Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We are dressed to match today.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Intentional.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: We could do a duet right now and look put together.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: It's funny because I was to ask you later on to do a duet if you wanted to do a duet with me today.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I was joking.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Hello. Hello, my friend. I'm Dana. This is words that move me. Welcome. Oh, and this is my dog, wrist roll sitting on my lap right now, blending into my all black. What do they call this? Jumper? Onesie? Romper. What's the difference between a romper and a jumper and a oneser? I'm curious. Gotta know. Moving on into this episode, I'm very, very excited. Our guest today is Galen Hooks, longtime friend, a huge inspiration of mine, a leader in the dance community. And we are talking about some exciting news that she has. We talk about advocacy. We talk about the things that dancers and choreographers are missing and missing out on right now and all the ways that she is able to fill gaps. She's very good at seeing areas for improvement and having plans for how to make things better. So I'm really excited to share this conversation, but first, we have to do some wins today. I am celebrating twofold. Number one, Riz got her.
I forget the word right now. She got a vaccine today. It is a starts with an l. Bad dog, mom. Bad dog, mom.
The only thing I want to say is lupe. Like, lupe fiasco.
What was the thing you got today, honey bear? I don't know, but can you see the way the tongue is sticking out of the mouth?
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Oh, my friends.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Oh, it's very good right now. That's win number one. Number two, I taught at the space last night here in California, but not here in Los Angeles, far away, a couple hours drive. And the thing I'm actually celebrating, other than a room full of very hungry, enthusiastic young Dan slings, who were taking their last class of the year. Because as I record this, it's not even yet Christmas. But I kind of expected, like, a senioritis vibe in the room where people are just ready to go on Christmas break. And this was a hungry bunch of dancers, y'all. That's when 1.2. When 1.3 was that. Where are you going?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Where are you going, tiny?
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Oh. See ya. My dog just jumped off my lap. If you're listening only it is fun to use your imagination and just imagine what might have just happened. But it's really fun to watch it because Riz is so cute. If you are not watching the podcast, go venture on over to YouTube because she is giving our wide angle camera. A very nice shot of her right rear end. Right now, the other thing I'm celebrating about my class at the space. Thank you, Corey, again, for having me, is that I had a plan going into class, and in the moment, I could tell my plan was not the one. So I modified, and it felt really good to be flexible and to feel enthusiasm for the new plan was matched by my enthusiasm for being flexible with the plan.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: So that's what I'm celebrating today.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Now you go. What is going well in your world? Tell me all about it.
Tight. Good job. I'm proud of you. I'm glad that you're winning. It is important to count those wins, big and small, because I really think if you don't, it's possible that no one else will. So I love to celebrate. Good job. Someday we'll cheers together. But till then, let's just podcast, shall we? Let's talk about dance and dancers and dance things. Galen hooks, my friends, the one and only.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Enjoy.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Oh, why am I doing it?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: You'll find out.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Welcome back, Galen hooks, to words that move me. This is round two. Yes.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: First in person. Round two in general.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: That's true. That's true. This is my living room. I don't know if you. Have you ever been over.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: But not for a very long time, and certainly not with this setup.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: That's true. We are now in the video format setup of the podcast here in my living room, which is still directly across from a car wash. But thanks to the new microphones, you would never know. We certainly will know at some point. Okay. We will hear somebody. It's usually less about, like, the car wash sounds and more about the music that people are playing with four doors open, like, blaring.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: That's what we will hear.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: I was wondering, I'm like, what do you hear from a car wash?
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Just suds. Well, vacuum sounds hugely.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: And they used to be really poorly designed. Actually, my ex and I wrote a letter of complaint because the way you put the vacuums back left a little space for air, so they would suck and be squealing at very high decibels and in a range that only wrist roll can hear. And it was devastating for the podcast. It was not good times, but not so bad now.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: No, I think they wouldn't.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, great. Okay, so this is round two. First time you were here, we talked a lot. By the way, I re listened to your episode, your first episode, and I really love it. We talked a lot about advocacy. We talked a lot about the Galen hooks method, the way that you teach.
