrics for sexual for music, costume, theme, like we created an adjunct at the uh in the nonprofit Wi-Pad.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: We created the Wi-Pad Adjudicator course, and it was supposed to be a wraparound.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we spent months creating that with data that supported why these would be the things that you it's not like we're pulling it out of the air.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is this type of thing with music, we'll get a deduction, these types of things, and we did so much work on that, but part of that also has to be a competition that then is transparent.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is it is not right, kind, or an integrity to not put that out on the front end so that when people are preparing for their competition pieces, they know what the deductions are going to be.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then because that makes that's not fair, right?
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's not that's not an asperative fairness.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone then comes and drops a song that is, you know, sexualized or a costume, or they put a seven-year-old in point shoes and they get a deduction, they were given informed consent.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were advocating and when we did certify competitions that you they needed to sign off on this.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Tina even helped us create as a psychologist a script that of what the if the adjudicator, like what we would say in order to be able to deliver it through a trauma-informed approach to also make sure that the teacher was the at that point was the only one.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we even had a secondary script if the person wanted to meet with the uh the manager on site to be able to explain to the kids that look, I as a choreographer or a studio owner actually um, you know, I I apologize that I did something that was against the competition rules.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is not your fault as dancers.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: You have not, you did, you did nothing wrong.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings me to that the question of when people, this whole debate, if someone did put a seven-year-old on on point, isn't that within the purview, and it was harming the child, isn't that within the purview of the adjudicator to say that's not a good choice?
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna harm the child.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_04: I absolutely would say that and have that before.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_00: But yet we have piles of data that shows sexualization is abuse and harms children.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we can't say with with research, peer-reviewed research, that this isn't this is not the best choice for this child, this part of their development.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we also are not equipping our adjudicators because the competitions are not amplifying what you said.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Family-friendly event.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean?
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have to give language to what that means because that can be interpreted as all sorts of you know different things.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the clarification, the accountability, the transparency, I believe there could be a wraparound, like where it's like a comp, you know, and I've seen it happen.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I did see, I did see some competitions actually do this really, really, really well.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: But they were the ones that were willing, you know, if you're gonna brand on healthy child safety and dance, you've got to then realize you will take a financial hit for those that don't care about that.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: In that interim, you will then draw the people in and you just gotta give it that learning curve.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was like me in that period of time in LA where I lost everything.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly I what I had so many invitations.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I had, I was like saying no, because I became the choreographer that was not what that was appropriate.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean to say this in an egotistical way at all, but I had this period of loss and then massive harvest.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like if we can sustain that for the good of ourselves and our and these kids and the future of dance integrity, like we now, now we're gonna get somewhere.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just it breaks my heart to hear what you're saying because it's it's so true about, you know, just like the the limit, it's it's become so much more stringent than even what it was a couple of years ago.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_04: And all we can do is like reward that's why I that's why I'm still doing this, to be honest.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like it has gotten to me over the years of like, what am I even making a difference anymore?
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_04: Because I do I do try to say the things, I do try to award what is appropriate and what I like.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_04: And the only way I feel like I do make a difference is when I'm able to give a special award up on the stage in front of everyone, and everyone in the moment can hear my voice.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_04: And when I reward amazing jazz basics, beautiful foundations, age of like I will give a special award for appropriateness because I need people to hear that me as a judge, that is what I respect and that is what I am going to reward.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_04: Even if nobody listens to a critique tape, I'm saying it out loud in the room, and nobody can stop me from doing that.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It may be the starfish, but you're out there and you're doing it.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is phenomenal.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Both of you are making major impact.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Both don't even second guess it.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_05: I would love to hear your response to that age-old question of don't penalize a kid for a teacher's mistake, because that is where it gets sticky in the competition world right now.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, I think that if we can reframe that coming to competition is about is about growth and not just awards.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_00: If we can, and if we can say that this is also an environment for us to appropriately consider safety, right?
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean a safety, it would then be appropriate that we are not punishing a child if if a child is being taught to do multiple knee drops.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't we say this the way that you are teaching this child is dangerous?
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to harm their needs.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: If a child is being put in, you know, on point at seven years old, and uh we know the growth plates of the feet and all the things that have to become stabilized and the strength, it is going to harm the child.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: We are not punishing the child.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are actually advocating for the adults that are in charge of the child to engage in better, safer choices artistically for this child.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: That that is that's what we're we're actually advocating for this child.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're not punishing the child.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if there I would even be okay if there was a way where where the child doesn't maybe get punished from a point standpoint, but there was something that was more for the studio that got like a flag or something that said, I do believe based on my education and my experience, you know, or the way that lift, it was the partner work, the way that lift was taught is extremely dangerous.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_00: That child, that that dancer could fall.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we around physical safety okay to take points off?
