Episode 135: Tara Butler

Tara: Hi. My name is Tara Butler, and I'm the artistic director of Dust and Soul Dance Projects.

Tara: I'm here to chat about dance in the region of Waterloo with Sarah and Marshall at Bonn Park.

Tara: I've actually been listening to the past City of Kitchener Artists in Residence, and it really just is so amazing how many artists are here in the area and this is really supporting my mission with dance in our community, I’m very interested in expanding and building a very strong arts scene and an arts ecology.

Tara: And I think dance is a really integral part to that.

Tara: Although dance can be a harder sell than music and theater, it is a very important part of the arts ecology.

Tara: And this past November with Dance Takes Berlin, I think about how much excitement there was around seeing professional dance in this area, our community is like, yes, great, let's do this.

Tara: So it's really exciting.

Sara: All right, let's get started.

Sara: Tara Butler, thank you so much for joining us today.

Tara: Well, thank you for inviting me.

Tara: I'm so excited to be on your podcast and to talk about art in the region of Waterloo and specifically dance.

Sara: We're very excited to speak with you as well.

Sara: So we were just chat chatting before we got started and just realized, aside from Sassy Ray Burlesque, which is one type of performance, we haven't had a dancer or spoken about dance too much on our show at all.

Marshall: No, we haven't.

Sara: So we're excited to dig into it.

Sara: We're always very interested to learn something new.

Sara: And one thing that Marshall, and I can't speak for you, but we can't dance.

Sara: No, no.

Sara: I have been compared to Elaine Benes in the past.

Tara: Yeah.

Tara: Well, I think that's the interesting thing in our art scene right now is that there isn't a lot of dance specifically locally.

Tara: There isn't a lot happening.

Tara: So I'm really beginning to build this excitement around dance, and it is a very integral part of any arts ecology.

Tara: But it does tend to be a slightly harder sell because I think people go in thinking, oh, I don't know, I'm not going to understand it.

Tara: There's a concern that they have to get it.

Tara: And I think if the choreographer has created work from a very authentic place that you don't have to get the exact meaning of what that choreographer specifically meant, but you will get something out of it, and the work ends up being exactly what you interpret to be.

Tara: And that's how most choreographers want their work to be seen.

Tara: It doesn't have to be specifically exactly the way they intended, but there should be an emotional reaction, and it should evoke a thought process.

Tara: I do think that there is a lot of excitement now for dance in the region of Waterloo, and we're really building that.

Tara: So my little company, Dust and Soul Dance Project, we've really just started to get things going.

Tara: We had our very first performance, Dance Takes Berlin, in November of 2021.

Tara: So that was like the week everything opened up before we shut down.

Sara: I remember it well.

Tara: Yeah, it was super.

Tara: Just lucky everything fell into place.

Tara: It was a long process to get that performance on, because I had actually gotten a grant from the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund in April 2020.

Tara: And then I was like, at that point, we were like, well, maybe we'll be shut down for a couple months.

Sara: We were so naive.

Sara: So naive.

Tara: That was not the case.

Tara: So I actually had dates at the Registry Theater for November 2020, thinking, oh, it could still happen.

Tara: Of course that didn't happen.

Tara: And then it just really worked out so perfectly that things were opening up.

Tara: People were getting really excited about the possibility of returning to live theater.

Tara: We only sold the show to 50% capacity because we wanted everyone to be comfortable.

Tara: It's a slow return to live interaction with other humans, but it went really, really beautifully.

Tara: And there was a real buzz around that show.

Tara: And I think, obviously it was a moment in time that we all shared that we were returning back to live theater.

Tara: But I think it was also this new excitement about, okay, now there's a dance team here, and now we have a professional dancer bringing in and choreographing professional dance performances, and there is an audience for it.

Tara: And people were we sold out those shows.

Tara: People were calling and asking if there was going to be a third show put on, and we weren't in a situation where we could do that.

Tara: But it's exciting to know that we have an audience, and we're just going to keep building on that for sure.

Marshall: What makes for a really great venue for dance.

Sara: Because that's one of your favorite venues in the city, the Registry, right?

Tara: Yeah.

Marshall: It's so simple.

Marshall: It just works really well.

Marshall: We always picture lots of black when I think of the Registry.

Tara: Registry, yeah.