We talked about working with pop stars, dancers making choices versus delivering the choreographer's choice. Yes. If any of these topics speak to you, please, just directly after this, go back and listen to Galen's first episode on the podcast because I'm thrilled by it. It's very good.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: How long ago was that?
[00:05:43] Speaker A: 2020.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: During the pandemic. Okay. Even in it, you were like, once people are allowed to go out again, maybe coffee shops and stuff. And as I was listening, I was like, wow. Yeah. We were in the middle. Had no idea when that would happen.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: That's depressing.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: And here we are.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yes. Going to coffee shops. No mask talking.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: No mask. Look at the movie. The world has opened my mouth back up. Yes. And bonus on top of that, we are dressed to match today.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Intentional.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: We could do a duet right now and look put together.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: It's funny because I was going to ask you later on to do a.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Duet if you wanted to do a.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Duet with me today.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: I was joking.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: I was actually going to ask you. It's in the wrist roll with it portion, which is our rapid fire questions. Pretend like you don't know this, but I want to know. Isn't this cute? Right? Yes, it's perfect. I want to know who you would like to do a collaboration with. You don't collaborate often, but who would you like to collaborate, living or dead?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Oh, lord.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: We'll go ahead and jump to that right now. That's how we're starting.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: B boy Casper.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: What?
[00:06:45] Speaker B: I mean, that's been a long standing. Like, I wish. He's one of my favorite dancers in the world. He knows that. And Casper, you know, since the LXD.
Yeah. That's the first person that pops into my head.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: I want to see that collaboration.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: I mean, I don't really dance anymore, so it's hard for me to answer that question because I'm like, when I hear that, I just go, I'm tired. I'm tired already. Oh, my God. No rehearsal.
But yes, Casper's one of my favorite dancers in the entire.
Yeah, that's been a long standing.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Fantastic. There's a couple b boys on my list of people I would like to dance with as well.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: And it's funny, actually, I got a random call from crumbs. B boy crumbs, who? I was shocked. I was like, is this real? Because also, fun story, totally unrelated. My phone scrambles. Contacts, like, contacts your name, actually. I'm going to just call you really fast, like Victor something. It thinks you are.
My sister shows up as Craig something. I don't even know these people's names. But anyways, b boy crumbs shows up on my phone. I'm thinking, surely that's a scrambled contact. It's like Jillian or someone. And I answer, I'm like, hello? And it's be boy crumbs. He was trying to call someone else.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: A different Dana, but we wound up.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Having a catch up. And I was like, damn, I miss watching you get down. Like, he's so, so talented kid David. Also, I get to see Luigi a lot, but I always love dancing with him anyways. I mean, this pairing, you and Casper, let's go.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: He's not going to say yes, and I'm too, so it's not going to happen.
But in this hypothetical question.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Okay, can we take the rest of the hypothetical answers in the wrist roll with it portion? You'll have to stick around to the end of the episode for that. Okay, first things first. I don't know if you remember, but all of my guests introduce themselves. Okay, so tell us anything you want us to know about you. That's where we'll start.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Love it. Put the gross part on us because.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: It'S like, otherwise I have to do all this research.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: So introduce myself.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah, whatever you would like us to know. Bullets or non bullets.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, just so that the context, I guess, of what we talk about makes sense. My name is Galen Hooks. I'm a dancer, choreographer, director, sometimes creative director, sometimes producer, sometimes on camera, sometimes not.
And I've worked in the entertainment industry my whole life. I've worked with over 70 artists. VMA nominated made the Galen Hooks method, which is a teaching program I have, and I guess that's it.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Okay. That was tight. That was really tight. Yeah. That might have been tighter than the first time you did it.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. Whenever you're mentioning the first time, I'm like, what did I say?
