The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Hello and welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast. This is your host, Maia. Today we're talking about a topic that I'm a little bit scared of.

I might even say I have some imposter syndrome around this topic, which is kind of crazy because I have a degree in dance with a concentration in choreography. And one of the things that I studied during that time, actually one of the first things that I studied in the choreography track was how to build a solo. And yet, after I graduated from college, when I was no longer in that academic setting and creating solos specifically either for myself to perform or for other dancers to perform, I felt so much pressure and like all of a sudden, I didn't know how to craft a solo that was dynamic and entertaining and exciting and new and innovative.

So when I had the opportunity to talk to today's guest, I knew I wanted to pick his brain about this topic. I'm so excited to welcome Jason Pickett to the show today. Jason Pickett, if you don't already know him, is a professional dance educator, choreographer, adjudicator, and an international artist who strives to help dancers grow to the next level of their artistic journeys.

Jason has performed live on shows like America's Got Talent, collaborated with global brands Hermes, Icon Fitness, Toys R Us, Crocs, Bud Light, and more, and been featured in viral YouTube videos, Stormtrooper Twerk and High School Dance Battle, Geeks vs. Cool Kids, 4K, just to name a few. In addition, Jason has toured internationally throughout Germany and Israel with Odyssey Dance Theater as company artist, and is the creator and host of No Starving Artists, a dance media company that provides mentoring, coaching, and peak performance strategy to dancers, parents, and teachers, and is currently a full-time faculty member with Reinforced Dance Experience.

Super stoked to talk to Jason about creating, rehearsing, setting, anything to do with the art of making a solo today. Let's talk about it. Welcome, Jason.

Jason
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. I'm super pumped to be here.

Maia
Yeah. We kind of decided to talk about a somewhat specific or narrow topic with solos, creating solos for dancers, and I know that's something that you do. But before we get into that, can you just tell us a little bit more about you?

Jason
Sure thing.Yeah. My name's Jason Pickett. Online, I go by HeyIt'sPickett, and I've been a competitive dance teacher for around 15 years. All that while, I was training dancers, choreographing pieces, the whole thing, going to competitions, teaching several days a week. Throughout there, I also danced professionally for a handful of years, some things here in Utah, some things outside of Utah, globally as well, which was really cool. And then as of more recently, I've taken the role of really kind of narrowing down to just education and mentorship.

Those are kind of the things that I am currently doing. I'm a full-time faculty member with Reinforced Dance Experience, which is a dance convention and competition that's brand new for this season. And then I'm on faculty for a bunch of other events as well, which is amazing.

And I have a company called No Starving Artist, which is mentorship, education, feedback, and training. So we offer all of those things all under one house. And yeah, that's kind of the elevator pitch.

Maia
Yeah. I'm seeing you with the No Starving Artist and your own podcast, HeyIt'sPickett. And you just keep popping up in different realms, which I think is so cool. And congratulations on that, just being involved in so many different things and the platform that you've built. Yeah. So I do want to pick your brain about something that I feel so ill-equipped myself to talk about and do.

I just have a lot of fear around creating solos for dancers. I've done it a little bit here and there. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

I think it's kind of daunting when you just have one body in space. How do you fill the space? How do you make it new and innovative and create something that doesn't feel derivative or get boring? So let's get into that. My first question is, when you're creating a solo for a dancer, are you just creating that and setting it on them? Or do you take a more collaborative approach? Because I've seen very mixed approaches with how much input you give the dancer.

Jason
I would say my workflow for solos is extremely collaborative. No, I mean, it's definitely not overly collaborative, but it leans heavily on the collaboration side of things. For a couple of reasons.

One is, I want the person to ultimately enjoy their solo. It's not for me. So a lot of times, solos that I set are not even really things that I would not necessarily enjoy, but that I would excel at doing.

They're really kind of geared towards that dancer. All the way down to the music. A lot of times, I'm notoriously unprepared.

That's one thing to just lay out there. It's sort of like a schtick at this point, but it's really not. I really don't prep much ever for anything.

Team routines, solos, classes, anything. Solos are probably the least prepped thing that I do because I don't have to do formations. At least with team routines, sometimes I'm going in with some formations in mind.

With a solo, I don't even have to worry about that. So I just go in with a couple of songs and we go from there. I'll usually have the dancer improv to the music.

