Being a dance teacher is something I have always dreamed about!
By Mary-Ann Cartwright
Being a dancer teacher is something I dreamed of from a very young age. I loved being in the studio with my friends and my teacher - our dance family. Everyday being inspired and encouraged to follow my feet and my heart and dance my way through my life.
Skip forward 15 years and I finally realised my dream of having a dance school of my own; surrounded by students ready to be taught, inspired and encouraged. Add to that the unwavering support from their parents and one day it dawned upon me that I had created my very own dance family! My own tribe to inspire and encourage!
Being a dance teacher is a privilege; seeing children grow in confidence, skill and creativity is a wonder and something I feel very excited and honoured to be a part of. But it can also be incredibly lonely.
Often family and friends ask “what is your real job?” or “I bet you love just dancing about with the kids...”
Teaching dance is so much more than a job, and it’s far from dancing around with kids.
Firstly there is the year of training; I’m talking constant training! There is hours of choreography, studying syllabus, admin, safeguarding, searching for venues, liaising with those venues, banking, perfecting your own technique to ensure you’re teaching your dancers absolutely the correct way... all of this (and soooo much more), and no one to ask for advice or support. No one in my family or friendship group know anything about ballet technique, anatomy, policy and procedure writing. Being a dance teacher was lonely and bewildering once the dancing around with the kids was over for the day...
Then Covid made an appearance! Wow! Setting up, developing and establishing a niche business was hard pre-Covid, but now I had more questions, more training to undertake, more policies write; not to mention trying to move my business online and keep my client base in order to pay the bills... again, everyone around me cared, but couldn’t help. I felt lost and more alone than ever!
Then one lockdown lunch time as I scrolled aimlessly through Facebook while waiting for my son to eat his pasta I happened across a group for female dance business owners - a whole group of women like me who had no one else who understood their day to day challenges and who all now found themselves frantically trying to adapt their businesses, which rely so much on being in a room together with your clients and working off the energy in that room, to an online platform. A totally alien concept for us!
Then came a fun Facebook challenge within the group, which set me the task of thinking about my brand, my “why”, my aims, my money mindset... this challenge led me to sign up to a “Collective” - a small group of like minded dance business boss women! This group of women who I “met” in a Facebook group in April 2020, have helped me not only to keep my business going throughout the pandemic, but to thrive, to grow and improve despite the pandemic! They have been there to answer my previously unanswerable questions, they have signposted me to relevant teacher training and CPD, organisations who have helped with ensure my covid policies are water tight and inline with the values of my business, they have boosted my morale when Zoom Doom has tainted my week, they have given me ideas, a platform to share my own thoughts and all the while never judging. Only support. Only friendship.
This last 12 months have challenged me beyond anything I could have ever planned for. The Collective has inspired me. Encouraged me.
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