Latest / Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast / Age Appropriateness at Competition

Transcript

Age Appropriateness at Competition · Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast

0:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, and I'm here with my co-host, Leslie Miller, Hi Dance Lovers.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: We are super, super, super excited for this episode.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness, it's been a long time coming.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: And I cannot wait to talk all about age appropriateness in the competitive dance world.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Probably the hottest topic alongside tights versus no tights and maybe levels.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Like they might be Yeah, they live in the same world.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: And popularity.
1:27
unknown: Yeah.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's we talk about it a lot.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: We've talked about it many times on the podcast before age appropriateness.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: So now we're finally here and we have two fabulous guests that I'm going to introduce you to very shortly.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to dive into this topic.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: So pumped.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: And we also launched some merch and swag for IDA.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to check it out, head to our website now at impactdance adjudicators.com slash IDA merch.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: And you can grab yourself some making the impact gear.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: We have some really adorable crew necks.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: So you can support our podcast and and walk around, you know, loving, I love it.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: It's cute stuff.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And also, we have these really cute little enamel pins that that we just got in that I love so much.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: And you can just slap them on your dance bag and your jackets.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: And they'd be great little stocking stuffers if you're a fan of the podcast.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: So grab them.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the pins are my favorite.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And hurry up with that because it is December 17th.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: We can send it out real quick before Christmas, but order now.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you gotta order them.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: So head to our website, check it out.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Super cute stuff.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: And that's we're really excited about that.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure you've heard us all talk about our sponsors every episode, and that is because we are so grateful for them to help make this podcast happen.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: The first one I'd like to talk about is Level Up Dance Supplies.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: They have everything you need to gear up for the 2021 competition season.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: They offer the largest selection of top name brand dance gear at the lowest prices guaranteed.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: If you're in need of a rolling rack travel bag, a garment bag, or even a changing tent, head on over to levelupdanceupplies.com now to order all of your essentials and use our exclusive podcast promo code Bravo5678 at checkout and receive$10 off of your order.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we love you, level up.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: And another one of our season sponsors is Dance Costumes by Erzua.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: If you are still on the hunt for the perfect costume this season, be sure to check them out.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: They will work with you to create and design a beautiful custom costume so you can stand out on stage.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: They even offer a variety of sizes and can completely customize your costume with beads, appliques, and rhinestones.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: You can use our exclusive promo code IDA15 at checkout to receive 15% off all dancewear and custom costumes.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: So head on over to dancecostumesfirezoa.com to view all of their designs.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: All right, y'all, it's time to meet our guests.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: We're very, very excited, and we have a special guest here tonight as well.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: But the first guest that I would like to introduce you to is one that you may remember from last season, season one, episode eight, Boys in Dance.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to rewelcome back the always wonderful and fabulous Mr.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: Rob Gibbs to the house.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Hey! Hey Rob.
4:06
SPEAKER_04: Hi everybody.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us again, Rob.
4:10
SPEAKER_04: Of course.
4:11
SPEAKER_04: My pleasure.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Yay! Well, you know, there's a few new listeners to the podcast, I'm sure, since last season, and you were at the very start of the season.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: So if you wouldn't mind reminding everyone a little bit about who you are, where you're based, what you're up to, and any career credits you want to share.
4:28
SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
4:28
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
4:29
SPEAKER_04: Hi, everybody.
4:30
SPEAKER_04: My name's Rob Gibbs.
4:31
SPEAKER_04: I live here in New York City.
4:34
SPEAKER_04: I am a performer, dancer, musical theater.
4:37
SPEAKER_04: I went to school here in the city at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and have been working ever since I graduated in 2009 regionally and off-Broadway and internationally in shows and dancing.
4:51
SPEAKER_04: And I've been judging for a very long time.
4:54
SPEAKER_04: I don't even know how long that is.
4:56
SPEAKER_04: Uh I grew up as a competition kid in the South, originally from Arkansas, and then danced in Memphis, Tennessee.
5:03
SPEAKER_04: And now I'm here just doing the thing.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And Rob's been a part of IDA since the creation of it.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: I actually like he practically helped me create IDA in his apartment in brainstorming sessions way back in the day, so many years ago now.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: So always so grateful to have you support IDA and be on our podcast again.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for joining.
5:27
SPEAKER_04: Yes, it's my pleasure.
5:28
SPEAKER_04: I love being here and I love supporting IDA since the beginning.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: OG.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: All right.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: And our next guest is a very special guest.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: We're very excited to introduce her.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: She is the founder of the Youth Protection Advocates of Indance.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: And you may also know it as Wi-Pad.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: We'd love to welcome Leslie Scott to our podcast.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: Welcome.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: Great to be here with you.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: So excited to have you.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: And very, very important to have a voice from WiPad in this discussion because you guys are doing such great things in the industry regarding age appropriateness.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: So we're very, very excited for you to be here.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: And you can feel free to chat a little bit about WiPad as well.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: But in if you'd like to share a little bit about who you are, where you're based, any career credits you want to share, and maybe even share a bit about how WiPad came about.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody out there.
6:27
SPEAKER_02: So great to be with you.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, my name is Leslie Scott.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Leslie Scott, Zianovich, after I got married.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Courtney, Leslie, and Rob.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm so grateful to be here.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: You know, first of all, I want to thank Misty Lounge.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: You know, Misty Lounge is the owner of more than just great dancing.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: And when I was the executive director of WiPad for seven years, and I used to run it as a nonprofit, she was our first visionary sponsor.
6:50
SPEAKER_02: She was one of our advisory panel members.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: And in 2019, she actually took over all of the intellectual property because the mission got way too big for what we were able to handle.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: So Misty has a lot of resources.
7:03
SPEAKER_02: If anybody knows her, she's incredibly intelligent, really generous.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: So I'm just wanted to say thank you to Misty Lowne because I now get to sit on the advisory panel member and still build curricula with her and do amazing things like sit here with you guys.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I've been teaching for 31 years and I spent about 20 of those years in Hollywood.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: I was on faculty at the Edge Performing Arts for 14 years.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: I was on faculty at Millennium Dance Complex in Hollywood for about 12 years.
7:29
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, during that time I was able to also see a lot of things change in the industry, you know, social media, YouTube, the increase of dance-related programming.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm old enough to remember before that.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I remember the day that Nigel Lisco came into my class to scout for season one of So You Speaking Dance.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: And I remember before we had YouTube.
7:49
SPEAKER_02: You know, I remember when you used to audition and the first question wasn't how many followers do you have?
7:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's, you know, so to kind of be in the, you know, and I taught on conventions for uh competition adjudication for about 17 years.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: I've taught dance in twenty two countries, and I have, I mean, I performed for an array of uh celebrity artists, Beyoncé, pup daddy, just uh, you know, an an array as we as we do, you know, working as a a you know, a backup dancer, videos, music, videos, film, etc.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: And then also as a choreographer.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: And I actually used to be on the other side of this issue.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: So when you ask, you know, how did WiPad come to be?
8:28
SPEAKER_02: How was it birthed?
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, it would not be here if it wasn't for my years of self-sexualizing and self-objectifying in Hollywood and my experience of what I was like as an artist entering into the landscape of Hollywood, you know, coming in.