I'm not necessarily looking for anything specific, but I'm looking for how they react to the music. If they immediately jump in and start moving, if they immediately start finding the pocket, then that means that's probably the track that we're going to go with. Then from there, we just kind of start building.

Everything is really, really hyper-focused on the flow of the routine. So I try to be really mindful of every single move making sense with the move that came before it and the move that's going to come afterwards.

Maia
Cool. So it sounds like your approach starts out very focused on the actual movement vocabulary, and then you just kind of let the pathway and the use of the space itself develop organically out of that. Is that right?

Jason
A hundred percent. Yeah. And especially too, because I find myself in a position where I'm working with dancers who I maybe don't know that well, or I haven't worked with a ton. And so I want to make sure that I am building the choreography around what they're currently good at and strong at. I think when I work with kids consistently, I'm a little bit more on the side of like, let's give you some things to push you.

But I take a little bit more of the approach of like from the consumer end, which is like if I was paying for something, I want it to be something that's like executable and strong and good a few weeks after I get it. I don't know. That's just my take.

And I know there's differing opinions there. But yeah, so that's why that initial improv is so important, because also improv tells you a lot about a dancer. It tells you how confident they are.

It tells you what their skills are, what their strengths are, because they're going to kind of lean into those things. So if we start improv-ing and the dancer's doing a lot of turns or they're doing a lot of legs, then we're going to lean into that thing over the other as we kind of progress forward.

Maia
How much do you tie in your movement creation with the music? Are you basing a lot of it on just the improv and like, okay, let's create some phrases and then put it to the music? Or are you very bound with the music and choreographing to it?

Jason
I do a little bit of both, but there's a really specific reason why I'll do movement first.

So I would say I traditionally lead with just the music. The music is everything to me. That guides so, so much.

If I find myself getting stuck or if I find myself feeling like we need something that's a little bit different to change up the flow or change up the dynamics, then I'll kind of just create something and then we'll fit it to the music for like a small portion of the solo. So it's a little bit of both, but I would say predominantly it's the music is the lead for sure.

Maia
Okay. One of the big areas that I struggle with is I think I'm pretty good about creating movement that is innovative. Using improv, you know, you can use the body and really come up with new stuff. But then I got stuck with how are we presenting this on stage as a single body on stage, making sure it's not stagnant, making sure it does move.

And we have a dynamic opening and a dynamic closing, but making it different from the last solo I did and the one before that. I feel like I fall into patterns of like, this is what I think makes a really strong opening. So now I keep doing it.

So do you find that you fall into those patterns and what do you do to break out of that if you do?

Jason
I think so for sure. And it depends on the style. I do a lot more hip hop solos than anything else.

So, you know, in those, I'm probably going to find myself falling into patterns more so than when I'm doing a contemporary solo or a more movement based solo. Or, you know, if it's a style that I'm experimenting with and it's all new, so it tends to be a little bit more fresh. But I think the music, going back to that is definitely, that's one part is like whenever I feel like I'm getting repetitive or I feel like I'm getting stuck, I lean into the music.

What's the music saying or what is it sounding like? And can I just accent that? And will it work? I'm never afraid to try anything. I'm never afraid to like, there's never like a, even when I was kind of coming up teaching, it was like, I would come up with these ideas in my head and I knew they weren't executable. I knew they were not possible, but I would just give them to the kids and just see what kind of happens.

And they, you know, they moan and groan and like, we can't do that. And it's like, we'll just do something. I don't know.

And, you know, nine times out of 10, something happens that ends up being close to kind of what I was wanting. So I'm never afraid to try anything. I'm never afraid to change anything.

I'm never afraid to disrupt anything like that. Because to me, the process, the whole process is the process, not like the specific piece that I'm creating. So whether that means that a change needs to happen or something needs to get affected or, you know, redone, that's still a part of the process.

It's not ruining anything or changing anything or anything like that. And then the other thing is I just don't, to be honest, I just don't worry about it too much. Like the only thing I would say I worry about, and it's because I critique it so much when I'm judging, is staging.

So when I am setting a piece, I'm really, really hyper-focused on like, where is the routine moving? And are we using the stage? And what's the purpose? So, you know, is there a lot of times for me, I think this is something I do get a little bit repetitive on, is usually there's some entity off stage or the corner of the stage or that we're kind of, you know, directing energy to at times. And it becomes a through line throughout the piece, something we can recall back to. But it also just helps me kind of keep track of like, okay.

