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This is the podcast for us dance teachers balancing our teaching job with other jobs, commitments, and just life in general! We don't need to know how to run the whole studio, work with students 20+ hours a week, or win big at competitions; we just want practical advice and real conversations about how to be the best dance teachers we can be with the little time we have with our students. Join Maia on the casual dance teacher's podcast and in the casual dance teacher's network on Facebook.
Hey everyone, it's Maia. We're about to launch into a new episode, the last episode of 2024. But unfortunately, I have to tell you that the audio quality on this one did not turn out great.
To be honest, I probably could have gone back and re-recorded or fixed up the audio issues that I had with this episode. But I really want to enjoy time with my family this time of year. I have preached in so many different episodes and talked to so many guests who preached that we need to know when to take a break and take time for ourselves.
And this is the casual dance teachers podcast. That's not referring to our students being casual students necessarily, but that we know when something is just casual and it's okay to just do our best and say, you know what, this one isn't my best work, but I've been really pouring myself into producing some excellent, excellent episodes that will come out in 2025. And that's going to be my focus.
So I hope you still enjoy this one, but I did want to give that caveat and I hope that you all have a wonderful and happy new year and I'll see you in 2025.
Welcome to the casual dance teachers podcast. I'm your host, Maia.
If you're listening to this episode, when it first comes out, know that this one will be a little bit different from most of our episodes, but what I'm aiming to do today being the end of 2024 is recap all the amazing things that I learned as your host throughout the year, having the opportunity to talk to so many amazing guests and just grow the podcast over the past six months. It's really been a treat. And this time of year, I like to reflect and look back at all the wonderful things that I was able to accomplish with the help of others in the dance world.
And I wanted to share that with all of you. So let's talk about it. Welcome back everyone.
So as I recap today, I'm going to share one big key thing that I learned from each episode of the podcast that I've released since its inception back in June of this year, specifically when I spoke with guests. Obviously, I'm not going to share big key things that I learned from myself with the episodes that I released of my own ideas and tips. However, I really loved the evolution of this podcast, really naturally and gradually since I started it to incorporate more guest episodes and to kind of have this nice flow from month to month of encompassing different themes within the dance education sphere.
So as I go through these key takeaways, I also share a couple of little things that I learned personally, or that impacted the growth and development of the podcast, or just fun little tidbits that I want to share with you. We'll start with my very first guest episode of the podcast with coach Kristen Stan, where we talked about jumps training. And if you haven't listened to that one, the fun little tidbit is that Kristen is my sister.
And there really wasn't anyone else that I could convince to be a guest on my podcast at that time, because the podcast didn't even exist yet. How am I going to get someone to come on a podcast that I haven't started has absolutely no proof of concept. So I kind of forced my sister to be part of the podcast, but it turned out to be a great episode.
And I really liked what she shared about going heavy on the conditioning early in the season, and then pacing out the whole season or the whole year so that your dancers peak for performance time. A lot of times I think we think more about technical elements or introducing new vocabulary when the dancers come back in, because we think they may have lost some of their technique over a break, or that they need to be learning a whole bunch of new vocabulary to prepare for the vocab that's going to be in their choreography. But thinking about going more heavy on just conditioning the body to prepare for those things later in the season really stuck with me.
After Kristen, I also had a wonderful friend again, this was so early in the podcast, so she really did this as a favor to me. But Genevieve Fuller joined me on the podcast to talk about dance movement therapy practices. And I absolutely love that episode.
I love everything that Genevieve's doing and was willing to share with me. My biggest takeaway was her advice to draw connections between what the dancers are doing in class and their everyday lives, so that they feel some mental and physical applications from their dance practice with their sort of practical day to day experience. Now we're still within the very first few weeks of the podcast, but I was so excited when Megan Williams slid into my DMs and said that she would love to be on the podcast as a guest.
So this was the first time I had a guest that I didn't previously know, and had to kind of really start from scratch because I had no plan in figuring out how to kind of navigate guest episodes in that way. And it was so fun. And I absolutely love this episode.
Megan came on the show and talked about creating a dance program tailored to military families and how she's gone about that. And that's such a heartfelt episode. I wasn't sure if it was going to be widely applicable.
