Passion for Dance

Any dancer dreaming of a professional career is most likely working hard in the studio and honing their skills to be the strongest dancer they can be, but in the professional dance world, talent is only 20% of the equation. There are a lot of other skills to master that make up that other 80%. This 80/20 rule where success as a professional dancer is 20% talent, 80% everything else comes from my esteemed guest today, Menina Fortunato. Menina's mission is to help the next generation of dancers create their dream dance careers. She had her own remarkable career for three decades in this dance industry. She has navigated the demands of both on-camera and behind-the-scenes work while also juggling the responsibilities of being a loving wife and devoted mother of three. Menina has worked on prominent television shows and films including America's Got Talent, Star Trek: Enterprise, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and she's graced stadium stages entertaining massive crowds with superstars like Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Carrie Underwood, Paula Abdul, and so many more. Menina and I talk about maintaining motivation as a professional dancer, how our current generation could learn more about rejection and handling negative emotions through mental toughness and some mindset advice for aspiring professionals. And, of course, she'll break down her 80/20 rule and share what that other 80% is all about! Resources - Follow Menina on Instagram: www.instagram.com/meninafortunato Connect with The Business of Dance: www.bizofdance.com Connect with The Hollywood Summer Tour www.dancehst.com Connect with Menina: www.meninafortunato.com Sign up to the Passion for Dance Email List: www.chelseapierotti.com/email   Key Highlights - [3m 51s] - Menina’s Dance Background [10m 12s] - Menina’s Favorite Memory Onstage [14m 17s] - What’s Kept Menina Motivated Professionally [17m 48s] - Menina’s View on Values [19m 19s] - The 80/20 Rule [29m 16s] - Challenges Menina Sees in Dancers Seeking a Professional Career [34m 45s] - Menina’s Take on Balance and Mindset [39m 03s] - Menina’s Thoughts on Managing Chaos  

Do you have much experience with dance outside of your own culture? Since it's International Dance Day, I want to take today's episode to focus on dance as a source of heritage and identity and how it can truly connect us across our different cultures, but I can't do it alone. My guest today is four-time Emmy Award-winning host and executive producer of the show Bare Feet, Mickela Mallozzi, who is on a mission to experience the world one dance at a time. In today’s episode, Mickela and I talk about the need to be vulnerable when you're learning something new and how we have to let go of perfection so that we can genuinely be curious and learn from other cultures and experience dance through their eyes. She shares her views on the various cultural foundations of dance that are not often taught, and she shares some great stories like learning the dance with the people of the Garifuna who survived exile only to maintain, thrive, and grow their cultural heritage, including their native dances. I hope you enjoy the cultural exploration of dance in this episode, and let’s celebrate International Dance Day together! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/157 Connect with Mickela on the Bare Feet website: www.travelbarefeet.com Follow Mickela and Bare Feet on Instagram: www.instagram.com/travelbarefeet Sign up to my Email List: www.chelseapierotti.com/email  

Dancers, this one is directly for you! You can be a mentally healthy dancer who is ALSO mentally tough. Here's the difference between mental toughness and mental health and how you can build your mental toughness. Learn more at: https://chelseapierotti.com/156  

Do you feel like it's getting harder and harder to challenge your dancers and hold them to a high standard without hurting their feelings or being seen as a mean coach? When I talk to dance educators, many of them express this internal conflict where they want to push their dancers for more and help them see the value of hard work, but they might be scared of nasty parent phone calls, worried about being fired, and have a genuine fear of harming the dancers they care so much about. I understand the stress and fear, and I also appreciate the desire to recognize mental health. In today's episode, I’ll be sharing the difference between mental health and mental toughness so that you can be the teacher that is able to create happier, more successful dancers through mental skills. We’ll talk about how mental health and mental toughness go hand in hand, and I’ll share a few strategies to help you help your dancers build mental toughness. I hope this episode helps you see that it is possible to teach our dancers to be mentally tough while also protecting their wellbeing! https://chelseapierotti.com/email Episode 66 about Mental Health in Sports: https://chelseapierotti.com/66 Other Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/156  