[00:09:28] Speaker A: You blacked out, didn't you? Okay, so don't worry about previous episode. I'm going to call back some of the really important bits that I think we should revisit. Okay. But for today, we've already started, obviously. But I want to jump to first. You have some exciting news to announce.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I just very briefly mentioned a teaching program I have called the Galen Hooks method. If you're listening, you might have taken the classes or taken the intensives, and I've kind of programmed all of them to become video on demand lessons. I've been teaching them in person, globally, really, for seven years now. So they've been in LA, of course, New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Atlanta, et cetera, et.
I just. There was like a point that was reached that was like, I just want to document all of the kind of concepts and what we talk about in the sessions and have it documented. I mean, really, there's a lot of people who aren't able to come to the sessions. They either don't live in a place that has them. They're just not accessible for everybody. So if you have ever wanted to take a session, there are also people, I think, probably that live in LA and New York and in the major dancehams that are just like, maybe they want to take, but it takes a little bit of a certain kind of mentality to be like, I'm going to put myself in that situation, which is no shame. I would be the same way. And I love taking online classes. I know a lot of people aren't. That's not their jam.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: But I love teaching.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Not anymore, but I love it.
I really like focused, deep work. And when I take online dance classes, I feel like I can really focus and do what I want at my pace, et cetera. There are pros and cons to each, but I can get way more in depth with things that in the actual in person intensives, there might be like a top line thought about something, but now I can turn that thought into a full course, or there's things that I will repeat a lot now because there are just so many. I don't have the same students all the time in every single class I do. So I've been doing kind of monthly in person classes at my night of dance events. But there's different people all the time, so I'm repeating the same concepts each time to make sure everybody's got that top line north star for the class. And if I just have it documented, then more people can see that more of the time, and I don't have to depend on it being said in the room.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: So really, it's a documenting of all of the core concepts so that you can take the classes anywhere at any time on demand, which is different than I've been doing kind of live digital classes where you have to still take it live. And this is just. It's like the master class series that exists, where it's just take it wherever, whenever.
And I know that's something that people have really wanted who can't come to the classes in person. So I'm really excited about it.
For some context, there are a dime a dozen kind of dance platforms where you can take tutorials. There will be some tutorials on this, but the first thing I'm rolling out is a series on how to retain choreography, which is a topic that a perfect example of in an in person class pre pandemic.
It just didn't seem like that was a kind of class you would teach. When you teach dance classes, you teach choreography. And through the pandemic, I started to do how to retain choreography classes online because it's the exact kind of thing where it's like, wait, I can dedicate time to this one thing, learning this.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Skill, instead of learning these eight counts.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Exactly. You will apply that skill to all eight counts. And that's the most awesome thing about these more topic driven classes is they change how you take every class forever for the rest of your dance journey.
And so it'll be things like that. How to retain choreography, how to personalize choreography, which is a gigantic one. And I know this is like a discussion across the board in so many areas right now, is dancers not taking, not being faithful to the choreography that's given to them, but not understanding when to personalize it, when to keep it clean. And it's not a straightforward one sentence answer that can be said in a q and a.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: It's not a one size fits all approach.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: And I did a series of that as a live stream class last year, but now I'm like, let me just document it in a full collection. So things like that that are topic driven, skill driven, in addition to mindset, things that I have seen in the intensives in any given city over all of the years, the mindset stuff is so much more important, in my view, than learning the booth.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: You are talking to me straight to my core.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: And we've all seen things change so much over the years. So I'm offering things that, for example, I think a lot of people that have taken the sessions know a phrase I've been using currently is captain your ship. And that can sound like just the kind of platitude, captain your ship. But I can take that concept that I've seen work in the intensives when I'm using it throughout the teaching and extract it and make it its own course, like you're taking a college course.
I can sit and talk about that thing for a multitude of lessons and have it be an open and closed ended concept rather than have it be just attached to. If you come to an in person intensive and the captain your ship mentality, it changes everything you do in the dance studio and in life, if you really apply it and it resonates with you. So there's several kind of mindsets that have been core concepts in the intensives that will also be on there. All that to say, it's not just learn the routines, it's a whole philosophy. And it's really what's been developed over the past seven years in the intensives now available to take as you choose, anytime, wherever you are.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Nice, Galen. That's massive. It's a lot of work, like just the chronicling of all of it, just the capture of all that, let alone deciding how you want it to be viewed and how you want people to be paying for. Is it a membership model or one offs?