Tara: All theaters have magic, but I think the Registry Street is specifically good because it is very neutral.

Tara: It's a bit of a black.

Tara: I don't want to say this in a bad way, but a black box, and so it can transform into anything.

Tara: And I think space wise, it's a really beautiful space as far as enough room to dance.

Tara: It has wings, which is key for entrances and exits.

Tara: For dance.

Tara: Specifically, they have a dance floor that they put down specifically for dance performances, which is integral.

Tara: And the audience size is perfect.

Tara: Like it's an intimate venue.

Tara: You feel like you're really performing there.

Tara: It feels like you're really connecting with the audience.

Tara: I've performed across Canada in multiple giant theaters and tiny theaters, and the Registry Theater is almost the perfect size for dance so that you can really connect to your audience and you can really feel the exchange of energy between the dancers and the audience.

Tara: So I agree.

Tara: I am so happy that we have this venue, and everyone at the Registry Theater is also so supportive and so excited to bring dance into the theater.

Tara: So it's been a really nice partnership.

Sara: And I'm excited to continue with a choreographer tries to explain what they're looking for to the performer, but then it has to be interpreted.

Sara: So that's something that I would not have actually thought about with my limited knowledge of dance because of it's almost like a director's note, I guess, but really because of my limited knowledge, again, of the National Ballet, which, of course, I know you have experience with.

Sara: We all look at it as here's the steps, and if you screw up, the dancer from Fame is going to bang the ball on the floor and gosh, darn it, we're starting over again.

Sara: But I didn't think of it as a note and that there can be a little interpretation.

Sara: And again, it's because I'm not a dancer and I'm not in that world, just like with music or with art.

Sara: We all have maybe a little bit of our own style there.

Tara: Yeah, I think you're right.

Tara: And I think it's a really important point that there are different ways of presenting dance.

Tara: And I think when you go to see a classical ballet, like a story ballet, it's more literal, it's very clear.

Tara: The characters.

Tara: Usually there's a program note that explains the whole story, so it's a little bit more spelled out and classical valet, those are my roots.

Tara: So that's the beauty.

Tara: And definitely I resonate with that.

Tara: But as I've developed as an artist and dancer, moving into a more contemporary dance really offers more interpretation from the viewer, and it's a little more abstract.

Tara: But every choreographer that I've worked with has a very clear idea and path for what they want to express.

Tara: And the other thing that I really love about doing contemporary dance and creating that full creative process is that process, that it's more collaborative between the dancer and the choreographer.

Tara: So it becomes not just about what the choreographer wanted to say, but how that dancer interprets that message and then expresses it through their movement on stage.

Tara: And I think if both of those people, if the dancers and the choreographer are coming from an authentic place and they believe in what they're expressing, then the audience will respond.

Tara: There will be something that they take from it.

Tara: So you don't have to be an expert in dance at all to really appreciate what you're seeing.

Tara: And I think that is another part of my company that's really important.

Tara: So our goal is obviously to do professional, original, contemporary, advanced performances for our region.

Tara: But another part is that I'm very invested and committed to creating workshops for non dancers and for our community.

Tara: And the purpose of that is really to demystify dance.

Sara: As a non-dancer.

Sara: It is very mystical to me.

Sara: It's like a magic that some people possess and some people don't.

Sara: Right.

Sara: So you're speaking to me here.

Sara: So workshops for non dancers sounds alluring right.

Tara: Yeah.

Tara: So going in, I've done a few workshops now.

Tara: I did one at the registry right before the Performance Dance Takes Berlin in November, and it was really wonderful.

Tara: So all of the participants were not directly related to dance.

Tara: Some of them had a bit of movement background, and some of them had none.

Tara: Interestingly.

Tara: Everyone was over 50 years old.

Tara: So that was a really interesting thing, too, because you would think that the 2013 crowd would be like, okay, I'm going to do dance workshops to be awesome.

Tara: And I was really happy being an older dancer, I think dance career, we sort of get this idea that it's short and it's only going to last until mid 30s.

Tara: But here I am dancing late into my 40s and still loving it and still feeling like I have something to offer.

Tara: Anyway, back to my point.

Tara: These workshops are really what they offer is participants get to come in and through guidance and through some very clear direction, they create their own movement phrases.

Tara: And all of those movements are based on their own personal experiences, which is a technique that I really love working with.