Before you dive too fast into next season, do you stop and ask your dancers to reflect on the past season and share their candid thoughts with you? Though I know sometimes at the end of the season it's easy to go straight into next season, hopefully you take a small break in between.  While it can be hard to hear, and I understand sending out a survey or sitting down to talk might feel nerve wracking to you, it's incredibly powerful to do this with your dancers. One of the most untapped resources is your leadership (either formal captains, graduating seniors, or even upcoming leaders). Asking them key questions can completely change your next season for the better. In today’s episode I’ll share with you why it's so valuable to ask your dancers questions at the end of the year. I’ll also be talking about how I learned to ask my dancers to pause and reflect on the last season as well as share with you the five questions you should specifically ask your captains. I promise these reflections with your captains at the end of the year will change how you plan and set yourself up for the next season! Improvement Season Free Challenge: https://chelseapierotti.com/challenge Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/155  

Do you teach dancers under ten years old? Can you teach dancers that little about mental toughness, or is it better to wait? I'm often asked if mental skills training is appropriate for young dancers taking level one classes or in the mini competitive program. The answer is, yes, it is appropriate. In this episode, I’ll share three key ideas to build mental toughness in young dancers. We’ll also discuss how mental training is just like physical training and the importance of exposing your young dancers to mental skills training at a young age. Talking about mental skills, mindset, resilience might seem like an advanced conversation or just too much for our youngest dancers, but I'm here to say you can talk to dancers about mental toughness at every age. If you teach young dancers, tune in to hear more about building mental toughness at any age! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/154 Follow the show: https://followthepodcast.com/passionfordance

In the dance world, summer isn’t just the time for intensives and summer camps, it’s also a time for a whole lot of planning. If you're someone like me who loves a good planner, someone who color codes everything, and someone who enjoys mapping out the next year to come, I'm excited to share my planning process with you! If you don’t consider yourself a planner, I encourage you to listen in and consider a new perspective: you can be a planner if you want to. In this episode, we’ll break down my four-step planning process of reviewing the year ahead, choosing what to focus on, digging into your calendar, and dialing into Q1 of the upcoming year. If you want to see some growth in your dancers this next year, tune into this episode to hear all about my four-step planning process! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/153 Get The Ultimate Planning Workbook: www.chelseapierotti.com/planner Follow Passion for Dance: www.lovethepodcast.com/passionfordance    

This episode is an incredible story of resilience and how one woman went from leaving an abusive home at 14 to creating a life for herself as a performer and business owner. Our guest today, Josephine Lancuba, is an award-winning performing arts business and talent management professional from Sydney, Australia. She's an educator, speaker, talent agent, and has spent two decades in the arts industry, leading and managing studios and production-based businesses (including her own musical theater studio) for the last ten years. Josephine's story of resilience is absolutely inspiring, but it's more than that because she shares actionable tips for building resilience as a teacher, studio owner, and how we can help our dancers. We also talk about building confidence, defining your own success, and the power of forgiveness. Hopefully this Passion for Dance conversation will lift your spirits and inspire you to keep sharing your passion for dance! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/152 Listen to Studio Biz and All That Jazz: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/studio-biz-and-all-that-jazz/id1592213015 Josephine’s Website: https://www.josephinelancuba.com/ Connect with Josephine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephinelancuba/  

Dancers, have ever wished you felt more confident? Dance teachers, have you ever felt like you’ve tried everything to help your dancers believe in themselves, yet it's falling on deaf ears? The truth is, as dancers and humans, we can’t just sit around and wait to become more confident; we have to take action in order to gain confidence. In the episode, I'll be sharing the key insight into gaining confidence. We’ll break down learning the skill of confidence, why confident actions must come before confident thoughts, and examples of how you can take small actions every day to become more confident as a dancer and in your life. Stop waiting for some magic thing to happen that will give you confidence, and tune in to learn about this simple yet powerful action you can take to immediately see a positive shift in your confidence! Competition Day Journal Prompts: www.chelseapierotti.com/confidence Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/151  