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why are also why are we okay to take points off on technique?
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_00: If someone does a very pokey wonky pirouette or foie and you can tell the the cur the uh technique was not taught correctly, don't you deduct points?
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, is it well then why is that not punishing the child?
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: There is a very good like, why is that not punishing the child?
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_00: You deduct because a child has a technique that is that is not by the teacher that was taught by a teacher.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who made that choice, the teacher?
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why is that not?
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it's because this topic is stigmatized and it makes people uncomfortable.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and and it and because people don't want to have that moment of education because it's uh it's based off something that makes people feel very uncomfortable.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where we need to get more comfortable is advocating this is not punitive.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're advocating for the the word holistic is so overused, right?
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: But we're advocating truly for the holistic wellness of this dancer, mind, body, emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual wellness of this child is what we're advocating.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: They are a whole person.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I am gonna use this as an opportunity to advocate for that child, even if it means they don't get the top award because I I need to educate the adult that is making these choices.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can do it physically, then you better bet I'm gonna do it emotionally and and and uh and psychologically.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I think that I have over the years kind of come back and said you're missing, you're you're literally cutting off the entire conversation and you're making it reductive.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're reducing the conversation to say that we're being punitive.
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_00: What we're actually doing the exact opposite.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you wouldn't say it in these millions of other ways where we're still deducting for the child.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So again, if we're gonna use this mentality, then it needs to be put across the board.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_05: And to be completely honest, with this whole method, which I agree with, and I think that there should be some type of deduction penalty box that is strictly for the teacher, the choreographer, the studio.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_05: We score the dancer for the dancer out of a hundred.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_05: And then there's a little box on the side, and we check, check, check, check, check other issues that might have popped up based on what was presented and choices by this the teacher.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_05: I think that makes sense.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_05: It shows and it holds people accountable.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_05: It holds the dancer accountable for what their delivery was and it holds the choreographer accountable.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_05: Now, the other thing to think about with that is that because we there's so much that we see on stage these days, everyone will be getting deductions, everyone.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I just don't want you know, like everyone will be getting deductions.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_05: That's not what we want, but that's where we're at right now.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_00: If something like this, yeah, like exactly how you can't, you know, and Tina, Tina knows that this is like a term in psychology.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have to feel it to heal it.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_00: If no one feels that like that like accountability, that moment to feel like, wow, I got a deduction because I used fill in the blank song and I forgot and I used the X, you know, whatever it is.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: If no one feels that, then of course they're just gonna keep being on autopilot and be like, look at all my awards.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Tina, I don't know.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know if you think, I mean, I we spent so much time.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_00: We we even we spent so much time also on tone and compassion and like not delivering this with a no shame, no blame tone.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not a gotcha moment.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a put you down, you're disgusting.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like the we we have a list of words that actually do not use these words.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: These are very shaming.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: They are blaming, they are put down.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna put the teacher and the studio owner on a defense.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_04: They're not gonna receive your information, they're not gonna receive the feedback.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_03: You all don't know how much work Leslie has put in into like I Leslie, I have to give you a shout out because all of the years, all of the years where your brain has been like, how can we do things better?
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_03: How can we protect the kids?
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_03: What can we do?
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_03: All the backlash, and I mean, I was there with you, but y'all don't understand how much like if people would just allow some of the suggestions that we have made early on, the industry would change and it wouldn't be punitive.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so, Leslie, I I know this has been like your passion project for so much.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I just I really want to give you a shout out because I have seen all the work that you have done.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_03: I have been so proud to be able to do it with you.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, we did it very thoughtfully and supporting and not punitive, all these things, especially in the competition world, because we've all been there.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I think really, Courtney, to say where you're like they'd all get deductions.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, they're all gonna get deductions.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're in a red room.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_03: We have to tell everybody.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we're at a competition.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what this is for?
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're right, right.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_04: Don't you want the deductions?