Tara: And I learned that technique from Alan Kager and Karen Caja, where you take your own personal experience and you turn those emotions that you connect with those experience into movement.

Tara: So during that workshop, it was amazing.

Tara: We had two and a half hours together, I believe, and there were ten participants, and each participant came up with about seven or 8 minutes of choreography, which is really exceptional.

Tara: And it was a really fun bonding experience.

Tara: I hadn't met any of the participants before that moment in time, and I feel so deeply connected to all of them because we shared this creative process.

Tara: And my goal with these workshops long term would be to create a community piece, bring choreographers in to work with our community to create a piece that would be performed as an opening for my performances, which it's a long term goal, but we're working on it little by little.

Tara: So I have another set of workshops coming up April 23 and 30th, and then a couple in May as well.

Tara: So, yeah, I'm really excited about just offering that to our community to help deepen the understanding and the enthusiasm for dance and so that we feel more connected to each other, which is huge, that's I think why we do art to connect.

Marshall: How do dancers support each other emotionally?

Marshall: I think about, you know, in sports, it's very clear.

Marshall: I watched an NHL game last night.

Marshall: The goal is scored, the players line up along the bench.

Marshall: They put their hand out.

Marshall: It's basically a high five.

Marshall: Women's volleyball.

Marshall: It's just a quick coming of hands together.

Marshall: Right?

Marshall: I've been watching Bloopers from the show of The Office, that series.

Marshall: And when they leave, the camera going after something hasn't worked, they cheer each other on and laugh and say, oh, there's that face we all love, right?

Marshall: Like Sarah was saying before, there's this mystique about dance that you don't really see any kind of behind the scenes things happening because when you see dance, everything looks perfect when you're watching it.

Marshall: But there must be ways that you are emotionally supporting each other backstage and throughout the whole process 100%.

Tara: I mean, I think we're just like everybody else that to make a show really work and to make a company really functional, it's the connection between each other.

Tara: For instance, I don't like to speak publicly, but it's kind of a thing that I have to do now.

Tara: And so before the show was just like, I don't know if I'm going to make it, all these people are waiting for me to talk and the dancers are like, you're going to be great, we're awesome.

Tara: We can do this.

Tara: We're doing it together.

Tara: We have your back.

Tara: I know when I dance for Canada, Sally Yorken, we would be four shows, there'd be 15 or 20 of us, and we would just hold hands in a circle to connect with each other because we were trying to tell a story together.

Tara: So it was just a way of even if we weren't physically dancing together in each section, we were connected as a whole.

Tara: So I think a lot of that happens.

Tara: The one nice thing that I really love about creative process is there's always a check in before rehearsals and after we're not just here to dance, we're like, how are you doing today?

Tara: Are you ready to be open?

Tara: Because when you're creating, as you know, it's very exposing and it can be very vulnerable and you're drawing from your own personal experience.

Tara: So it can be quite emotional and even scary at times.

Tara: So to have that support system is really important.

Tara: And definitely dancers have that 100%.

Tara: I think that's probably what's also been so hard about covet is not having that physical connection and contact continuously through a process.

Tara: We created a lot of what we did in that show online.

Tara: So there was communication in words, but there's a lot of communication that happens just in the way you look at someone or you grab their hand or how we partner each other in rehearsal and how we physically check in with each other.

Tara: So I'm really looking forward to being in the studio more this year.


Sara: It's wild to me that you created this choreography or most of it online.

Sara: Like, it's hard enough for artists or podcasters or day job type stuff that people have to get this done online.

Sara: But dance, this is a wild concept to me.

Tara: Yeah.

Tara: I created with Alan Kaisha, the solo that I did not show.

Tara: And I was in my living room space with the odd child whipping by every once in a while because kids were home from school.

Sara: Yes.

Sara: We worried about it for those first couple of weeks like you were talking about earlier.

Sara: And now it's just like, yeah, I have a family and a life, and this is what it looks like.

Tara: Yeah, exactly.

Tara: So when we finished creating the work we had created it in this living room, like, small area.

Tara: And so the first run through I did in the studio, Allen was like, why are you dancing in one little spot?

Tara: And I'm like, well, I didn't have any room in the house, so we kind of had to expand and see how the solar would come to life if we were able to move beyond those four walls.

Tara: And it did work.

Tara: Alan Kitty we're talking about.