8:41
SPEAKER_02: I did not, unlike Rob from Arkansas, with growing up as a competition kid, I grew up as a street dancer.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: So I grew up popping, rocking, de-girling.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: I was not a studio kid.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: I did start teaching at 17 through a really like weird chain of events, you know.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I showed up in Hollywood in my baggies, my jersey, my ball cap, my dunks.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: And very quickly within a year, because of the messages coming from media, from my mentors, from my agent, I, you know, was told I needed to lose weight, I needed to be more sexual, my music needed to be more sexual, my movement needed to be more sexual, and this was a recipe for success.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: And it was, it was a recipe for success.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: If we wanted to look at success only as what it looks like as a resume, external success.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: But after about eight years of really deeply engaging kind of this in this ethos of aesthetics and self-sexualization and self-objectification in Hollywood, I realized that not only was I having an internal meltdown, a lot of my colleagues were having internal meltdowns.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: We were dealing with anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse, a lot of hypervigilance and obsession over what we look like, um, poor boundary choices, not being able to advocate for ourselves on jobs.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: We did not feel that we had body agency.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: And through that, it was very clear to me that what was happening to us as adults in the dance industry was very quickly trickling down to children.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, at, you know, I think that we can all remember here the days when a 14-year-old was not a masterclass teacher, right?
10:04
SPEAKER_02: Or the days where an 11-year-old was not it was not an adjudicator.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: You know, or, you know, this again, you know, and it but over the years, this has become more normalized, where, you know, we are competing for a lot, a lot of times, not just, you know, uh educational jobs, but flat out professional jobs with teenagers, with adolescents, with very young children.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, with that comes the idea that these children are being exposed to a lot of behaviors and a lot of lack of regulations, a lack of training on in how to advocate and protect for children.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I had a very big epiphany and decided that, you know, where was I gonna go with my talents from here?
10:40
SPEAKER_02: And that's when I decided to create youth protection advocates in dance.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: That was in 2012.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: One of the biggest reasons I created WiPad was because when I started to speak out on these issues in Hollywood, I tried to talk to the studio owners, I tried to talk to my colleagues, I tried to talk to my agents because it wasn't just, you know, the inappropriate um interactions that we were dealing with children, it was also a lot of pervasive sexual harassment, sexual misconduct.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: I was very much ostracized.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: People did not want to hear it.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: These were, you know, topics that our community, unlike now, because now they're trending topics.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: And if you are not willing to come to the table, people are going to notice you're not at the table.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: That, you know, if we want to look when I first started talking about this, you know, 10, 11 years ago, it was very much an avoided topic.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: People felt that it was going to impact, you know, the financial stability of the dance industry because we make a lot of money off of children.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: And people really did not want to engage on this topic.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: So when I created WiPad, I called upon psychologists and doctors that worked in these fields that could kind of through, you know, through education, you know, uh evidence-based research, co-sign what I had experienced anecdotally and what I felt viscerally seeing happen to me, my colleagues, the children that I taught.
11:53
SPEAKER_02: And then that developed into the Wi-Pad certification.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: We launched that in 2017.
11:58
SPEAKER_02: And that is, you know, the world's first of its kind certification for dance educators that focuses on physical, emotional, and sexual wellness of children.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't need to probably tell the listeners here that we are one of the only youth-centered activities in our nation and in many nations that has no governing body.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: You know, so anybody can teach dance, anybody can own a dance, you know, you know, a dance convention, a dance competition.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: And that's disturbing.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: You know, when you need more training and credentials to groom a dog than you need to teach children, we need there's something wrong with that.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, WiPad was developed through also the ethos of no she, no blame.
12:34
SPEAKER_02: Because I used to be on the other side of this topic, I very much understand the mindset of being so into climbing up the wall of success and not even having how I was impacting children on my radar.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: I it didn't even, I it wasn't even on my radar.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: I was too cons so consumed with what was gonna get me seen and noticed.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: I didn't even consider, you know, the fact that I could be exploiting and commodifying children through the process.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, so I don't feel that education and shame can live in the same wheelhouse.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: I just don't feel that, you know, I think there is a lot of different forms of adequacy and being a watchdog and shaming and blaming is certainly one.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: It's just not the way that WiPad has gone because we really do believe education can lead to self-regulation.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: And that's, you know, that's our goal with the certification and all of the work that we've done.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: What a what a story.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so, so glad that you have created this.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: And we support WiPad so much at IDA.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: And I we actually are are passing the opportunity for all of our judges to obtain certification for Wi-Pad, which is really exciting.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: I want to thank you guys for what you're doing also, because I I do think that IDA, like Wi-Pad, is an example where people in the industry can just step up.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: We are smart, we are the most creative group of people on the planet.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: We are, we are educated in, you know, my degrees in sociology and history, we're able to build curricula, you know, that can service these areas that are really, that are really, you know, don't have a lot of thought put into them, don't have a lot of training into them.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: So I I completely reciprocate that to IDA for what you guys are doing and for what Rob helped you create as well.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: That's I'm I'm so interested to hear more um in a little while about your beginnings of trying to start this and understanding that, okay, you were on one side of the page and then you kind of did a 180.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Um who who was with you on that?
14:21
SPEAKER_00: But I would love to touch on that in just a minute.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: But my first question, because I would love to dive into like the competitive aspect of age appropriateness, by asking Rob, because you've been judging for a while and more recently, I think, how frequently do you think you witnessed not age appropriate dances at competition?
14:39
SPEAKER_04: Every every competition, yeah.
14:41
SPEAKER_04: I think I think at every competition, you I don't know that I could pinpoint and say every event that I've been to over the last God, I don't even know how many years we've been there.
14:53
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, definitely.
14:54
SPEAKER_04: That, you know, I don't think as well that I've walked away from a competition and been like, oh wow, you know, everybody was age appropriate that entire time.
15:02
SPEAKER_04: There's always something, there's always a song choice or an unedited song or a not clean version of a song or costuming that has happened that, especially being on the receiving end of these performances, that I that if there's an opportunity for one of the judges or an audience member to tilt their head out of maybe a little bit of confusion, I think you are you already have your answer if you're questioning the appropriateness of something.
15:32
SPEAKER_04: And sometimes it doesn't even have to be about age, it could just be about taste level.
15:37
SPEAKER_04: It could be about subject topics that that shouldn't that we're not ready to touch on, or that that age, again, isn't ready to touch on.
15:47
SPEAKER_04: But yeah, I think I would have to say more than likely it would have to be every competition.
15:51
SPEAKER_04: There's some there's always something.
15:53
SPEAKER_04: There's a tweet that you would wish that went a little differently of something.
15:58
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: And Leslie, you had mentioned something in your in your intro about why you think that is, and that is climbing, climbing the ladder of success by exploiting children.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that has something to do?
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that applies to competitive dance as well?
16:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing for us to remember is that the exploitation, commodification of children did not begin in the dance industry.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: This is a cultural problem that is happening in every industry.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: It is happening across our global landscape.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: This isn't just something unique to America.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: And what happens is it trickles in, it permeates, it breaks through.
16:33
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, we don't have to look any further than pop culture, right?
16:36
SPEAKER_02: To look, I mean, just look in the last five years, the types of songs, the type, um, the types of media behavior that has quantified likes the equal currency of value.
16:46
SPEAKER_02: You know, we these these trends are going on the same track.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: So the more that we see hypersexualization, objectification, and objectification comes in many forms.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: It's not just sexual, right?
16:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like when we talk about appropriateness on stage, what's the concept?
17:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, you know, also like how about the overuse of hypermobility?
17:04
SPEAKER_02: How about having children on point when it's too early?
17:06
SPEAKER_02: How about, you know, just putting tricks on people's bodies where we are where we are mistaking, you know, the elasticity of children as, you know, being flexible when in reality we could cause grave harm to them and their development.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: You know, so I think that, you know, when we when we talk about this word appropriate, people think that of course there's elements where it is cultural.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: It could be where you are, you in Florida or you in Arizona, you know, like the type versus no type.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Like there is some elevate, you know, element of that, but in general, you actually can quantify appropriateness.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there is research out there that actually can say if something hits this, this, and this marker in terms of sexualization, this is sexualized content.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it's it's so it's happening in the greater culture.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: And for us, you know, for Rob, for Leslie, for you, Courtney, you know, this the reason we're here is because our impact is in the dance industry, right?
17:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we if I mean, if we were trying to attack this on a global level, and it would be just the robustness of it all could feel overwhelming.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: But this is our industry.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: And so we have an ability to say, not on our watch.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: So do we want to be an industry that tackles this and says, not on our watch, not you know, not on our time, or do we want to be an industry that believes this myth that in order to be successful, we have to exploit children?
18:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's not true, but you would be shocked at how many studios think that's true.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: Right.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: Like we see it every weekend.
18:29
SPEAKER_02: Like they they think that honestly, the only way to be lucrative, the only way to be popular, and the only way to make money is to commodify and exploit children.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: And and that that I think that's a myth because we have thousands of examples.
18:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, Rob is an example, right?
18:44
SPEAKER_02: I mean, listen to his resume.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Rob is a successful educator and an adjudicator.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: Is he out there exploiting children?
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Look at IDA.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, look at WiPad and the hundreds of certified studios and the thousands of certified WiPad educators.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: Are we not living our dreams?
18:57
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we are.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: And we're also going to sleep at night feeling really good about the impact we're having on the emotional, physical, and sexual wellness of children.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day, when we make our money off of children, we have a responsibility to protect and advocate children.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: That literally is it.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: Me as a teacher, I pay my rent off of kids.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: I I pay, you know, so it's like if I am going to make a living off of children, I have a responsibility and that, you know, as Misty Lowell says, a respond ability.
19:26
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I have an I have that obligation to understand psychologically what's happening to them in correlation to what I am doing and engaging with them.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, this idea of censorship comes up a lot when we talk about this topic.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: And and I would just, I would just say this has absolutely nothing to do with censorship.
19:45
SPEAKER_02: I certainly am a proponent of artistic freedom.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you all are too.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: But would we teach sixth graders for a reading book club, Fifty Shades of Ray?
19:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, for my daughter's kindergarten class and her art class, would I bring in a nude model for her kindergarten class?
20:00
SPEAKER_02: No, because this from a brain development standpoint, it doesn't make sense.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: So it's not about censorship, it's about the fact that you use different methods, you use different methodology when you use when you teach children versus when you teach adults.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: That is across the board in all educational platforms.
20:15
SPEAKER_02: So it's, you know, a lot of people feel very, you know, oh, you're gonna censor me.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: No, that's what what we're asking you to do is to not take your adult-driven artistic visions and then superimpose it on children that first of all don't understand the content, you know, and secondly, might get exposed to content that they don't have adults in their life to help them process what they just, you know, what what they just were essentially used for.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: You know, using their, you know, we we're deploying these children's bodies and their talents for concepts that are really harmful to their emotional development.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: And we think we have a right to do that because of our artistic freedom.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: And I would challenge that.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: I would I would really challenge that thought process.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: I agree with you because I feel like and I and in a way, I I feel like this discussion can lead into this this topic as far as just types of appropriateness.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: And we and I feel like we all briefly mentioned it as far as like subject matters in in competition routines.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Like you just said, Leslie, it's like pe the choreographers are taking advantage of, well, these are this is who I'm working with.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: I have these students, and I'm going to do a dance about suicide or something or rugs or something that is just maybe a little bit too sensitive or a little bit inappropriate for a family-friendly event.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And and and those types of things, like we usually think of age appropriateness or things being inappropriate on stage as dancers twerking and booty shaking and wearing skimpy costumes, and like that's what our brain usually associates.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: But there's also the other side of what type of subject matters studios are presenting onto stage, and is that okay for that?
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, in yeah, in WiPad, we have a whole module on concepts.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: Well, we have a module on music.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: On costumes, on movement, and on concepts.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: And Dr.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: Christina Donaldson, who is a PhD psychologist who primarily works with adolescents, but she, you know, has worked with, you know, children across the spectrum.
22:10
SPEAKER_02: You know, and she developed that module.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: And you're, you know, you're exactly right.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: It's like how not every child is their own ecosystem.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: So if you want to do a piece on suicide, you don't have any idea that you might be completely activating and triggering that child.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that child is dealing with suicidal ideation.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they lost somebody to suicide.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, so we, you know, we don't, we don't, the thing is, is we don't know.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: So I think that there's a way to engage with these, you know, a lot of them are amazing social justice, you know, commentary.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: And I think that dance is a great vehicle for that.
22:41
SPEAKER_02: But as far as the appropriateness of that, I know I'm also, I don't know who else here on this call as a parent, but I mean, as a parent, I want my parental rights to be intact on how you deploy my child's body in your in your artistic vision.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: I think that I should have a right to, if you want to do a piece about sex trafficking and my daughter's eight, nine years old, I feel that I should have a choice to say, you know what, that's great, but I'd like to opt if I decide, I want to opt my child out of this.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe I wouldn't, you know, how the choreographer was going to engage in it, but I have dealt with a lot of parents and studio owners on Wi-Pad where the content and the concept has never even been brought to parents, things that can be extremely triggering emotionally.
23:21
SPEAKER_02: And the parents were never even involved as to whether or not you want to deploy your child's talents in that way.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, they go in front of, you know, judges like me and Rob and you all, and we don't know what emotional journey, you know.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of pieces on the Holocaust, right?
23:36
SPEAKER_02: Like, did you I think that that's like a great opportunity, then let's take the if if children are not ready to go to the Holocaust Museum.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: If you wouldn't take your eight-year-old to the Holocaust Museum, do you do you under?
23:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, do you feel me?
23:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I again, like I please hear hear my heart on this.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: I think that dance, I have a, you know, I have kind of a brand of if you hire me, you're probably gonna get some type of message movement, I call it.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: I will, I'm not just gonna choreograph the typical hip, I'm a hip-hop choreographer, obviously, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna do some message, but I'm always thoughtful into the appropriateness of all of the dancers.
24:08
SPEAKER_02: On is this, is this, is this something that would resonate with them, you know?
24:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think that so I know we kind of got off topic there.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: I know that's beautiful because it it leads into something that we were just talking about.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: You alluded to it, Leslie, is something that we've talked about previously.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Is as a choreographer for children, you are an educator for children.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: If that is what you do, if you work in a dance studio setting, you work for children.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: You, as the choreographer, must drop your ego of, well, I want to have this vision.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, sure, have a vision on professional adult dancers.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: That I don't want to censor that at all.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: You do you.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to children, your ego has to step aside and say, this is for the kids.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: What are they able to cut process?
24:49
SPEAKER_00: What are they able to deal with?
24:51
SPEAKER_00: What are they able to portray safely and with them in mind all the time?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And that is something that I I just I've never understood, you know, when I've sat there and had to watch a Holocaust dance or a suicide dance or a sex trafficking dance or all these other topics that I'm like, yes, these are real, terrible, awful things that happen in our world and children are aware of them, you know.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think we have to give kids credit that like you're they're not dumb, but they're also not ready to process it in a way that should be presented on stage.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Like that is something you do with a parent, with a teacher, with a psychiatrist, with a psychologist, you know.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: And like poorly done too.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: Like you know, like I've seen so many poorly executed dances with sensitive subject matters where I'm just like, I I just couldn't even literally I just stop critiquing because I'm so distracted.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I can't even focus because I'm so disturbed by this.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: And you never want that's the other thing that I think about a lot of um teachers need to also like again drop the ego and step back and look at who's my audience at a dance competition.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Technically, you're trying to impress the judges.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Let yes, we are getting on stage, we are do we are doing what we do, we have grandma in the audience.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: And again, like you mentioned, Leslie, it is a family-friendly event.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: So we have to step back and we have to say, it's if a five-year-old little brother is in the audience, are they going to be okay watching this?
26:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there have been so many times I've I've seen routines where there's like gunshots going off and like I'm just literally I'm terrified, or like a school shooting or something like that where I'm uncomfortable as a judge.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And you don't want to make me uncomfortable.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe pull up the mark strings a little and and there have been times where I've cried in in like, you know, a beautiful way, but not like uh I'm disturbed and this is inappropriate.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: Ralph, any thoughts?