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like here, here it is.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_03: This is it.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_03: This is where we're all gonna come in together and we're gonna start working as a community.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_03: And here's where the reality is is where you're at.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_03: You all, every one of us has a starting point.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_03: This is your starting point.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yours, yours, yours, yours.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I just wanted to offer the reframe on that, Courtney.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_03: Is yes, of course, everyone's gonna have a deduction.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a competition.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to start somewhere.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have to start, and it all comes back to the to what I said about conflicts of interest with profit and ego and reputation competing with child safety.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_00: They literally can live together and thrive.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you they can.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you they can.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you have the right leadership involved, it can completely thrive.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know it to the to my bones.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, even psychologically speaking, change is constant, right?
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_03: Change is just a part of life.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_03: So why not put some consciousness into how we're gonna change?
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because otherwise, what's gonna happen is we're just gonna keep doing what we're doing.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it's gonna change within that construct, and it's gonna change where you don't have a lot of conscious um effort put in.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_03: So it's unconsciously changing, which is I think why we've seen even more in certain ages where it's just been egregious.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, when people have shown me videos and they're like, What do you think, Dr.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_03: T?
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Oh, I have to go wash out my eyeballs.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I can't not unsee what I just saw.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like kids are like six or seven.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I almost just want to be like, come free therapy, come on.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna need it.
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_00: But Courtney, I do want, and by the way, Tina, thank you.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_00: You were making me tear up there.
• 1:25:09
  unknown: Thank you.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_03: You've done amazing work, Leslie.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Seriously.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, thank you.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you, Tina.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I do want to also say to you, Courtney, like I thought it was so cool that you added background checks in 2022.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was so amazing.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, that is, I mean, I'm I'm if anybody's followed my work for any period of time, they know that that is like something that I can't even understand, is not just, you know, like 101 of engaging with children.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make sure that you don't have a history of child predator behavior.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I just think that is so cool because I know as an as someone who ran an organization who took that cost on, you know, which we did, and I know that you provide it.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think that that like, and I know that you weren't just doing it because it's a good branding sell.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know you really believe in it, and I think that's really cool that you did that.
• 1:25:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_05: So we we're trying to make the progress in the direction.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_03: You are making, I think you are making the progress.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's really the true reframe is you're making the progress, and it really is one gram of sand at a time.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you're taking a beat.
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_03: It is, and you're having to go one.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_03: And at first you're like, oh my God, there's nothing happening.
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_03: But if you keep doing it and keep doing it, eventually you're gonna see a little pile.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then that makes it like, oh, it's working.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did a whole seminar once just with some male judges who were trying to help.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to help them with language because they they were like, if I say this makes me feel uncomfortable, I get I have had people accuse me of being perverted.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Saying that like it's like me, like I'm sexualizing the children.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we did a whole thing, and Tomy Ann is the one that really helped me with this.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up leading it because Tomy Ann is just like so, so, so busy and I had the time.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what we came up with is to not make it about their gender.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do because they're a man.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they are an advocate of young of youth dancers and the education that they have received around sexualization and objectification of children makes them very uncomfortable.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_00: So to completely not make it about them being a man.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like don't say that into the right because all that that gets misinterpreted.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_00: But just use the education and and don't say it as anything to do with your gender because I feel the same way and I'm a woman and I want to turn away.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with my gender that I want to, that that I'm having a hard time, you know, receiving this and then having to judge it.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_00: It really is because of my heart and the education I've received.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that that once you start to say that, you because there was a level of fear with these men that I worked with about that.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, this whole idea, a lot of things you get is like, well, it's you, you're the one with the problem.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're sexualizing something that's not sexual.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you we hear that a lot too.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_05: We hear that all the time.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not what the data says.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not what people who have anecdotally lived through that and then had to face the consequences after say that.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's so it doesn't pan out anecdotally or in peer-reviewed research.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's a great uh smoke screen and a good blame shift.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't, you know, it's it's just really like I said, the spiral of silence.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like really hard to speak out.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So people have really flimsy comebacks that shut people down because of the fear, you know.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're an industry that wants to be included.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at a certain point, you two are at a you two to a level are okay with not being completely likable and more, and you're more okay with being on the right side of history.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this takes.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You you have to like being on the right side of history for kids and for your art form than you do have to like just being liked by whoever.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_05: So good on you.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_05: The moral ethics of it and like just being a morally appropriate educator, choreographer, dance professional.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_05: Being involved in this world, as we know, it has to do with children.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of times we were the children that were brought up in these studios.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that we have to have a little bit more respect and thought and care when it comes to a lot of the decisions that we make when we're guiding these young dancers into their life.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_05: And all of these life lessons that we always talk about that dance teaches them outside of just what we're giving them.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_05: You know, there's more to it than than just that.