Tara: He is so experienced, and he has done not just a lot of award winning choreography, but he's also done a lot of dance for film.

Tara: So he also knows how to kind of explain what he wants through Zoom.

Tara: I mean, honestly, sometimes I don't know how we did it, but it worked and we did.

Tara: And then I think the hardest part was creating the trio that we also did.

Tara: So Nikesha, Garak and Nomi Versa and myself created a trio together online.

Tara: And I mean, I was kind of leading that.

Tara: And my experience with it was I think I prefer almost to be a dancer in that process than a choreographer.

Tara: I found it a little more difficult to explain my ideas and what I wanted.

Tara: And I think probably at times over explain to myself, because you don't know when you're on Zoom, you're like, are you there?

Tara: Because everyone's muted and there's a delay.

Tara: So we did manage it, but we did rehearse all of those pieces for a couple of weeks in the studio live because there's no way you can, especially with partnering sections.

Tara: You can't hope that it goes okay.

Tara: You have to, as you said, like, we want it to look just right.

Tara: So we would come back into the studio and when it was safe and reverse.

Tara: Yes.

Tara: But I think in general, I would rather be in studio with dancers for sure.

Tara: As I'm sure you know.

Marshall: When performing live, I always wonder what it's like for the performers to be on the last night of a long run.

Marshall: I think about something like The Nutcracker that runs for 50 shows and then that last performance when people must like, they know this is the last time we'll all be together like this and this will never happen again.

Marshall: I can't imagine what that feels like when you're on stage realizing this is the last one.

Tara: Yeah.

Tara: I mean, I danced for classical valet companies for a long time, and I was a principal dancer at Kennedy Valley, Oregon, for 16 years.

Tara: And so we did long runs of things every year.

Tara: It was like, okay.

Tara: And as I got later into my career, there were years where I was like, oh, is this the last time I'm going to dance ballet?

Tara: Because we might not do it for another four years, and I'm going to be still doing classical ballet at that point.

Tara: And so as I got close to my last three years with the company, you kind of plan retirements from classical ballet.

Tara: And I wanted to start a family.

Tara: So there was a lot of discussion about that.

Tara: But there was I mean, I remember specifically my last, last show, and my director bank came up to me and he said, it's just a show.

Tara: You can't think of it as your last one.

Tara: Just be present.

Tara: Like be in there, do your thing.

Tara: So I think the one thing about live performance is that you're present.

Tara: There's something so magical about being that present.

Tara: And so you're not thinking, oh, this is the last time I'm going to do this or the last time you're just telling the story and doing your best.

Sara: I love musicals.

Sara: I am a huge fan of musicals.

Sara: I understand that people aren't.

Sara: And I try not to inflict my love of musicals on other people, but I was lucky to obviously watch Hamilton during the pandemic as it came out.

Sara: We got Disney for this reason.

Sara: And there's a moment where the wonderful actor, whose name I can't remember at the moment, who plays George Washington, finishes his big song.

Sara: And it's a glorious moment.

Sara: And this is in the first quarter of the show, and he burst into tears.

Sara: The actor burst into tears.

Sara: It's not part of the show, and you can feel it since probably the last time they're doing this, they're wrapping it up and recording it for Disney to give to the masses.

Sara: He is feeling this moment in a way that is about his parents and his friends and his family and everything that's brought him to this moment and this once in a lifetime performance for him and to me that's the most moving part of it is seeing this human moment for this actor.

Sara: And I feel like I'm going to have to insert his name later because I feel so bad.

Sara: He was also on that Sex in the City, just like that series that just came.

Sara: Do you know his name?

Tara: Yeah, he's been there somewhere.

Sara: I'm going to look it up, sir.

Tara: I think that's a really good point that especially when it is a big role that you've always wanted to perform and it's something close to your heart.

Tara: That moment is such a big just such a big moment in someone's career that it's almost impossible for a human not to react to it.

Tara: So I think I felt similarly when I did my last performance of Romeo and Juliet, because that was a dream come true.

Tara: And I did get to realize that dream quite early in my career.

Tara: But I danced that ballet probably, I don't know, for 16 years I danced that ballet.

Tara: So the last few shows of that one, I felt the same way, that the tears were kind of welling, that it was like the signature role that I was now passing on to the next generation, which is wonderful, but there's a little bittersweetness to it as well.