26:31
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, of course.
26:32
SPEAKER_04: I have so many thoughts.
26:34
SPEAKER_04: There's tons.
26:34
SPEAKER_04: I I do think it's interesting to talk uh to at least think about these individuals that Leslie, you're you're saying that that um that the survey went through.
26:44
SPEAKER_04: Well, more than likely, those people are not the ones that like IDA would be seeking out, or your company would be seeking out if their focus is more so towards uh putting desensitized information or video or content on online and social networking, no matter who it harms.
27:03
SPEAKER_04: And and talking like going back to and thinking about pieces that we find at dance competitions or not even always in dance competitions.
27:11
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there there are times that things are done in adult ways that that are I still think are inappropriate.
27:17
SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, again, you don't know who's in your audience.
27:20
SPEAKER_04: So you could it could be going through, and I'll just like I'll pinpoint and say, you know, how many pieces have we seen over the years of uh breast cancer awareness or are losing a loved one?
27:31
SPEAKER_04: Not to say that that's inappropriate.
27:33
SPEAKER_04: And that's how some people artistically need to fulfill that moment in their life.
27:38
SPEAKER_04: But I've also been to, you know, adult performances here in the city where they need to express it in those kinds of ways.
27:46
SPEAKER_04: But then sometimes you're, you know, it's subjective, it's always going to be subjective.
27:51
SPEAKER_04: So you may be sitting in the audience and you may find something inappropriate, but someone just needed to get it off their chest.
27:56
SPEAKER_04: And that's the way that they did, and and you have to support it in any way.
28:00
SPEAKER_04: But I I under I also understand that this podcast is focused around age appropriateness and dance competitions.
28:06
SPEAKER_04: So so you're thinking that those individuals, those aren't the ones that we want to have around our children.
28:13
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, talking about it's not a joke, but it is kind of funny because after every convention and after every dance competition, you refresh your Instagram uh following and you have hundreds more, and they're all little babies, you know, that are so-and-so dance studio graduating class of 2000 you know, 14.
28:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:34
SPEAKER_04: And you're like, oh good.
28:36
SPEAKER_04: Susie May just started following me on Instagram.
28:39
SPEAKER_04: But I would never, I would never, it's I I also think that it's it's a class level that I've that you're saying that, you know, you looked at my Instagram and it's a class level that I've always tried to maintain just for my own, my own well-being and my own self-ordinance of saying that this is where I'd like to sit in life, not even viewed from children or adults or my own mother.
29:02
SPEAKER_04: You know, it's just that's what I would like to put out into the world to say that this is who I am and this is and this is where this is where I stand on a lot of things.
29:11
SPEAKER_04: And that, and that's you can choose to follow or unfollow, and and that's that's how the world is right now.
29:17
SPEAKER_02: And but I don't think that we can minimize the impact of that of that choice, right?
29:22
SPEAKER_02: Because I think we have to have, when we have a landscape of, you know, just kind of oversaturation of of dance celebrities, right?
29:31
SPEAKER_02: And you are the dance celebrity when these kids come to this competition.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: You're the celebrity to the competition.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: So I think what is so important for children to see is representation.
29:41
SPEAKER_02: And the representation is when they see Rob's social media like this, and they see my social media like this, and Courtney and Leslie like this, and then they see another teacher like this.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: They're children, they are not passive consumers, children are little sponges.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: They they click it, they it they need to see more of us represent something like this online.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: So they don't think that the only way to be successful in dance is to do A, B, C, and D.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: So the more people go ahead, Rob.
30:09
SPEAKER_04: It's not even only just children, though, and it's not even only students, it's also studio directors and choreographers and teachers.
30:16
SPEAKER_04: Because if we think back to the beginning of like YouTube before we even had social media, before Instagram existed, the the way that we were exposed to these like out-of-the-box kind of concepts in well, I would say mid-America, but uh there are there are studios across the world and dance company uh across the country that are very forthcoming and and forward thinking about all of these subject matters.
30:41
SPEAKER_04: But you have to think sometimes people don't live in those kinds of communities.
30:45
SPEAKER_04: And so you think you can dance in the first couple of years.
30:48
SPEAKER_04: Some of those kinds of dances and subject matters were the first times that any of these studios, directors, choreographers, and dancers were ever exposed to any of that.
30:59
SPEAKER_04: So then it felt like and it seemed like a good idea that you know, someone such as like Mia Michaels did this piece on on So You Think You Can Dance, or I'm sure there are other dance things, but I don't watch TV, so it doesn't really matter.
31:15
SPEAKER_04: But that that that those studio directors were like, oh, that's really beautiful.
31:19
SPEAKER_04: Let's do that for our kids.
31:20
SPEAKER_04: I think instead of taking the back of it and thinking, well, let's think this through.
31:26
SPEAKER_04: How might this affect someone else in this class, even if it's just one person?
31:31
SPEAKER_04: And it's all just me backing exactly what you've just said, Leslie.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that that you know, we do have a middle ground here, right?
31:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it doesn't have to be we say we don't do these.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: We I mean, I think first of all, if we do them, we hope that people do them responsibly, right?
31:46
SPEAKER_02: We want to encourage the teacher to engage the parents to be thoughtful about who's this demographic, what's happened to this demographic, do we know anything about these children and their emotional life, their home life?
31:55
SPEAKER_02: But I think also recital competitions, why not do disclaimers?
31:59
SPEAKER_02: If you're gonna let a piece on stage about domestic violence, why not do a disclaimer?
32:03
SPEAKER_02: There may be somebody is somebody in the audience who could it could literally trigger a panic attack.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: Why not just do a disclaimer?
32:09
SPEAKER_02: You know, put it in if you're gonna do it in the recital, put it in the recital.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: You are more than welcome to step out.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: Piece number 14 is going to be about gun violence.
32:17
SPEAKER_03: Right.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: And if you, you know, so someone who's lost somebody to gun violence, like just do a disclaimer.
32:22
SPEAKER_02: They do and allow the audience lights.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: What are those lights?
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Those strobe lights, yeah.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: Allow the audience the opportunity to say, oh, you know what?
32:30
SPEAKER_02: I've got my seven-year-old with me that doesn't feel really comfortable.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: I haven't talked to them about this topic yet.
32:34
SPEAKER_02: I don't want the first time they hear about this topic to be at a dance show.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, we're gonna step out to the lobby.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: You know, I just feel like I'm a very big informed consent person, whether it has to do with when I'm at the doctor or just in life.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: I want to know.
32:47
SPEAKER_02: I want to know what I'm signing up for and what I'm gonna be exposed to and what are the risks or what are the benefits.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: And then I get to make a choice for me and my child, what I want to engage in.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate the transparency for you know, the wife had certified studios.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: That's now that's part of their certification is to just, you know, give a disclaimer.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: If you want to do these pieces, let the audience know the audience deserves to know because you don't want people showing up and then getting triggered, right?
33:11
SPEAKER_02: That's not why we do what we do, right?
33:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:13
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: That's exactly there's a way to be thoughtful.
33:17
SPEAKER_04: And the and exactly what Leslie just said is you can't go into a Broadway house and they're using strobe lights or a fog machine without them putting that leaflet in your in your paper.
33:28
SPEAKER_04: We would be at a dance competition or a recital or a performance or uh, you know, any kind of I keep trying to think of this word and help me when it's one person that wants to do a show by themselves here, like here in this cabaret.
33:43
SPEAKER_04: That's what I was gonna say, like a lamancha.
33:44
SPEAKER_04: My goodness, cabaret.
33:46
SPEAKER_04: So you would never be able to do that without saying those things.