And that's the one thing too. The more that I'm thinking about it, staging is the one thing too, that I'm a little bit more analytical about. So, you know, as I'm setting the piece, I'm like, okay, we're on this side of the stage.

We need to get to the other side of the stage. So how do we do that? And we can still have freedom in doing that, but we need to get over there. So how are we going to do that? And it doesn't always work.

I mean, staging is just hard. Staging is really, really hard in a solo. And it doesn't always work.

Sometimes I come back and I watch a piece and I'm like, what was I doing? Like, this doesn't move at all. And so then that becomes the focus of that lesson. But I try to really kind of focus on that.

And I think that helps with repetition too. If you're, because if you fixate too much on the choreography, then you're going to fall into patterns because you're, you know, you're trying to make the choreography good. As opposed to if you're just kind of focused on the whole process and the flow of the piece and making sure it matches the music.

And when the music rides, you ride, then, you know, you're much less likely to fall into those repetition patterns.

Maia
Yeah. I really like what you said about having like an entity that you're directing energy towards because I think, I mean, you have your solos where it's like a jazz solo and you're like hamming it up for the judges.

But a lot of times I think if you are too focused on just the movement and you're not coaching the staging and where the energy should be directed and what the impetus is behind it, it can become very kind of self-aware and it feels like a little flat because everything is just to the judges, the invisible judges in front of you or whatever it is. So that's a great thing to reflect on and kind of changing gears into what your rehearsal process is as opposed to the creative process. You said you're often working with dancers that you don't know that well. So how much time do you typically allocate for teaching a new dancer, a new solo?

Jason
Solos, I'm kind of firing through. I'm going to be honest. Maybe three to five hours max. But a lot of times it's falling in that like three-hour category. And I'm always happy to like when I'm back in town or via Zoom to like reconvene with solos and things like that. But I think that works for me because the process is so catered to the dancer that for the most part, this is not across the board, but for the most part, the kids that I'm working with can decently execute their solo by the end of that three hours because it's kind of custom fit to them. It feels good for them. So that would be that. Team routines, I'm a little bit more lengthy on.

And interesting enough, when I was teaching, majority of the time, because I should qualify that, I haven't taught inside of a studio regularly for about a year and a half now. But up until that point, I was doing the normal stuff. And typically, it was only a couple studios that I worked at where I strayed from this.

But I was doing choreography throughout the season. So I wasn't setting the piece all at once and then cleaning it afterwards. It was kind of this living, breathing organism from the beginning of the season all the way up until we competed.

And to be honest, even past that point, I'm one of those teachers. I have no shame in claiming it. I am a changer. I will always be a changer. I'm a changer like the day of competition. I'm a changer the week after we competed.

And there was really multiple reasons for it. One was because there would be things I would see on stage and I'm like, doesn't work. And then two, I think it's a good push for the kids too.

They get complacent with the routines. They start to not like the routines. And so sometimes it's a whole song.

I would change whole songs midway through the season just because it just wasn't working. And I know a lot of people get, and rightfully so, they get kind of stuck on the pieces they set. I've just, thankfully, I've never had that sort of habit for the most part. I've always kind of been open to like, yeah, this isn't working.

Maia
Mm-hmm. I was even going to say to you before we started, just based on emailing back and forth with you, like, I get the sense you are the opposite of me. Like, you don't have anxiety, it seems to me. And you have like more of an open vibe, I think, or like chill. And I'm very high strung and have anxiety about everything. So I just love hearing that that is not a problem to make changes. I mean, it's been a work in progress.

Jason
I mean, I've definitely always been, for the most part, pretty easygoing. And I deal with stress well. But I think the difference in my energy the past year has been doing a lot of work to validate all of those things that I did. Because before it just seemed like these weird, quirky things that no one else really did.

Everybody was super prepared and they had their formations. I know people that like journal their whole routine. Like they write down individual moves.

And in my head, I'm like, I don't even know what that would like, why would I do that? And then this year was really kind of seeking out information and resources that really validated that like, no, this is an OK process. It's not the right process. I don't think there is a right process.

But it's an OK process. And then that really kind of dangerously opened the floodgates to where I was like, OK, cool. And I guess I don't have to worry about anything.