[00:15:20] Speaker B: It's not a membership model, and that's because I am one person and I do not have the bandwidth as much.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: As I would love to.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: It's definitely a quality over quantity thing. If I were doing a membership every month, I would want to give a lot of stuff every month, and I don't have that bandwidth. And honestly, something like a how to retain choreography course, or how to use your face, or these things that are like very specific, topic driven things, they just don't lend themselves to a monthly drop of a bunch of small bites.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: You find yourself back in the same problem that you were in with in person. Which is having to start back at one.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: With every new group of humans. Yes.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: It's much more like a university course layout, where these are courses that are open and closed ended, as opposed to it being. I'm going to put out twelve new tutorials every month.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: I see.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: But there will be periodic, like throughout the entire year. I'll be releasing new stuff. So it's not going to be everything all at once. It will be a slow drip of content, but it's not going to happen monthly and definitely not with 20 new things added each month. Okay, quality over quantity.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Can people come and go as they please? Or if they sign up in January, they have it through January.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: I'll use the how to retain thing because I just know that that's what I'm launching with. Once you purchase that, you have it for a lifetime access and you can watch it whenever you want.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Modules.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Okay, cool. So if I think I'm a person who really has to work on my face, but I think I retain choreography pretty good, I can just do that one.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Fun. Yeah. I am also an at home trainer type of person. My peloton sits right over there.
Recently used, by the way.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Good for you.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Right after I got the dog, I think I was up to, like, 198 consecutive weeks of working out. Not every single day.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Close to it. And then I got hurt. And now I'm.
No consecutive weeks? No consecutive weeks. I'm back to like three days in a row. But anyways, I love the whenever you want element of it. Yes. And I love the go deep element of it. I love that on a Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. I'm not working out on Sunday night to me.
Okay. Monday morning at 1016. And I have something at eleven. But I really, really want to sweat. I can. Or if I have a three hour block where I want to do a ride and then core and then a stretch and then like a mindfulness meditation, I can. I love the flexibility and the fact that I don't have to go anywhere ever since I was a child. Actually, this is a theme. I quit dance. My mom put me in dance when I was three. She thought it was cheaper than daycare. Ha.
But it also kind of had a return on the investment, for sure. She put me in dance early, and then by the time I was six, she let me quit because I threw a tantrum. Every time I went, I would cry and say, I don't want to go to dance. And so she asked my dance teacher one day. Once we got there, she apologized and she was like, I'm sorry. Dana's so much trouble. She's just in tears on the way here. And is there anything I can do to help? And my teacher was like, I don't know what you're talking about. She's fine in class. I just didn't like going. Like, I didn't like going to dance. I loved being at dance.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: And I loved being dancing. But especially in a big city like this, it's not easy to and from. And then when you're in rural areas or cities that don't have access to things like this, it's not even about wanting to go. It's being able to.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: So the accessibility of it, the design of it, and then what you're offering alone sounds like sweet tops. I'm thrilled by that.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: I am curious. I want to know a little bit more because as a person who's started delving more into thought, work and mindfulness, we'll call it mindfulness on like a big broad. But I am shocked that I have been able to accomplish the things I've accomplished without some of the tools that I have now. Yes, we'll just call it metacognition or, like, thinking about thinking. I can't believe we never talked about mindset in my dance classes growing up. Or, like, the way you talk to yourself while you're learning.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Right now, the intensives are called the galen hooks method, but it started, the very first intensive I ever did was called behind the audition. And it was an audition intensive that kind of lifted the veil on what happens behind the table at an audition.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: And on the casting side.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: On the casting side, because I was a dancer from the time I was seven years old until I transitioned to choreography, until I transitioned to assisting and then associate, and then co and then choreographing. And I remember when I started assisting, I was like, no one's telling us on the other side of the table what you're thinking. We should know this.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: This is useful, very useful information.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Just tell us. And so the reason I'm mentioning that is kind of everything. Like, all of the intensities have developed from things that we weren't told, and mindset is such a huge part of that. I do really want to articulate that the mindsets I'm talking about are, like, very specific, practical, action oriented mindsets.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: This is not like, think a positive thought and you'll get the gig.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: And that's just to make it really clear of what to expect.