33:49
SPEAKER_04: So here we are, for some reason in the dance competition world that's based around the livelihoods of us, but that's given from teaching children.
33:59
SPEAKER_04: We have to break a stigma.
34:01
SPEAKER_04: Why would we need to do that?
34:02
SPEAKER_04: Why wouldn't it just be the the industry standard?
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, industry standard, exactly.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: And the other way is like as judges, which we all are, I don't have a choice, right?
34:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, like that, and unfortunately, that's my job, and I'm getting paid to sit there and watch every dance.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: But I also don't even have a choice to to not watch this.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: And if there was at least a disclaimer, or if we knew ahead of time, I I mean that could even be another thing.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: Like, I absolutely agree, disclaimers would be awesome.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: That would be a step in the right direction that we need.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: So I think every if it there's any competitions listening, like please that's easy.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: Incorporate it an extra little bubble on their registration form.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: It's not that hard, you know?
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Like put it into the program.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: That's such a good point.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've seen teams do pieces on rape.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: Right.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like, what if what if an adjudicator is a survivor of sexual assault?
34:59
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: And maybe they haven't gone through trauma recovery, or maybe they have.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, if I ran the sex abuse division for Wi-Pad for seven years.
35:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm a survivor of child sex abuse and adult sexual assault.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: And this is, you know, a huge part, obviously, of the Wi-Pad work is working on, you know, helping dancers find, you know, trauma recovery, um, disclose, report if they want to, et cetera.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Like, why would why would we not just want to be sensitive to that, you know, in understanding that how painful it could be for an adjudicator to have to sit through that type of concept?
35:31
SPEAKER_02: But I'm not sure.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: And then you have to give feedback on it.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not even that I have to just sit there and watch it.
35:35
SPEAKER_04: Like, I have to and to put a score to a costume that's based on that.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And then they did fillettes, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
35:43
SPEAKER_02: Right because, you know, it can just go sideways really easily for a lot of people that were supposed to actually be here to have a positive and encouraging experience.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: Hey dancers, it's get ready and gear up for the upcoming 2021 computer.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: I think that we've definitely kind of hinted at this often in this discussion so far.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: But a question that a lot of teachers have, and a question that a lot of parents may have, is then why do those dances win?
37:02
SPEAKER_01: And why are those dances rewarded?
37:04
SPEAKER_01: And why aren't those dances penalized for that type of movement or that type of song or that subject matter that is inappropriate?
37:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the other issues that a lot of judges feel like they face is that everyone has a different definition of what inappropriate is to them.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: And I know, Leslie, you touched on this a little bit earlier about, you know, every region might have a different view of what appropriateness is.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you know, it's it's interesting.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: My hope is, and I'd love to get your feedback, is after you complete Wi-Fi certification, if you are we have a hashtag inappropriate is no longer vague.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: Like there's literally science behind this.
37:46
SPEAKER_02: So I mean, there is it.
37:48
SPEAKER_02: So I think that this it to think that it is subjective is a myth if you believe in science.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, so I just want to don't lose me here, audience, but I I want to tell everybody just really quick about a research study, okay?
38:01
SPEAKER_02: So Dr.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: Toni Ann Roberts sits on our advisory panel.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: She PhD from Stanford, she has studied sexualization objectification for 30 years.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: She came up with the objectification theory with a colleague.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: She's published, she's amazing.
38:13
SPEAKER_02: She's the psychology chair of Colorado College, which is the research and um development arm of YPAD.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: So they purchased an eye tracking device.
38:21
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so what they did is then they curated our nation's top sexualized videos.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: They codified it.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: What actually equals a sexualized dance video?
38:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so lip-licking, body touch, winking at the camera.
38:35
SPEAKER_02: They created, the research team created an entire coding system.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: Then what they did is they had participants from 18 to 60 years old come in and watch three different videos for 30 seconds with different variances: high sexualized content, medium sexualized content, low sexualized content in the dance.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: They were wearing the eye tracking device to track the dilation of the eye.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: So what they found out with this afterwards, they took a survey.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: What did you think of the dance?
39:00
SPEAKER_02: What did you think of the music?
39:02
SPEAKER_02: What did you think of the dancer themselves?
39:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, so so not just what's your opinion about the artistry, but did your opinion about the like, did this dehumanize them?
39:11
SPEAKER_02: So a lot of dehumanizing research in psychology shows the more you objectify people, the more you dehumanize them.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: You believe that they deserve pain.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: You believe you know, in a bullying scenario, the the girl who is sexualized is more culpable in her bullying than someone who is not.
39:26
SPEAKER_02: So we have to look at this through the lens that these children don't have choices, right?
39:30
SPEAKER_02: Did anybody ever ask this child, like, would you like to be sexualized in this competition piece so I can get a double, triple?
39:36
SPEAKER_02: No one, like these children never need consent, right?
39:38
SPEAKER_02: This so we cannot blame the children in any way, shape, or form.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: So what happened after this study is three things.
39:45
SPEAKER_02: First of all, the sexualized content, and this is a lot of people have this myth that people who sexualize children are predators.
39:52
SPEAKER_02: There's the guy in the van at the park trying to give kids candy.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: That's not true.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: The more that we see this, the more easily we look at children as being sex targets.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: So these are everyday average 18 to six-year-olds.
40:06
SPEAKER_02: Number one, with the eye tracking device, the more sexualized their eyes went to the breast and genital areas quicker.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: Number two, the more sexualized content, the more dilated of the eyes.
40:16
SPEAKER_02: So in psychology, when eyes dilate, it can be a sign of anxiety, involuntary attraction, involuntary attraction, fight or flight.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: It can be a myriad of things.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: So watching the sexualized content, the eyes dilated more.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: And third, the audience spent on the highly sexualized piece the rest of the time trying to avert their eyes from the sexualized content.
40:38
SPEAKER_02: Is that what we want for our audience?
40:40
SPEAKER_02: Do we want to create pieces where we make our judges and our audience that uncomfortable that their eyes are dilating because they're having anxiety or they're having involuntary attraction because what you have put on stage might be so reminiscent to how their brains have been wired is sexual.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: So they have this moment of involuntary attraction because the packaging looks so much like what something that is equal to sex, you know, sexy in our society is.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: Do we want to make people that uncomfortable?
41:07
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, do we want to have children participate in making people that uncomfortable?
41:13
SPEAKER_02: Unwillingly, not with them not even having agency to understand that they're being utilized in this way.
41:19
SPEAKER_02: Right?
41:19
SPEAKER_02: I so we have two things from this research study.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: First of all, it is a huge problem that when children are sexualized, that we objectify them more because these children are these children are not culpable in this participation.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: A children can a child cannot consent.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: Just like in sex abuse, a child cannot consent.
41:37
SPEAKER_02: They are not able to consent.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: They don't understand what is happening.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: A lot of times there's grooming, there's, you know, there's so many things going involved.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: Even if a child later on says they enjoyed the interaction, that is not consent.
41:48
SPEAKER_02: That is not consent.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: Just like with, you know, sexualization and sex abuse are on the same continuum.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you guys saw our sex abuse webinar, but they live on the same continuum.
41:57
SPEAKER_02: Sexualization of children is not like out there in its silo.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: That has nothing to do with sex abuse.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: No.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: The more you sexualize a child, the higher chances that they're going to be targeted for sexual exploitation, and the more that they're not going to be able to say no because it has become so normalized that this is how they present themselves, they don't feel they have the right to say no.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: So these are completely connected.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is how important this is, you know, for us.
42:19
SPEAKER_02: So this research study is the first of its kind.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: So I think that, you know, we're gonna do more.
42:24
SPEAKER_02: We're definitely gonna, you know, pursue it more, but it's the first type of research study that anybody took sexualized videos and looked at what's the experience of the viewer, and then how does this change the belief about the person?
42:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that this this is not, you just take a bunch of sexual offenders from jail and do this.