And I feel like it really is. I feel like every dance teacher needs to hear about the work that Megan is doing. And I think it's important to just keep in mind from that episode that not everyone has the luxury of being able to commit to a program in the same way.
Military families lives can look a lot different than the average person in the workforce. And so it's great to hear that she's created a program that works for them. She doesn't expect them to commit long term.
She knows that some of her students are going to come and go. And she doesn't hold back from really pouring into them and investing in them. Despite those circumstances.
I think that's really beautiful. After Megan, I was able to connect with Laura Ward Moran to talk about preparing recreational students for collegiate dance programs. Laura shares so much advice and tips and just practical takeaways completely for free for people in her Facebook group Mission Aligned Dance Programs.
And this was an extremely exciting connection to me because Laura is also hosting the Mid-Atlantic Dance Educators Summit this coming July 2025. And I will also be sharing at the summit. So it was amazing that I got the opportunity to connect with her.
I feel so blessed that she's including me in the summit. I'm so excited about the other guests that are going to be there teaching. I'm also really excited about what I'm doing there.
I'm going to be sharing my curriculum planning guide, but not in the way that I do on the podcast. We're actually going to get into a small group and do a curriculum planning quote-unquote power hour. And I actually have a free guidebook that I'm creating in partnership with that, that everyone that participates will receive, where you can actually make notes about what you want your students to learn throughout the season and then divide it up into units to have a really nice clear picture of how you're going to be going through your dance season.
And you can do that all right there. And that's just one small group out of a whole day packed with amazing, amazing teachers and presenters and artists. So be sure to sign up for that.
So one teeny tiny little takeaway from that episode is that Laura was really firm about saying, don't rob technique class time to try and get too deep into history, theory, or other elements of dance education. There are ways to incorporate it without taking away from the student's technical education. Erica Mayle came on the show to tell us about preventing and managing injuries in our dancers.
And she was really firm about saying, have an injury policy that's really clear and really consistent from the beginning of the season. More issues arise when you're just not consistent between one dancer and another with the way that you handle injuries, injury prevention, or even asking dancers to step back because you feel like they're pushing too hard. So have that set before these issues arise.
After Erica came on the show, I did a whole choreography series that I absolutely love. They're some of my most listened to episodes, which I'm really grateful for because I poured my heart and soul into sharing as much as I could about the process of choreography as possible. And I was so excited to end that series with a special guest episode with Chelsea Wideman, who actually just released the first volume of her book about artistry in dance.
And on the podcast, she shared all about her approach to teaching different elements of artistry in dance. What I loved about this conversation is we had a very similar view that all of these different elements of artistry are connected and it's like this big messy web. And that's almost how our conversation was at times.
We're really bouncing from one thing to another because everything's so connected. So as a teacher, you know, I do have my curriculum planning guide and I try to stay really structured, but that gave me some insight that it is okay to bounce around a little bit when it's relevant and to point out to the dancers, how connected everything is. The next guest episode was really a treat for me.
I had Alicia Mae Holloway on the show to talk about the influence of social media on the dance world. If you don't know Alicia Mae Holloway, I'm like a big fan girl and I actually slid into her DMs, like totally cold, no connections and just said, hey, I just started this podcast. I think you'd be perfect to talk about this.
There's really no one else that I think could talk about it better than you. And her team got back to me and said she'd love to do it. And we did go back and forth, honestly, for a few months.
So it was very early in the inception of podcast that I reached out. And again, I felt like it was just like a favor. I don't know why she said yes to doing my podcast, because at the time I had like very little proof of concept, but she came on and Alicia is a professional ballerina.
She has worked with Dance Theater of Harlem. She's worked with a number of fantastic choreographers and companies, and she has a huge following on social media. She was also on a season of The Bachelor and has a following from the sort of reality TV world.
But it was just really cool for me to connect with a big star and someone that has that much influence. And she's super down to earth. We had a great conversation.
I love that she still has a positive view of social media, but she made it very clear that you need to set clear boundaries for yourself, whatever you're trying to do with social media. Set those boundaries from the get go so you don't get burnt out or develop some kind of resentment against it. Now at this point, I will also just give a quick shout out to Clancy Works Dance Company, which also hosts a summer teacher training session called the Dance Educators Training Institute.