Sara: And this man's name is Christopher Jackson, wonderful actor and great performer for aspiring young dancers.

Marshall: Is education in the early years?

Marshall: Is that quite competitive?

Marshall: Can it be very hard on people competing with your fellow peers?

Marshall: I guess, and students?

Tara: You know, I went to the National Ballet School.

Tara: That's where I trained.

Tara: And I think everyone in my class and all that, obviously everyone at the school was very, very talented.

Tara: I think there's a sense of camaraderie because we're all trying to do the same thing and train in the same way.

Tara: So, yes, there's a sense of competition, but in general, I always felt very supported by my peers, and we were all in it together and experiencing this very intense way of training together.

Tara: This is another part of what I'm interested in doing here is developing a bridge from so right now, high school students, they dance at their local dance studio, and then at grade twelve, I often ask them, are you going to continue with this?

Tara: What are you going to do?

Tara: And they're like, no, I'm going to go to university.

Tara: And it's a little part of me that's like, how do you just walk away from dancing every single day of your life?

Tara: And I think part of it is that there hasn't been a bridge from that pre professional student into company.

Tara: So what I would like to do is set up a mentoring sort of a place where these dancers can come and be a part of our rehearsal process and have professional experiences.

Tara: And so I hope to bring in choreographers that are active in the field to come in and do one or two week workshops with local dance students that maybe they haven't decided whether they want to let this go completely or not.

Tara: And they need to know that there is a future in dance, if that's what they so desire.

Tara: And now that dance is being developed a little bit more here and there are professional opportunities is really what I want to offer local dancers.

Tara: So developing that a little bit more and developing a mentorship program so that you might not be ready to be the lead in a professional performance.

Tara: But there are steps before that, right?

Tara: There are steps that build you and get you ready to really embrace a professional dance career.

Tara: So there's a lot of talent that kind of gets lost or moves away because there's nothing really happening here.

Tara: So I'm working on that as well.

Tara: It's a long process, but that's important to me, too.

Tara: The workshops for obviously our community, but also workshops for local dancers that would love the opportunity to dance professionally in their hometown in the University of Wireless Fine Arts program.

Marshall: If you do say like a four year honors degree in painting, drawing, art history.

Marshall: At the end of that, if you were to ask, hey, can I apply for the master's program, which is in the same building on Phillip Street, the answer is no.

Marshall: The teachers will tell you you've listened to the same group of voices for four years.

Marshall: Now.

Marshall: You now need to go somewhere else.

Marshall: So their master's students come from elsewhere, and you havew students who graduate with an honors.

Marshall: If they want their Masters, they have to go somewhere else.

Marshall: They don't want you for another two years, and they have the reasons for it.

Marshall: And they'll explain that to you, is dance working that way?

Marshall: And that people are encouraged sometimes to go hear from other voices.

Tara: And I think it's really important to have multiple mentors and multiple people that influence you.

Tara: I was so lucky when I danced for Ballet York, and I worked with Ben very closely on his choreography.

Tara: But he would also bring choreographers from across the country in to work with us and those experiences, that creative process.

Tara: And he knew his dancers needed that, developed them and developed their curiosity and expanded how they approached their work because they had all these different influences.

Tara: So I don't think necessarily you're pushed away.

Tara: And that is sort of my goal, too, is, yes, I could teach a lot, too, and mentor my students into becoming ready for professional life.

Tara: But I would also like to bring choreographers in from all over the place to influence them.

Tara: People that have a really modern dance background, people that are very classical, people that have sort of a multidisciplinary practice.

Tara: I would love that, too.

Tara: So that we get a really full picture of what's possible.

Tara: So I understand that mentality.

Tara: If you've listened to these four teachers for these four years and you should move on to another group of people that have something else to say.

Tara: And I think academically maybe that's exciting because you get to also live in a different community full of artists, and it does happen in dance, but I think it's more up to the artist.

Tara: Like, if you feel you're being fed by whatever that director is offering you, great.

Tara: If you think you need more, then there's that push to as you know, artists are self motivated.

Tara: They're like, okay, I'm not getting enough from this.

Tara: I need to go and find out this or, oh, I'm interested in this artist.

Tara: How can I study under them?

Tara: So there's a little bit more of that, I think, that happens in dance.