42:40
SPEAKER_02: Like this is, these are everyday people whose belief about the value of these children declines, believes that they deserve more harm when they are when they are behaving in sexualized ways, believe that they're consenting when they are behaving in sexualized ways.
42:54
SPEAKER_02: This this is needs to be really like we need to deeply sit in this.
42:59
SPEAKER_02: What are we putting our child our children at risk for?
43:02
SPEAKER_02: It is so much bigger than just this one piece, you know.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: So I mean, I just think that that research study is profound.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just really grateful that Dr.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Roberts and her team, you know, went ahead and pursued it.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: And we need more research like that.
43:15
unknown: Yeah.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really fascinating.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the audience, our audience is gonna be, I mean, a little mind blown that there there has been so much much research on it.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully there will continue to be more.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Because, like you said, it's not, you know, I think our our industry is, as you said earlier, not regulated.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: So Joe Schmo off the side of the road, Jill Schmo, whoever, can have a dance studio.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: So you're you don't have all of, you know, many, many dance studio owners are not high highly educated.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that in a negative way.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: It's just some of some of us love to teach dance and then we went to teach dance.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: But like the the higher education of the psychology is right.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's not exactly accessible, you know, to everyone.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: So my we had touched briefly earlier, and Rob I'm Super interested to hear what you have to say about this.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: So many of these sexualized dances at competition win.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: And there are many, many of us out there, you know, and many people across the dance forums that we see and hear, you know, as we mentioned earlier, we want to, we want to moan and complain and oh, this is terrible, it's terrible, it's terrible.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: And then it keeps happening.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: So clearly nobody's doing anything about it.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: But why, in your opinion, Rob, do you think these dances win?
44:25
SPEAKER_04: Well, I think that that that subject matter can go back to what Courtney said a little bit earlier and saying that this is our job.
44:33
SPEAKER_04: We're we're paid to sit at a table and watch every dance, whether we feel inappropriate or not.
44:39
SPEAKER_04: And unfortunately for our industry, most of the time we're given bullet points to score people.
44:45
SPEAKER_04: And those scoring sections are costuming, which is where you can, where you can give the score that you want to based on the age appropriateness of it.
44:56
SPEAKER_04: But then there's uh, you know, the next step down is technique.
45:00
SPEAKER_04: Well, are these kids, no matter what they're doing on stage or what they've been choreographed to do, is their technique immaculate?
45:08
SPEAKER_04: Well, I can't lie to them and say that no, you don't have good technique.
45:14
SPEAKER_04: What I'm telling you is that you do have good technique, but more than likely over my critiques, I'm telling, hopefully focused in on the choreographer, that we really have to focus in on the age age appropriateness of what we're putting on the stage.
45:27
SPEAKER_04: So then, you know, the next level down is execution of choreography.
45:32
SPEAKER_04: So you're giving a score.
45:33
SPEAKER_04: So then if you're if you're thinking about the culmination of all of the scoring going to these children, more than likely 18 years or younger, they're only getting scores that are based upon what you're seeing up there.
45:45
SPEAKER_04: And it's your opinion based on them executing choreography, costume that someone else put them in, their technique.
45:53
SPEAKER_04: I know on some competitions there is a sub-level of actual choreography, and that's where sometimes you can really stick it to the choreographer, and then you can type a note down at the bottom and say, So, to your question, why are these people winning?
46:08
SPEAKER_04: Well, because dance competitions, most of them are on the same scoring range and the same scoring sub-brands that they have been since the beginning of their, you know, when they open the doors of that dance competition.
46:20
SPEAKER_04: Most of them, 10 plus years.
46:22
SPEAKER_04: We have, we do have many now, especially on the IDA roster, that are new to the scene.
46:28
SPEAKER_04: And so those people are probably making really, or hopefully are making really wise choices on their scorings.
46:36
SPEAKER_04: These other competitions, though, on the other hand, they're not even giving the judges an opportunity to say, is this?
46:43
SPEAKER_04: I mean, so so we we just talked about earlier, if you're breaking a stigma, why not put an age appropriateness scoring range in there?
46:50
SPEAKER_04: Why can't you say something like that?
46:52
SPEAKER_04: But then also being as a dance competition judge, you also get feedback from your director sometimes.
46:59
SPEAKER_04: And like you said, we you have to sit there, you're you're paid to judge every number, you're paid to critique every number.
47:06
SPEAKER_04: And that, and I love doing it.
47:08
SPEAKER_04: I grew up as a competition kid.
47:10
SPEAKER_04: So I knew when I went to a competition and came home and listened to at that time a cassette tape of what was our critiques.
47:17
SPEAKER_04: If I knew someone was engaged and they were listening and they were watching and cared about me on stage, those are the people that I more than likely took their critiques to heart and really focused in on.
47:27
SPEAKER_04: The other people that were just talking about pointing your toes and using your plie, those are the people that fell by the wayside.
47:35
SPEAKER_04: So I try to be that the first judge that cares so much about what they're seeing on stage, but then you have to then sometimes you have to find a way to be able to get into those choreographers' heads, knowing that you're actually talking to a child to be able to say, and and it goes back to age appropriateness, not even just for a sexual sexualization of something that's on stage.
47:59
SPEAKER_04: Are they ready for that?
48:01
SPEAKER_04: Are you ready for, you know, a turn sequence of 12 fuete turns in the middle of a lyrical dance?
48:07
SPEAKER_04: More than likely not.
48:08
SPEAKER_04: Let's be totally honest.
48:10
SPEAKER_04: You know, we have we have New York City ballet here in the city, and there are people there that are still working on their fuite turns.
48:17
SPEAKER_04: They are legitimately working six days a week in a ballet company at the top of an art form.
48:23
SPEAKER_04: And we're going to dance class.
48:25
SPEAKER_04: We, as a proverbial we talking about dance studio kids, are going maybe to two ballet classes per week.
48:32
SPEAKER_04: It's not appropriate.
48:34
SPEAKER_04: It's you're not you're not there yet.
48:36
SPEAKER_04: And for I would prefer, and we say this all the time, and I'm sure that I've said it in critiques a million times.
48:42
SPEAKER_04: I would rather see you pull off a clean pirouette rather than fall out of a turn sequence, because for some reason, somewhere along the way in history, that's what for some reason is the biggest cheer section of the song.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: Even if you fall out of them, people are still cheering.
49:00
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they're still gonna cheer for you because you fell out, because they don't want you to exit stage left and be upset about your performance.
49:07
SPEAKER_04: And we don't either, as judges.
49:09
SPEAKER_04: We still want you to succeed.
49:12
SPEAKER_04: I always want them to succeed, no matter what.
49:14
SPEAKER_04: I'm there for you.
49:16
SPEAKER_04: I'm there because I love this art form and and I love I love seeing children succeed at that.
49:23
SPEAKER_04: But let's go back to the beginning question from Leslie.
49:26
SPEAKER_04: I know exactly where the the poignant focus is on these people and saying the hypersexualized dances are always winning.
49:35
SPEAKER_04: Is it is it though, or is it that it's the technical side of it all?
49:40
SPEAKER_04: Because you can have a hypersexualized child that doesn't have any technique and they're not winning because they don't have technique, because the scoring then is based on what a competition is giving us to base down.
49:52
SPEAKER_04: And I'm never gonna lie to a studio or to a kid about their technique level.
49:57
SPEAKER_04: I'm never gonna give a happy score just because, you know, I I like their earrings.
50:04
SPEAKER_04: That's not that's not what I would ever put out in the universe, even though I do love those.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, here's and I'm I'm glad I'm glad that was like a a great response answer, Rob, like a hundred percent.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's something I'm gonna pretty much say the same thing.