• 1:29:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I think just a little more care and thought needs to go into it instead of trying to like keep up with the Joneses and be a part of the trend and what's winning and what's cool on social media and what's getting likes, you know.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_05: That has taken over what we're doing as educators for a lot of people, and we see it firsthand and we, you know, and and there's so many layers to this that we've discussed when it comes to convention comp, studio, everything.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I believe, and I know this, there is a billion-dollar industry to be built on safe dance for kids.
• 1:29:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know that.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know it because I've I've seen it.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that, you know, we is when this industry can have organizations that don't have funding that is compromised, that don't have leaders that have conflicts of interest, that are not trying to keep their brand and whatever they're dealing with, their other parts of their like one of the things I think that worked for us and that worked for us is like I what I had already taken by the time I met Tina, I already realized I'm willing to lose everything I built here in Hollywood.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's how I was willing to give it all up.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like there, there needs to be a disposition, like I said, of what is what is keeping kids safe in dance worth?
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_00: That really like I really had to find out how much I loved dance.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I really had to find out how much I believed in good, healthy dance for kids.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the accountability piece is a journey.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a journey.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it can be is so like edifying.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's an edifying, it's an edifying journey, but it also has to be equitable.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Organizations cannot treat one organization differently than they treat another because there's a cross-marketing agreement going on, or you get money, or like they're that right there deteriorates the integrity of the cause.
• 1:31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you're also saying is the kids, the risk I'm willing to take about the kids in those areas because of whatever conflict of interest I have going on, I'm willing to take the risk for those kids because I have to keep my network, I have to keep my whatever it is.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the kids in this thing that I don't really know, they don't give me anything, then I'll protect them.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be full, we have to, as an industry, come to a place where we say, and that's why like the leaders involved have to have to be well vetted for the conflict of interest.
• 1:31:53
  SPEAKER_00: The money has to be well vetted for the conflict of interest because nothing should be able to deter that body from safeguarding children.
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is how important this is.
• 1:32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the sexualization piece of it is, you know, is obviously, as we've already talked about, a very activating piece, but it does require some accountability and it does require some advocacy and it requires education.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And not every, I used to always say education leads to self-regulation.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 1:32:21
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of people it does.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But they're also the accountability piece is what gets people to actually shift the ecosystem to be like, I am now protecting kids.
• 1:32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I am running a thriving studio and I don't, and I, and it's there's no more suffering, Leslie.
• 1:32:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like that learning curve.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like now I'm like, now this is my me safeguarding kids became my brand.
• 1:32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And people, and it also became me cellularly.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Courtney, when I watch you, I know that.
• 1:32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just know it.
• 1:32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know from who you are.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Leslie, I just met you, but I I know it obviously because you've been with Courtney for so long.
• 1:32:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there is so many, there's a lot of reward circuitry going on, right?
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in those of us that are in this work, and it's, I would just invite anyone out there that's feeling hesitant or that doesn't know how to do it, or maybe you're working at a studio and you're afraid to say something, or you're working at a competition, or whatever happened, you know, there's fear, or you're battling this yourself.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are realizing like I've been steeped in self-sexualization and I like I would like to try to go back to a different way of engaging in my art form.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to invite you to like open that door and start small because there is a whole other world, and it's a beautiful one, and it's a powerful one.
• 1:33:39
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode all about the over-sexualization of kids in dance.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_05: Huge shout out to Leslie and Dr.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_05: T for joining us on this fantastic discussion.
• 1:33:49
  SPEAKER_05: And thank you so much for all the work that you do in advocacy in our dance world.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_05: Don't forget to follow them on Instagram.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_05: You can find Dr.
• 1:33:57
  SPEAKER_05: T at dancin.doctor.t and Leslie at Leslie ScottSet.
• 1:34:03
  SPEAKER_05: Also, to learn more about other organizations and resources in our dance industry who are helping be the change for the protection of young artists, check out the links in our show notes.
• 1:34:14
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• 1:34:21
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• 1:34:27
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• 1:34:35
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• 1:34:41
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• 1:34:46
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• 1:34:50
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• 1:34:56
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• 1:35:06
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• 1:35:13
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• 1:35:36
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• 1:35:41
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• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_04: Stay tuned for more great episodes in season six of Making the Impact, including reels and footage, artistry and acro, and in house versus big conventions.
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for tuning in.