Three Years after I wrote this, we are on the back side of Covid but the dance world changed.  I am going to keep this up as a Blog because 1) we never know when it might happen again and 2) The dance industry has never experienced this type of interruption. (This is not taking any political side) I am dead serious when I tell you that this will impact all types of studios. I spent three months playing out the various scenarios to help you survive. Three years later, many studios did not survive as did many of our…

12/30/22 Dopamine & Dance Many scientific studies on the psychological effects of dopamine show us that When one feels good, the pleasure centers of the brain are flooded with dopamine. Understanding the cause and effects of dopamine can have a high impact on the entire success of your studio.  I caution you because the knowledge of it can be used for good or evil. Once you see how it is used positively, you’ll be less likely to abuse this power you now possess.  In the past, studios preyed on lonely widows, getting them to cash in investments or overspend to…

Answer this question correctly and you will have a very successful studio. Over the years I kept hearing, if only we were in the Olympics... Yet Dancing With the Stars, or Strictly Come Dancing in England, So You Think You Can Dance, World of Dance, Strictly Ballroom, Shall We Dance (both English and the original Japanese classic), Shag, Love N' Dancing, an probably a dozen more back through the last 70 years have done little to change the attendance at dances. One of the early seasons of DWTS outdrew the ratings for the Olympics Closing Ceremonies. The Olympics are every four…

Assuming that we are able to legally re-open, our first task is to minimize the risk to ourselves, our employees, and most importantly our clients. While the behavior of the Covid virus is still unknown, the actions that we take now will help us avoid a repeat, whether it is a Covid second wave, a typical flu season, or the next unknown biologic. I described the four facets we would have to deal with as Mechanical, Virtual, Physical and Psychological. The  first one- mechanical is not cheap. Air filtration systems come from slightly more expensive filters that you can buy at…

Jerry Seinfeld described what comedians do as "Selling Hot Air". Not to diminish what we earn through countless years of training our bodies or paying masters for training, we are not selling a tangible product. When our students go home at the end of the day, what they have taken home is nothing but what they remember and the emotions they have felt. So from our side of the transaction we are selling our time. But consider this- While our Time is precious, will we ever run out of the "air" we are selling. In other words, do we work…

Rethinking Time When I was a child in the early 60s, many of the family sitcoms Father Knows Best, Leave it To Beaver, My Three Sons, drew the prototypical family. Father worked, Mother stayed home except the daytime shopping trip, was home by 6, everyone ate dinner together then sat around the family room, reading, watching TV, or playing family games. Other than a hospital, police station or restaurant, few businesses were open past 5. That all changed around the 70s. Women returning to the workplace encouraged by the Women’s Lib movement, the Vietnam War, and the oil crisis, were…

The Plan to Rescue StudiosIf you read my delineation of our problems then you heard me say how it was so important that our studios and ballrooms survive, how important it was to eliminate the Fear of going to a dance studio, and that we needed to cooperate and collaborate. It will be easier than you think, and it will change our industry for the better. It will not be quick and it may not be quick enough for some studios who were already on the precipice of surviving before 2020. By the way it has already been done before…

The Fear AspectThis one will take the most empathy from everyone. Where some of you thought the whole quarantine thing was a waste, others believe that it was selfishness that made some people ignore or violate the quarantine and cause us not to squash the curve like other countries. Here is not the place to argue that but to realize that if you take 10 students and rated 1-10 the need to be quarantined vs the desire to be out and about, you would probably have one person on every number. Yes. those decisions would be based on what State…

Problem #2 Understanding How Government Regulatory Agencies Might Impact Your Future. Please this is NOT POLITICAL! Keep it that way here please. As of this writing many states are starting to open up out of quarantine. Since studios do not have a big prescence advocating for them we are very likely to be at the end of the line unlike the big gyms, restaurants, theatres that have huge powerful mouthpieces. This is where the various dance councils could serve but I am not expecting anything at this point. Unless we have a well thought out, reasonably detailed plan, we will…