Maia
Yeah. No, that's so cool. And I think especially if you're working with a dancer that's not your every week consistent student, they're going to need to be able to adapt with or without your presence.

So giving them adaptations and making them quickly take them and run with them allows them to then in the future not be freaked out by you not being able to hold their hand.

Jason
Yeah. I give that freedom. I pass that freedom along to the kids that I work with as well. I always make a point of saying like, hey, this is yours now. This is not mine.

So, you know, consult with me if you want to change the whole thing. But like if there's something that's not working, just fix it. It's not it's not that serious.

I mean, I just don't think that and again, this is a very personal viewpoint. I don't feel like competitive dance is the avenue for me to like safeguard my artistry to a point where it takes away from the kids ability to do their routine. And so, yeah, I like things to be really natural as well.

I'm relatively selective about the kids that I do solos with not because it's like some high thing. It's just like I just I don't I hate I have a weird thing with value. I don't want someone to pay me for something and then it them get something that doesn't work for them or it's too hard or wasn't what they planned on it being like that's my worst nightmare.

And so I don't think I do a very good job at it. But I try to like filter as much as possible. Like I don't think this is a good fit.

And a lot of times it's really natural. I did a solo this year for a dancer in Connecticut and it's one of my favorite solos I've ever done. And it was extremely, extremely natural.

We did a private lesson. We just were workshopping a combo because she, you know, she had danced all day. She was really tired.

So we were just like, oh, let's just like put some moves together. And that was the end of it. We workshopped this little combo, like maybe 15, 20 seconds.

And her mom texted me like late that evening and was like, she can't stop thinking about this combo. Like, could we set it as a solo? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. Like that that to me means that this is this was yours.

This was meant to be yours. This was supposed to be yours because the moves were not premeditated. This was a song I had had in my playlist.

I'd been wanting to use for a while. Had never done anything with it. And it somehow landed on this dancer at a time when it made sense for that dancer to land on.

And it turned out being this incredible solo that, you know, I'm really proud of. She's really proud of and is really different as well. So I don't know.

I think like I, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself super spiritual or super holistic, but I think there's elements of my approach that are just that.

Maia
Hmm. I feel like that about dance in general. I feel like there has to be something bigger than you, However you identify that, guiding you to keep doing what we do. Yeah.

Jason
Yeah. Otherwise you go crazy. Yeah. Especially me because I don't plan.

Like I literally walk in the room and I'm like, it'll come. It's going to come eventually. And thankfully, up to this point, it always has.

Maia
That's what I was going to ask you next. Like, have you ever run into a situation where you're starting to run out of time and it's not coming together?

Jason
So I think I, I don't know how, I think it's a mixture of like too much caffeine and just my own internal madness. But I can most often get myself into like a flow state, not necessarily on command, but I know that at some point it will happen.

And so I'm not afraid of that delay. And I, I tend to kind of foreshadow. I probably should foreshadow more when I set pieces, but sometimes I will just kind of let the dancers know like, Hey, if, if it starts coming and it starts flowing, we're going to pick up speed and I'm going to start slamming you with choreography and you just got to hang in there and we'll come back and we can go through it.

But when that hits, you have to just kind of grab on and like, all right, let's do it. And so I just take it slow. If I don't have inspiration for that day, which, which happens, there's pieces where I've like, I've cut the music the morning up and I'm like, I hope this works.

And you just start slow. You just start slow. You just start doing stuff.

And eventually, like, at least for me, it just, it hits and I'm like, okay, cool. I know where this is going. And then I'm also always trying to be really aware of like, when that stops, we pivot, we go to a different part of the song.

We go to, um, you know, we go back and clean a little bit. That's a big key for me as well is again, I'm not tied to the process. However, it ends up unfolding is how it ends up unfolding.

Somehow it always works. I don't, I don't know. Up to this point, I've never not finished a piece in the allotted time that I gave the studio to do.

Maia
That's amazing. Do you feel like you typically do have enough time to do cleaning as part of your process, work on artistry and performance quality? Or is that kind of something that you have to leave to the dancer?

Jason
It depends. I usually try to give some sort of direction on, on performance, even if I don't have time to like coach it a lot, but the pieces are always finished.

They're always 100% formatted transitions are there. And the, you know, the dancers can make it through the whole piece. I'll say, I'll put it in that terminology, but no, sometimes, sometimes not.