And it's not to say that those other things, if you're manifesting or if you're believing in yourself or shaking off the haters, or like, all these kinds of, like, I'm going to call them platitudes, just because they can be that way. Some people are really great at teaching those things, but as you know, I'm sure, Dana, I'm a practical person. I'm like, all about practicality, measurable.
So that's just like, in my bones to think that way. So if I had had from the time. And the other great thing about, obviously, it being on demand is you can be twelve and take this. And the young kids that come to the sessions, I'm like, I wish so bad I knew this information because you were that age. We're just kind of grasping at straws when we were in class, and there were so many more auditions back in the day. So that toll that that takes on you mentally, when nowadays there are just so many fewer of them. There were so many auditions, there were so many opportunities in life to feel like crap, and no one was really telling us how to deal with that or how to take criticism. How when you're on set, and you get, like, crazy notes, or you're with a director that's a total dick or whatever. Like, all these things that are difficult mentally, on top of just physically trying to be a great dancer or dealing with a difficult actor or whatever, there's just all these things that is not taught to us. The dancing was barely taught technically, we were taught to dance, but I didn't get notes on my face. I didn't get told what actually reads on camera besides general scale, your performance. Exactly.
Or how to work with an artist that was never, ever taught. So, yes, there's, like, the mindset stuff.
I'll put it this way. For a lot of people, after they do a two day intensive, they're dancing completely differently. And they're not dancing differently because they've been injected with new skill level dance data. Yes, they're dancing differently because they've changed their mindset on what they can do with their current skill level.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: They've changed the way they are thinking.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: And therefore, you change the way you perform, because it's our minds that tell our bodies what to do and how to do it. And if we keep going or if we stop or if we telegraph fear versus.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Pride or confidence or anything else, like when you say, captain, your ship. I'm imagining the movie men in black, where there's the tiny alien in the head who's at the command center, like, driving the human. I really think, not on some Scientology level things, but that there is a command station that every artist can sit at and dial things up and dial things back and kind of read out whatever meters of what's happening or what's being asked for and decide how and with what and to what degree you respond and you deliver, and that sort of thing takes. Sometimes it's just permission. Like, I give you permission to drive your own ship. I think for a lot of us, for a lot of the time, we were encouraged to be.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Yes, robot. Follow the.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Follow, follow.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Well, the number one thing I say first with the captain, your ship analogy, is that most dancers are thinking the choreographer is the captain.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: So they're standing there waiting for direction on what to do, where to go, and they're not thinking critically, and they're not the captain. The dancer is the captain. The choreographer has the map. They're giving you the choreography and telling you where they want you to go. But you're the one steering. You're the one deciding how fast you're getting there. You're in charge of the journey, and none of these mindsets would be necessary if dancers were thinking that way naturally. But what has happened over the years is it's getting worse and worse and worse that when I step into any given room of a studio, I'm like, oh, maybe there's maybe one person, and I'm not exaggerating. Usually there's not one person who's entering a studio with the thought process. I'm in here to take what the choreographer is going to give me and.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Make that shit dope.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: That is not even a calculation that's happening. And if someone's confident, there are lots of dancers who are confident in a room, but they're not making those really important, very specific, creative decisions. Captaining your ship is your body, and your ideas are your ship. And the ideas part is really important because a lot of dancers are confident physically, and they're going hella full out and very.