I attended that in this past year, and I'm so happy I did. Not only was that great training, but I also got to connect with the next two guests that I had on my podcast, Maria Daniel and Neal Lynch. And they both were kind enough to agree to come on the podcast after meeting me just for the day and working together, which was a lot of fun.
Maria Daniel shared about dance education as ministry and the work that she's doing in that area. And a big takeaway for me was how dance is a great sort of language to use when addressing social, emotional well-being. And that can be applied in any setting.
It doesn't have to be just in a dance classroom. And Neal Lynch talked about teaching culturally sensitive hip hop. She is an absolute hip hop whiz.
I just love hearing her talk about hip hop and the passion that she has. And I really was struck by her advice to not be a quote, unquote, colorblind teacher, but to view every situation through a lens of recognizing diversity and recognizing that people might come from different places and have different experiences. If we discount those, we're taking away some of the value that we can have in our classroom.
So it's really important to actually value those, view those, and include those diversities of experience as part of our education. Nicole Perry was my next guest sharing about consent informed dance education, which was another episode that really resonated with me in so many ways. I felt really ignorant at the end of that episode because I had learned so much and there were so many things that I had not expected.
So one of the things that I think I went in with a little bit of a bias about was that implementing consent informed practices in a dance classroom could take away from technique time and the value that you're giving the dancers in the classroom. And I learned that that's totally not true. There are so many great ways that Nicole shared to give students more choice and more autonomy in the classroom, and it only will strengthen the education that you're giving them.
Rachel Jencks was my next guest who I met through a mutual friend, which was really fun. If you ever have a recommendation for someone that you think would be a good fit for the podcast, please let me know because that's how Rachel and I connected and I'm so glad we did. She shared her story and her tips for taking care of your body and your mind, not your students, which I mentioned in the episode we got to first, but yourself and what you need.
And I've shared it before, but I'll share it again. My biggest takeaway that Rachel mentioned, if you punish your body repeatedly for not giving you the results you want, that's called abuse. That would be called abuse in any other setting.
So that's true for your body too. So we need to find a gentler way to approach our relationship with our bodies. And the next guest after Rachel was Isaac Iskra, who actually was also introduced to me by a mutual friend, Maria Daniel.
So again, I love connecting with people that way. Thank you so much to anyone who's made a suggestion or connected me with a guest. And Isaac was talking about his experience as a dancer and choreography, having been diagnosed with autism in his twenties, as well as some tips for how to make our classrooms more friendly for autistic dancers.
And the biggest takeaway I got from that was just give students time, not just autistic students, but any student might need some more processing time. That's not the same for everyone. So give them time to process and give you the response before you shut them down or assume that they aren't capable.
My next guest was Olivia Liu, who I found through putting out a general call on social media, looking for a guest specifically to talk about this subject. I knew that it was something that I wanted to share on the podcast, but it's not my area of expertise. So I needed to find a qualified guest.
And the great thing is I actually found a lot of qualified guests, but I was able to work it so that some of the other guests that reached out to me from that social media sort of advertisement will now be guests speaking about other topics. So out of everyone that got back to me, I felt like Olivia was the perfect fit to talk about preparing recreational students for dance competitions. And we had a great conversation, lots of takeaways in that episode as well.
But the biggest one was give the dancers the responsibility to sort of take matters into their own hands. They will need to rehearse on their own time. They will need to clean on their own time.
So before you get into sending your students to competition, just make sure that they're responsible enough to handle that and that they have the time and resources to handle that. And once I had that interview done with Olivia Lou, I realized that a fabulous follow-up to that was talking about coaching artistry with Amy Bush. So she also does coaching and adjudicating, but she has a company that's just focused on coaching artistry in dance, which I think is so cool and so important.
And I love what Amy said, that dance is a conversation with the audience. So regardless of which direction you're facing, where you're traveling, what the formation is, you always need to be aware of how you're communicating and carrying on that conversation, whether it be with the judges or with a general audience or with a camera. Now, most recently, the theme has kind of switched from that competition thing that we had last month into dance business.