And sometimes it's just a question of like logistics. Like it just doesn't work out. I would love to be able to have 10 hours to set a piece over the course of three days, but it's kind of balancing, like in the position I'm in, it's balancing time, money and resources.

So, you know, one night at a hotel is a lot cheaper than three. So it's trying to be a little bit flexible where it matters. And I think like, sometimes it just, it, I just take it as a challenge.

I don't know this, this past season, I just did a really poor job of checking my schedule for a trip that I had planned. And a couple of days before I was looking through my schedule and the one studio that I was at, I had three and a half hours to set a team routine. And I was like, okay, never done that before.

Like, this is usually something I do over like six to eight hours. And at first, at first I was like, I can't do this. Like, it's not, this is impossible.

And then I was just like, there's literally nothing I can do. The flights are booked. The hotels are booked. Everything's booked. So we're going to rock it and make it happen. And we did.

And the piece turned out great. So sometimes it's like, I don't know, you got to play the cards where they land.

Maia
Trust the process. Is what's coming to mind, as cheesy as it sounds.

Jason
Yeah, yeah. It's out there. It's waiting for you to be open to it, is my opinion on it. I think, like, you know, artistry is something that like, if you're open to it, it will overwhelm you in ways that you never anticipated if you're open to receiving those inputs from your surroundings.

Maia
I feel like I'm in therapy right now. Everything you're saying is like, Maia, it's going to be okay. You don't have to have every count.

Jason
It's always okay. It's always okay. I mean, I mentor a lot of dancers and like, when we start talking about fears or things they're nervous about, the process we always go through is like, what's the worst case scenario? And you know, these kids will be like, you know, I'm worried I'm going to forget my solo.

And it's like, okay, has that ever happened to you? And they're like, it happened when I was five one time. And I'm like, okay, so we got one time out of 10 years. Those odds are not very high.

And then I go, but let's say you do. You forget the whole solo. What's the worst case scenario? And they're like, I mean, I walk off and that's it.

And I'm like, yeah, you're still alive. You're not injured and you can do it again next time. So when we start to rank the things that we're scared of, we start to realize that like, on a scale of one to death, they're pretty low.

Maia
Yeah, a mix up on a solo is pretty low on the totem pole. That's so good. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Okay, so I'm totally going to pivot here because I want to wrap up fairly soon. But I want to hear more before we do that about no starving artists.

I know that's like kind of off on another tangent.

Jason
Yeah, that's okay.

Maia
But I'm just really interested in the work that you do with that. So can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Jason
Of course. Yeah, yeah. So like I said, the kind of like main things that we, I always say we, and I really shouldn't do that because there's nobody else.

It's just me. There's no we. But there's the education component.

There's the mentorship component and the feedback component. So the education format takes the form of an on-demand platform called The Club. Dancers can join. It's $12.99 a month and they get access to a bunch of on-demand videos. I wanted it to be something that was different. So it's a lot of videos about like musicality and movement quality and textures and how to pick up choreography faster.

There is some combos in there, but that's not the focus. The mentorship side takes the place of one-on-one mentorship that I do with dancers. And they tend to be what I would call like high-performing dancers.

So these are dancers that are, you know, regularly in the top 10 at competitions, if not in those top three spots. And that's not all, and that's not who it's necessarily catered to, but that's just kind of who gravitates towards the program. And then the feedback side is dance critiques.

So dancers can send over their solos, their team routines, duos, trios, and I give them feedback just like I was judging them. And then the other component in that education bucket is the podcast. To me, I view that as like the free... Aside from like all the content I put out, the podcast is really like just me kind of offering up conversations that I think are interesting to people, centered around this idea that we don't have to be starving artists to be creative.

It's something I always struggled with coming up was that if I was successful, then I had sold out and I was no longer an artist. So this is kind of my way of like battling that or kind of, you know, sticking it to the man of like, we can have success, traditional success and still be an artist and that's okay.

Maia
So good. I love that idea and the platform that you've kind of built around it and the content that you're putting out around it. That kind of covers a little bit how people can learn more about you. And we did debrief a little bit at the beginning, but just to kind of bookend it for people if they want to follow up, get more from you, get in touch. Can you take us through different avenues for that?