Do you wish you had dancers who pushed themselves in class and held themselves accountable? This seems to be a common challenge for a lot of dance teachers: we wish our dancers would embrace a challenging class with a positive attitude and enjoy the process of training to be an excellent dancer. In today’s episode, I'm going to tackle the concept of accountability in class and getting dancers to go full out with a friend of mine, the incredible dance teacher, Kelsey Nelson. Kelsey likes to dig into what developing artists need, and dancers who train with her are given tools to aid in both their mental and physical needs while also learning proper foundation and technique. She created her own cross-training and teaching method, and today we get to learn all about it. Before she started her journey as an educator, Kelsey worked professionally on various major motion pictures and corporate work, and now she travels across the country working for national talent competitions and conventions. She is impacting the dance industry and is so sought after for her innovative and knowledgeable training and coaching, which is why I wanted to bring her here to you. She's a master at teaching challenging classes that help dancers find their own motivation and accountability, and she's going to share her little secrets with you today! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/150 Follow Kelsey Nelson on Instagram: www.instagram.com/kjndance Email Kelsey: kjndance@gmail.com Connect with Kelsey: www.kelseynelson.com Follow Passion for Dance: www.lovethepodcast.com/passionfordance  

Do you find yourself getting crazy busy during competition season? You’re burning the candle at both ends only to crash hard and probably get sick as soon as it's over? If you're a passionate dance teacher, you've probably pushed yourself too hard. I see you, and I get it. I think many dance teachers can relate. We are passionate, and we care about our dancers, so we push ourselves and have really high standards in order to serve. If you feel like you're more productive when you're busy, or if you've ever said, “I just have to push through the next two weeks, then I can slow down a bit,” but that never happens, I want to share another way forward. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about how to push for our dreams and goals in the dance industry while paying attention to what psychologists call the alarm response. The alarm response is a cycle our bodies and brains enter into when we’re stressed. We’ll take a closer look at the three stages of this alarm response, and I’ll give you a few tips on how to take care of yourself when you’re experiencing this. I hope this episode helps you to stop this cycle in its tracks before stress causes a five-alarm fire in your body! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/149 Stress Management Tools for Dance Teachers: https://chelseapierotti.com/stress  

Have you heard of grit? Even if you haven’t, I bet you've seen it or you've felt it. Grit is the mental skill that could be the difference between getting that challenging turn section or staying stuck at your current level. This episode is for the dancers out there who have big dreams and goals in our dance industry but might need help to develop a little grit. I’ll be sharing what grit is, why you need it, and how you can start practicing this mental skill today to see a real difference in your dance skills tomorrow. We’ll dive into the two parts of what it takes to become a gritty dancer and how to lean into creating a healthy passion for a dance for yourself as a dancer. If you have big goals and dreams in dance, tune in to learn how to develop your grit! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/148 Rate and Follow the Podcast! https://lovethepodcast.com/passionfordance    

When you're trying to motivate your dancers using positive coaching, you might focus on celebrating the small wins, cheering them on, praising every step of growth along the way. That all sounds good, but let's talk about the flipside: could too much praise be a bad thing? In this episode, I'm going to tell you all about what psychologists call the Good Job Coach, and as it turns out, the Good Job Coach might not be as motivational as you might think. We’ll discuss the importance of specificity with feedback and the sweet spot of balance between praise, instruction, and redirection. Tune in to hear all about what too much praise can do to your dancers and how to keep their spirits high! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/147 Follow the show: https://followthepodcast.com/passionfordance  

If you’re a part of the dance world, you probably saw the University of Minnesota's jazz dance routine at UDA Nationals with the passion and technique and the now viral turn section. But how do they pull off two incredible routines year after year? Well, I invited the University of Minnesota's coach, Amanda Gaines, to the podcast to tell me all about it on this episode! Today's episode covers all four pillars of the podcast. Coach Gaines shares how she motivates her athletes, her mindset, and personal coaching philosophy, how her dancers learn to be resilient after mistakes, and the value of having a solid community around you. Coach Amanda Gaines is in her 12th season coaching the University of Minnesota dance team and her 16th total season with the program. She’s been an integral member of the Golden Gophers, winning 17 different national championships between 2006 and now, and she's graciously agreed to come on the show and tell us all about it - including whose crazy idea it was to turn, do an aerial, and keep turning. Tune in to catch all the great coaching advice and behind-the-scenes stories from the University of Minnesota Dance Team Coach, Amanda Gaines! Follow the Show: https://followthepodcast.com/passionfordance Website Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/146  