Sara: Can we back up, Tara, and talk about your initial love for dance, where this started and what that journey looked like for you till now?

Tara: Yeah.

Tara: So I started dancing very young.

Tara: I think my parents likely put me in dance because I was bouncing off the walls and had too much energy, and they saw that I needed to focus.

Tara: I took jazz and tap, and I just loved it.

Tara: I was an enthusiastic student, and my friend who I played soccer with was like, oh, my mum wants me to audition for the National Ballet School.

Tara: Do you want to come?

Tara: And I was like, yeah, okay, I'll come.

Tara: Like, whatever.

Tara: I wasn't really into it because I didn't take ballet, but I went and then I got in and she didn't.

Tara: But she ended up on the Canadian women's soccer team.

Sara: Amazing.

Tara: I was more into soccer, and she was really into ballet.

Tara: And then we kind of switched, and that worked out much better for us.

Tara: So I auditioned for the National Valley School, and I was hooked almost immediately.

Tara: The teachers that teach the younger students are not just all about technique, but really ignite the imagination.

Tara: And there was something about the discipline and the imagination together that just suited me, and there was no stopping me.

Tara: So then I sort of did all of my training and graduated and went right into the National Ballet of Canada for a year.

Tara: And then I went to Alberta Ballet for a couple of years, and I danced also while I was in Alberta, I went to the Bank Center.

Tara: They had a Banff Festival dance, which at the time was run by Annette Paul and Brian McDonald's.

Tara: And they ran the dance program, and we would spend eight weeks.

Tara: Everything paid for and just dance, eat, sleep, drink, dance.

Tara: It was all dance and you're up in the mountains.

Tara: It was spectacular.

Tara: So I spent, I think, three summers up there, and then I ended up coming back to Toronto and auditioning for this smallish company.

Tara: At the time, Ballet Oregon.

Sara: Not so small anymore.

Tara: Not so small anymore.

Tara: And it was the first year Banks was doing a collapsible Nutcracker, and my audition was ballet class, which he came and saw and then he said, can you do Puerte's?

Tara: And I said, yes.

Tara: And he said, how many?

Tara: And I was like, I don't know, put music on, let's see.

Tara: So I did quite a few because fortes are like this big thing you do in classical ballet, and it's usually at the very end of the big positive.

Tara: It's consecutive pure west.

Tara: And he was like, great.

Tara: You can do Puerto if you got the job.

Tara: And at the time, the company was doing a lot of contemporary work as well.

Tara: And he was like, okay, well, let's you do some contemporary work.

Tara: And he's like, oh, that needs a bit of work, but we can work with you.

Tara: It just from then on became this partnership, and we developed so many big classical ballets together.

Tara: As I said, Banks brought in multiple choreographers.

Tara: We worked with Alan and Karen Cajo, Hungry Wang, Giaconda Barto, Roberto Campanella, Robert De, Rosier, Crystal Pipe have had this Kathleen Ray, all these wonderful choreographers that we were influenced by continuously.

Tara: So he had come to the conclusion at age 36 that I was about to get married and wanted to have kids.

Tara: And I felt like I shouldn't wait too much longer.

Tara: So we did that.

Tara: And my husband's from Elmira, so we ended up moving out here to be closer to his family.

Tara: And yeah, I have fallen in love with this community, and I'm so excited to be bringing professional, original dance here and really integrating into the archeology.

Marshall: What do you imagine for, like, if you just think about wildlife and what that thing could look like with more and more growth and support?

Marshall: What could that look like in ten or 20 years from now?

Tara: What I hope is that my company is fuller and has more performances to offer the community.

Tara: I hope that we're more integrated and we can really involve the community more in what we're doing creatively.

Tara: And I really hope that I am bringing up an opportunity for local dancers to really develop and Hone their craft instead of having to go to Toronto or Stratford or all over the place that yes, maybe you want to do the odd contract here and there, but that there is something for you here that stimulating and can offer growth and development and for young dancers to know that it is a career that you can make a living at would not be great if I could hire a bunch of dancers and actually keep them employed for a whole season.

Tara: And I think that's what we deal with in the arts that it can be paycheck to paycheck, and it's one brand to the next.

Tara: So, yes, I think it would be really nice to see lots of dance happening, not just classical contemporary, but dance in different genres, really developing and filling out that dance team.