Jason
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. The website for No Starving Artists is nsadance.com. So it's just No Starving Artists abbreviated dance.com. And that's linked in my Instagram bio, which is at heyitspickett.

And you can find me at heyitspickett everywhere. I unfortunately do not have TikTok anymore because I got a new phone and gonzo bonzo. But I am still on there.

So if you do have TikTok, you can check me out there. And yeah, you can DM me or email me. Feel free to do either.

I definitely respond to email the most frequently. I'm not going to say fast, but faster than Instagram. And yeah, if you have questions or anything like that, you can absolutely reach out.

Maia
Awesome. Now, I did not ask you this ahead of time. So if you want to opt out, totally fine.

But do you have a favorite quote about dance or pertaining to dance in some way that you can share with us?

Jason
A favorite quote? There is one that I heard at a dance competition. It was Starbound Dance Competition circa who knows when. I mean, probably 2013, 2014.

And the director, Sandy Coit, is the one who said it. And the quote was, only those who see the invisible can do the impossible. And I don't think it was her quote, but she was the person that I heard it from.

Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible.

And I've always, I don't know why, it's always stuck with me. It's something that I've never forgotten.

It was like, I probably shouldn't give this out on the internet, but I don't think it is anymore. It was my password for a lot of things for a long time. But yeah, so I think I just love it because I think it's really, really true.

Like you can't do, you know, something crazy unless you're able to see what other people don't see. And yeah, so it's kind of something I've, I've really kind of lived by for, you know, since I heard it until now.

Maia
That's pretty profound for dance competition. Like, wow.

Jason
Yeah. It was one of those things. She was just kind of like giving a speech at like the awards ceremony. And like, I couldn't tell you what teams of mine were competing. I couldn't tell you the exact year.

I couldn't tell you anything else she said. But for some reason that like stuck with me for, I mean, up until this point, I'll never forget it. That's awesome.

Maia
Well, thank you so much. And I think that really ties in with this whole conversation. Like we're talking about something that could be pretty mundane, which is just like, how do you make a solo for dancers? But we got into some pretty profound stuff and like the mental preparation behind it and like spiritually pouring yourself into it. So that's a perfect way to cap it.

Jason
A hundred percent. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I love this topic.

Maia
Wow. This is Maia. I'm back after having that conversation and reflecting a little bit, and I'm still kind of in shock that we started talking about creating solos and it got really vulnerable there for a minute. And I hope you all not only learned some really practical skills and advice about crafting solos, but also kind of took that journey with us into kind of delving into how, who we are at our core and the things that motivate us and inspire us feed into the things that we create.

I think that is such a cool development to this conversation. And I hope you all appreciate it as much as I do. So please join me in thanking Jason Pickett again for this wonderful conversation.

In addition, thank you so much to my newest partner, Dance News Daily. If you're not familiar with Dance News Daily already, you can probably figure out from the name that this is an amazing source to get daily dance news. Dancenewsdaily.com is the website with tons of up-to-date dance news from all different genres, and it's from all over the world.

There's articles about new works being created, classes, the latest literature on dance. It's so amazing, but my favorite feature is the daily email. So on the website, dancenewsdaily.com, you can sign up for free and you can get a daily email that has links to all these different articles from different news sources, telling you what's new in the dance world today.

Obviously with the podcast, it's really helpful for me to stay up to date on what's new in the dance world. But as a teacher, I think it's also so important to steer my dancers towards getting news and reading about what's going on in the dance world. And it can be really overwhelming and they might go to sources that I'd rather they not get their information from.

Like I don't want them just going on TikTok to get the latest in the dance world. So to have it all in an email that you can encourage your students to subscribe to, but that you can also just open real quick every morning, scan through, grab what's relevant to you, share it with your students. And it can be like a headline of the week type of tradition that you start with your dance classes and just a really great learning opportunity for everyone.

So be sure to check out dancenewsdaily.com and subscribe to the Dance News Daily email. I also want to thank GB Mystical, who certainly pours himself into his art as well and created the wonderful theme music at the beginning of the show. And thank you to all of you listening.

And please do continue to interact and maybe be vulnerable with me by sharing what you think in our Facebook group, the Casual Dance Teachers Network, or on our Instagram page, the Casual Dance Teachers podcast on Instagram, or leaving a review for the podcast on whatever platform you're listening. Thank you again, and I'll see you next time.