And to be honest, when I started the podcast, I kind of wanted to shy away from that because I'm not a studio owner. I'm not a dance business owner. So I just didn't think it was my place to talk about it, but I was able to connect with some guests that had amazing insight on just maximizing the results of your studio or your dance business, whatever it may be, whether it's a company, a studio, if you're a freelance choreographer, I was getting a lot of great insight and professional development ideas regarding that.
So even though it's not really my place, I was able to sit down and have some amazing conversations about that. The first one was with Audra Queen, who has her own podcast, the Dance CEO Podcast. And she actually also invited me.
We kind of did a reciprocal thing. So in the future, you may be able to catch me as a guest on her podcast, but she first sat down with me and she said something that took me a couple listens to actually catch and process. She said, have a goal in place for where you want to get, but you don't need to know the how you only need to have the goal.
This is a complete opposite of what I've typically done and how I've operated, but she said, you're going to develop skills along the way. So if you have a five-year plan and you lay out the how now you're only doing that with the skills that you have. Now you're not leaving space to incorporate the skills and connections and things you're going to learn along the way.
So you don't need to have a, how the, how will come. I absolutely loved that. And then I got the really cool opportunity to connect with Ian, who was in Australia, doing guest choreography at the time that we spoke.
So I got to look out his window at the beautiful view of the water and listen to these crazy birds outside his window. And it was just so cool. And our conversation went so well about the topic that we initially had kind of chosen to talk about that we ended up going on and on and on getting into Ian's background and the businesses that he started and what he's doing now and how he's grown his businesses and developed a plan for sustainability in the future.
And that was my biggest takeaway with Ian's episode was that you should have a plan for how you're going to sustain your business, even when your body won't necessarily hold up anymore to be doing constant movement and constant physical work. So that brings us to the present. That's all the guest episodes that I've recorded since starting the podcast back in June of 2024.
And to be honest, I never anticipated that I would have this many amazing, amazing guests on my podcast. I'm so grateful to each and every one of them as well as to all the listeners, because we have continued to grow. And that's been really exciting to I try to take Alicia's advice and not be looking at my stats all the time.
But it's so exciting when I take a peek and see that people are listening and sharing and we're gaining more and more listeners all the time. So because of that, I do plan to continue the podcast into 2025. We have some really, really exciting episodes coming up.
I will be taking a little bit of a break in the spring around recital time, I don't want to be putting too much pressure on myself. So we'll take a little break, but season one will continue right into the new year and I will announce when we'll take a brief hiatus and then start prepping for season two. If you again have a guest suggestion, if you think you yourself would be a great guest and have something important to share with our community, please let me know.
If there's a topic that you would like to learn more about, I'm sure that I could find a guest to speak on that. So please reach out to me and let me know. And the best way to do that is to join me in the casual dance teachers network on Facebook.
That's been another really fun element of starting this podcast that I've been able to connect with people through that group. So I'd love to hear from you there. If you prefer again to slide into my DMS, you can do that on Instagram at the casual dance teachers podcast.
And I also have the podcast's email address listed there. So you can email me if you would prefer to do it that way. I also mentioned this before, but it would be a huge gift to me if you would review or rate the podcast on whatever platform you're listening.
Our most listened to platform is Apple podcasts. But at the time that I'm recording this, I don't have any ratings or reviews on that platform, despite it being our highest rate of listeners. So if you're on Apple podcasts right now, just go hit some stars up at that top.
And you'd be doing me a huge favor and also helping to share some really valuable content with other dancers and dance educators. Another fun fact that I have not shared on the podcast yet is that GB mystical who wrote our theme music, I thank him in every episode and link in the show notes to his band camp, because there is tons of music there that he's produced, and he's actually my cousin. So again, when I was starting the podcast, I had no resources and no connections.
And I was lucky enough that he was willing to let me use a sample of his music that just went perfectly with the theme and the feel that I had in mind for the podcast. And so thank you again to GB mystical. Since we're approaching a new year, we're kind of wrapping up with this fun retrospective of the podcast to date.
I wanted to close with this quote by Walt Disney, "All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them."