Real talk: are you too hard on yourself? When you leave a competition, do you start thinking about the next event as soon as this one is over? Are you a little too self-critical and don't allow yourself any moment to just enjoy the present? If everything isn't perfect during a competition, do you beat yourself up over it? We often discuss perfectionism with our dancers, but are you a perfectionist yourself? Do you know how to handle your own deep-rooted perfectionism so that it doesn't cause you to burn out? In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about you, the coach, the teacher, the mentor. It’s all about ensuring your own perfectionism isn't getting in the way of your joy of teaching. We’ll discuss the effects of negative self-talk, mindfulness while coaching, and how self-awareness of the things we say to ourselves can impact how we show up for our dancers. To all of my recovering perfectionist dance coaches out there, this episode is brought to you by the dance coach membership, Relevé, a community for dance coaches on the rise. Head over to www.chelseapierotti.com/membership to learn more about how to join us inside this membership where you will get the support and guidance to find a new level of joy and success in coaching! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/145  

Summary: Do you ever look at another dance team you admire and think, “They must be so locked in. Every single practice they're probably making progress and getting better every day”? I guarantee that a team you admired at that event didn't just get better every day. There were setbacks along the way. There were days when it felt like progress wasn't happening, but that's why they did so well - these excellent teams understand that setbacks are good. In this episode, we’ll focus in on the three things to do when you have setbacks in your goals. We’ll discuss the benefits of shifting our mindset around setbacks, why it’s important to pause and reset as well as track our dancers’ progress, and I'll tell you what to do when you have a setback coming up. Enjoy this episode of Passion for Dance! Starter Journal Free Dowload: https://chelseapierotti.com/journal Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/144

Summary: Disappointment is something we all have to go through, but we don't actually talk about how. We're just supposed to get over it and keep pushing forward. So how exactly do you deal with disappointment and continue pushing forward? In today’s episode, I'll be speaking directly to the dancers, and we’ll be talking about how to deal with disappointment. Maybe you didn't get the role you wanted, you didn’t book the audition you were hoping for, or you're disappointed in how your solo scored last week. If you're a dancer, the likelihood is that you've had to wrestle with this negative emotion of being disappointed, so tune in to hear more about the six steps to dealing with disappointment. This way, the next time you need a little pick-me-up after a low score or you need help turning around a bad mood after a disappointing performance, you'll know exactly what to do! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/143 Stay in Touch: https://chelseapierotti.com/email  

Summary: When it's time for competition season, there are usually two types of dance teams. First, there’s the dance team who usually all gets along and enjoys working together. Then, there’s the dance team that doesn’t actually get along all that well and might be dealing with some lingering animosity. We know that mutual liking for each other helps your cohesion and will help your team be successful, but we also know you can't force it because sometimes it's just not there. What do you do when your team is falling short of their potential because they are just a group, not a team? How do you help them transform into a true team? In this episode, I'm going to help teach you how to bring together the team of dancers who aren't clicking or getting along. There is a way to use positive mental skills to help ensure success. We’ll discuss social cohesion, prosocial skills, and how returning to your team’s goals and reminding your dancers they need each other will help bring them all back together as a team! Episode Resources https://chelseapierotti.com/142 https://chelseapierotti.com/podcastquiz  

Do you feel like you have a good work-life balance, or do you feel like the dance side of your life can sometimes tend to take over? If you feel like you have too many passions and it's impossible to do it all, I have a better plan for us: work-life blend. This is actually something I discussed back in 2021, but I've had so many teachers ask me for help with it recently that I decided to go back in the archives to re-release this episode. In this episode, we’ll discuss how our work and our life shouldn’t be in opposition to each other and how beneficial it can be to evaluate the categories of your life and use a planner to best implement the work-life blend that works best for you. If you feel like work-life balance is impossible, please listen in. If you can shift your perspective around this stuff, I promise you can find balance! Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/141

Dancers, how far is the gap between what you want and what you actually have right now? If you have big dreams, I hope there's a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. But how big is that gap, and do you have a real sense of the hill or mountain in front of you, and are you willing to do what it takes to close the gap? I usually talk to dance coaches and teachers, but today’s episode is a short and important message for dancers. We’ll break down the four things getting in the way of dancers’ dreams and discuss how you have the power to turn these around. By the end of this episode, I hope to help you bridge that gap between where you are now and where you want to be! Finish Strong Workshop: https://chelseapierotti.com/finishstrong Episode Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/140