50:18
SPEAKER_01: I think that I said it before, people have heard me say this, you can agree to disagree.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: I think the way that our industry has evolved is that back when I was growing up in the competition world, micro-time tapes were talked were spoken towards the teacher, to the teacher.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: The judge would talk to the teacher, and then the teacher would relay the information to the dancer.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: And I think that based on feedback and based on like our evolution of the industry and or and how big the industry has gotten a lot of teachers have now been requesting for the judges to like talk to the dancers because now we like sit and have a little meeting before class and like listen to all of our judges critiques.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: So when, you know, if it's geared towards the teacher, it could come across like things could be said that the teachers don't want the dancers to hear.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and now we as judges are speaking directly to the teacher.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: So then there's the other the other part of, well, let's not let the dancers be penalized for a teacher's mistake.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: Because the way that I look at it is everything that's presented on the stage is the teacher's fault.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's right or wrong, it is the teacher's responsibility, is what they presented.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: They taught the dancer this technique, they taught the dancer how to perform like this.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many times have I been winked at as a judge?
51:30
SPEAKER_01: And I like and I'm sure, I'm sure especially you, Rob, as a judge, you've they've probably, and if you've been in the only male on the panel, they've probably been like, make sure you wink at the male judge.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who's telling people?
51:42
SPEAKER_04: Go to judge number two.
51:44
SPEAKER_04: He's he's in the middle.
51:46
SPEAKER_04: You go up there and get it right in his face.
51:49
SPEAKER_04: Right.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, like yeah, like that's weird.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: That's you know, that shouldn't, that shouldn't be happening.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: But teachers complain that they're not.
51:54
SPEAKER_02: And understanding that that that's gonna permeate to other aspects of their life.
51:58
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
51:58
SPEAKER_02: Like if you're gonna go wink at your sixth grade teacher, like no.
52:02
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
52:02
SPEAKER_02: We're we're literally coaching children to flirt with strangers, right?
52:06
SPEAKER_02: Like when they're not naturally when they're not naturally at a developmentally appropriate age where they would develop flirtatious behaviors because they're starting to, you know, they're going through puberty, they're starting to feel attraction.
52:18
SPEAKER_02: Like that's one thing, but to train ch young children in order to get an award to flirt with judges is a is a really big problem.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: And that's the thing.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: The teacher told the dancer to do that.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's how I kind of look at everything.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: So in a way, yeah, there needs to be some sort of deduction box or something where we can gradually penalize the teacher in a so they will understand that this isn't appropriate, that that no, I don't, I I was uncomfortable with that wink, or this subject matter is not okay, and in a way, maybe have a score that shows what it would have gotten before the teacher made a few mistakes that we, you know, felt was needed, or a rule-breaking issue, or whatever it is.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the issue is that we're trying to judge it for what it is and what was presented on stage.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: And if, like Rob said, the technique was flawless, and if they were performing for their life, and if the execution was there and they didn't fall out of their pirouette, and there is not an option for me to deduct for choreography or appropriateness, then your score is automatically gonna be high, regardless if I think it's appropriate or not.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: And the only thing that I can really say is hey, um, note to the choreographer, I'm not really comfortable with a lot of this movement quality.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's a little bit too mature or too sexual for this age of dancer.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's really all I can do.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: That's not affecting their score.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: So no matter what, at awards ceremonies, they're still getting double titanium first place in a check.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: And that means that we're, you know, we're rewarding it.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: And that's where the issue in the industry is, I personally feel.
53:50
SPEAKER_04: I do know from being in the industry for so long and from working on the opposite end of the table that some competitions are not are not into giving that kind of feedback that at the end of the day for them, they have they have bills to pay and they're worried about focusing in on that and how disheartening that is that we we all started here together because of an art form, but now it doesn't matter about the artistic side of it, and it's more so just about making sure that you're you're having four sold-out weekends, you know, in in different cities, and and that's where their focus is.
54:31
SPEAKER_04: So I think that we would all have to come together and hopefully, uh, you know, I hope that so many dance competition directors and owners would listen into things like this and would take it into consideration that I mean, I remember when I was a director's assistant for a studio when I was younger and and going through the policies and procedures, and our studio is very focused on making sure that we stayed in those rules and that we never went over our time limit and that we never played a song because I remember going to a competition when I was 16 years old, that they had a list in their in their pamphlet when you registered that you weren't allowed to use.
55:10
SPEAKER_04: It said, like, and then so now that you know these X amount of songs that we won't allow you to dance to in our competition, you can take it and fan it out and think those are the kinds of proximities that we're not that we're not welcoming into the dance competition.
55:28
SPEAKER_04: But clearly that's gone into gray area over the last eight to 10 years, unfortunately, and and and we've gone in the complete opposite direction, you know.
55:38
SPEAKER_04: So they're thinking if it's played on the radio and that the artist has a clean edited version or a radio edit that you can buy on iTunes, then it's appropriate.
55:47
SPEAKER_04: And we're right, we're all here to tell you that that's not connotations are still there, it is still as inappropriate for the explicit version as it is for the edited radio version.
56:01
SPEAKER_04: It still means the exact same thing, even if the profanity is cut is cut off.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I commend anybody who edits Candyman because number one, that song is extremely hard to edit, it's so repetitive.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: And we all know what it means.
56:17
SPEAKER_00: Use Boogie Woogie Boogle Boy, you know, like it's literally the same song except Boogie Woogie Boogle Boy is appropriate.
56:24
SPEAKER_04: I mean, how many how many eight-year-olds have you have you watched dance to a burlesque song?
56:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
56:29
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
56:32
SPEAKER_04: I live in New York, I live in New York City and I've been to a burlesque show.
56:37
SPEAKER_04: And if anybody does a little bit of research behind it, they would not want their eight-year-old trying to portray something that emulates that in those kinds of situations.
56:48
SPEAKER_04: It just goes back to, and we've said this a million times, and I even think that we touched on it on the last podcast that I was on.
56:54
SPEAKER_04: Are you doing your research?
56:56
SPEAKER_04: Are you listening to all of the lyrics of the song?
56:59
SPEAKER_04: It it takes if you spent seven minutes less on Instagram that day as a studio director and looked up the lyrics to us and looked through it and read it and thought, oh, I I didn't know that there was a comma there in that sentence.
57:16
SPEAKER_04: And actually, she was saying she was singing about it being a continuation of a thought and not just a period.
57:22
SPEAKER_04: It it would make a problem a difference, especially for all of us, in the jobs that we do as dance competition judges.
57:29
SPEAKER_02: It's so true.
57:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, in Wi-Pad in our music module, we always say one of the best ways to decide if a song is appropriate or not, print it out and then imagine the child reading it on stage to the audience.
57:42
SPEAKER_02: If you're comfortable with that and you think the child would be comfortable with that, you're good to go.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: If you're not comfortable with that, then find another song.
57:50
SPEAKER_02: There's so many songs.
57:52
SPEAKER_02: There's so many songs.
57:53
SPEAKER_02: And what Rob said too is I think as adjudicators, we cannot forget that we have power.
57:59
SPEAKER_02: And I think that, you know, I talk with so many adjudicators, I've talked to hundreds of adjudicators in, you know, the duration of why I've had, you know, being an organization.
58:08
SPEAKER_02: And everyone has these experiences, like, you know, like all of us are talking about here.
58:13
SPEAKER_02: And I think that a lot of times we think things are going to change from the top down.
58:17
SPEAKER_02: And normally in activism, that's just not the case, right?
58:20
SPEAKER_02: They change from the bottom up.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: And I think that the more that, you know, the more that adjudicators say, uh, I'm not enjoying my job anymore.
58:28
SPEAKER_02: And we just we just did a training on the nation's top four, you know, dance convention.
58:33
SPEAKER_02: And at the end of it, one of the one of the teachers just said, like, I'm not enjoying my job.
58:39
SPEAKER_02: When I have to go into the mini room and I have to adjudicate the minis, like, I do not enjoy it.
58:43
SPEAKER_02: I I fear it.
58:44
SPEAKER_02: I don't like it anymore.
58:46
SPEAKER_02: And it was just really important because it the more that we speak up, the more that the people who hire us and need us hopefully might say, Oh, I, you know, because I mean, I don't, I I do, I mean, Rob is right about how, you know, this has become saturated, right?
59:00
SPEAKER_02: It's very lucrative, it's very financially competitive.
59:02
SPEAKER_02: The market is the market has become very financially competitive.
59:06
SPEAKER_02: So people are always trying to find their edge.
59:08
SPEAKER_02: And my belief is it's not because people don't care about this, it's because they just don't know.
59:12
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they haven't had somebody stop and say, hold on a second.
59:15
SPEAKER_02: We we need to focus on this.
59:17
SPEAKER_02: There's organizations and there's people out there.
59:19
SPEAKER_02: We can help you do this.
59:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to keep working for you as an adjudicator if we don't do this.
59:23
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't have to be crazy and it doesn't have to be extreme.
59:26
SPEAKER_02: It's, you know, we can just do three things.
59:28
SPEAKER_02: Like here's three things we can do to try to create a better landscape.
59:31
SPEAKER_02: And maybe next season we do another three things, you know, to kind of the you know, change is usually a marathon, not a sprint.
59:38
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, I I definitely there there are competitions that I do not adjudicate for anymore because things have happened and I have said, I I don't think this is right, or I don't think this person is in the right position, or I don't think this rule is correct.
59:53
SPEAKER_04: I don't think that whatever the case may be, and it was never changed.
59:58
SPEAKER_04: And it would, it almost felt like like from a directorial standpoint, well, this is my company, and I'm gonna do what I want to do.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_04: So then me as Rob Gibbs, I'm more than happy to not ever work for you ever again.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_04: And when someone asks me what how my experience was with that company, I am very happy to give an honest opinion.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_04: It actually just happened last week that a company that I no longer work for because of something that the director and I disagreed on that I thought, I mean, clearly, we all we always think that our focus is more than likely the correct one, or we wouldn't have that kind of ideal behind it.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_04: Someone asked me last week, oh, this competition is reaching out to me.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_04: And what what was your experience?
1:00:46
SPEAKER_04: All right, well, you asked.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_04: Here's my experience.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_04: This is this is what I this is what I dealt with, and that's and that's what it was.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that that shows a lot of courage.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_02: And I bet when you ex when you share that with other people, Rob, because a lot of people are just not able to have the courage to walk out their integrity in that way, you know.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I really commend you because it takes a it takes a lot of courage to turn down a job because it doesn't fit with your ideals and your values.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_02: And I think that took a while.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_04: It definitely took a while because you think, I mean, especially living in New York City, we are we're on a on, you know, like a much higher grade of living as far from a monetary standpoint as the as well, I mean not as much, but we all think that we do live uh, you know, more expensively in life.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_04: And like it was a job at the end of the day.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, well, you know, it's it's tossing it up.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_04: And then when you when you finally wake up at four o'clock in the morning, you think, I just I don't feel comfortable.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_04: I don't feel I don't feel like that I need this anymore.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_04: And then you just drop it.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and and that's important too, because like you mentioned, Leslie, how in how uh saturated the industry is, like you said, and it it a hundred percent is, and how uh new competitions popping up every other day.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's totally true.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, and and the sense that as and you mentioned as well, how competitions might be nervous to enforce or because it could potentially lose business for them.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: The same applies to their staff, their judges, you know, we're not I'm not auditioning someone when I'm working for them, but at the same time, I do have a a choice based on how my experience is if I want to continue that.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's the same for a client and a customer to a competition.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_01: So if the customer feels that the competition was rewarding or inappropriate material, then the client is probably not going to return.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: And the same can apply for the judges.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: If the judges feel that there have been things that weren't handled properly or rules weren't enforced or our voice wasn't heard, that's the same thing.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna find a new competition to work for that's going to actually enforce these things.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like the only way that things might change in that sense is if we continue to like speak up and be vocal about it and not be afraid to pass up or turn down a job if that's what it takes and to find a new competition or whatever it is, you know, on whatever side of the table it is.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: I think that people will eventually start to learn once they see, like, oh shoot, like look how many look how many times has this happened to me.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should make this change in this rule.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should, you know.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, even with what both of you were saying, like whoever is gonna watch this podcast, you better, you better believe there's gonna be people who wanted to and they were too afraid.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_02: And that's why when when we're talking about advocacy, activism, and change, that's why numbers is especially when you're dealing with something that can have a high collateral social damage, right?
1:03:38
SPEAKER_02: You can be shamed for it.
1:03:39
SPEAKER_02: You can be, you can be punished as you know, punitive, punitive actions can be taken upon you because you did stand on your ground.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_02: You know, you can be punished financially because now you no longer have a job.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_02: But I do think that that's the beauty of kind of what you two are both saying here is you're giving these great examples of, and if parents watch this also, you know, just to say, wow, like, like I don't have to ignore that feeling.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't have to, you know, ignore the fact that I don't enjoy it j judging for this competition.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_02: I don't feel good when I go to bed at night.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_02: I am waking up at four in the morning, kind of having a, you know, an internal crisis on whether or not uh, you know, me working for them, I'm basically supporting their brand.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_02: And their brand is not prioritizing the health and wellness of children.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_02: So I think that the more that you like you said, that we are vocal about it and we make changes.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, with Wi-Pads, we're trying to change the industry, but more importantly, we're just trying to create alternatives that don't that don't engage in that.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, Wi-Pad certified studios, they're all branded, there's hundreds of them.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_02: They're on Australia, they're in New Zealand, they're we're about to have them in the UK, they're in Canada, they're in America.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_02: I don't need to sit here and point my fingers at all these the studios that are commodifying flooding children.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_02: I just have to say, but take a look at these studios, you know, and to look at to be that example.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_02: So I think it's it's awesome.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, even your adjudicator training, like there was a time where there was just no standard on that whatsoever either, right?
1:04:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_02: Just like a free-draw, like, oh, okay, you're like great.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_02: Come and come come and join, come and judge for my competition.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_02: And it still is, yeah.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_02: For a lot of us, it's still, it's still it still is.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_02: So what you guys, what you all did is what I did with our advisor panel, is we just said, well, you know what?
1:05:16
SPEAKER_02: It's not out there, we'll create it.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: You know, and I do think what's interesting is that for somebody like me who's been in this way before it became cool to care about it, it's becoming cool to care about this.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's becoming cool to care about sex abuse in dance.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've never seen as many disclosures, you know, in the like public disclosure.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like I've been dealing with this for, you know, over a decade.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_02: And finally, people who completely dissed me in Hollywood are reaching out to me and being like, I'm so sorry that when you tried to bring this to my attention, I completely, you know, shut you down.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
1:05:51
SPEAKER_02: So it's like, but this is this is trending, but it's not going to be able to stop trending.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like that it's too much has been shared, and too many people now feel comfortable to care about this because now there's a lot more of us talking about it.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_02: So I think we have a real good chance here on turning this train around.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining us for this wonderful discussion about age appropriateness.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_01: Be sure to follow our guests on social media.
1:06:18
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1:06:24
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1:06:30
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1:06:36
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1:06:44
SPEAKER_01: And one thing you'll definitely need before you put a stage is a gorgeous costume.
1:06:49
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1:06:54
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1:07:16
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1:07:23
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1:07:30
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1:07:36
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1:07:49
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1:07:55
SPEAKER_00: Season two is in full swing with new topics and amazing interviews.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_00: Coming up in the next few weeks, topics include the December edition of the QA with Courtney, a nostalgic look at dance competitions past, and our next spotlight episode.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for tuning in to Making the Impact.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep dancing.