You can physically be like, I'm in charge.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Dazzle you with my moves.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is a great. I'm saying that kind of jokingly, but that's a great asset to have because a lot of dancers aren't in charge of their bodies. So if you're in charge of your body, you're already winning.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Body good body is good body and.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Mind better, yes, but body and ideas. But that's when it gets to things like how to personalize choreography. You have to have a point of view to know when to personalize that choreography. And so few dancers have any point of view, and they're certainly not breathing life and up leveling what the choreographer is giving them. I see that it's something that's lacking more and more as time goes by. So to me, it's becoming more and more important to make sure that that's included in tandem with teaching routines. And it just wasn't taught before. But part of it is there's so much talk about back in the day, things to be used to be. Back in the day, things used to be a certain way. And I think objectively, what I've heard from so many people, I mean, I feel this way, but I feel backed by having had so many conversations with the generations older than us. There's across the board understanding that just people were different back then. There were 17 year old dancers who looked and danced and felt like they were in their late twenty s that felt like adults and carried themselves like adults and had a maturity and a professionalism to themselves in class, let alone on the job. When you watch some of those old music video performances or award show performances or commercials from back in the day, quote unquote, that mindset stuff wasn't as lacking because just as people, things were different. And there's a lot that contributes to why people are different now. But I see it in classes, and it's a big, yeah, the mindset stuff is just really important. It changes how you train. Dance wise.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: I'm seeing you kind of underlying kind of a flip, a 180 flip from thinking the one dancer in the room who's thinking, how can I make this dope?
Relative to the 99% of people in the room thinking, how can you make me dope? Choreographer person? And I think that's probably the biggest difference because I think, and actually, we talked about this in the last episode because of the visibility of dance. And I think it's wonderful.
The red wall at millennium is like this iconic thing, and you have choreographers, instructors who are celebrities, like household names. And I think this is a wonderful thing.
But the risk of that is thinking that that person, again, has all the power.
I much prefer the performer have the power. And even as a judge, even as somebody giving feedback, as a judge or a coach, my first question is always to the performer, what went well? What did you do well, or what would you do differently? Versus let me tell you what I think you did well, or what I think you need to do differently. Certainly I have years of experience, and I have established taste, and maybe people are interested in hearing about my feedback, sure. But the performer knows themselves way more than I know them. So when it comes to big and meaningful feedback, I think the dancer, in this case, the dancer, but maybe an actor, maybe a musician, whatever, anybody receiving feedback, the individual knows way more than the person who's just dropping in to give a quick note or just taught a 90 minutes class. So this is, again, another reason why having a platform that you can return to and self assess, like, if I take how to use my face class in January, and then I don't have time to revisit it again until April, but I do it again in April, or I do it again in December, and I see, like, wow, have I made progress. This is another reason why I love things that are captured. If I take your class or your combo, and let's say you do your rihanna combo in January, and then I take your different class in November, I don't have an idea if I've advanced at all these two different things. Exactly. You have a thing that you get to do and do over. This is another reason why I love my peloton, because I can do the same ride and watch myself improve or be measurably different than I was the first time.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Measurable. That's so funny that you mentioned that, because measurable differences are so important.
I've been talking about that in relation to when people say, what classes should I be taking? And I'm sure you get asked that all the time. It's like, what kind of classes should I be taking? And it's always said, you should take ballet or you should take technique. And it's like, part of what's so important about a ballet or jazz class or a tap class is the standard vocabulary that you're doing repeatedly. Class after class. You can measure if you're better at your posse, but if you're taking hip hop or heels or jazz funk all the time, it's always different. It's really hard to have the measurable difference because it's not the same vocabulary that's repeated every time.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: So I totally hear you on that. And there's so many ways in dance that we miss that ability to measure our success. Because if it's just a choreography class, unless you're doing that same routine every six months and measuring yourself doing that routine, you don't have that exact apples to apples comparison.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Totally. Now we're talking metrology, and I'm getting very excited. That's the art science of measuring things, I think, especially in performing arts or fine arts or any kind of arts, where the actual, we'll call it product, even though that's insensitive, where the art product is subjective, people think. Oftentimes we just default to thinking, then it can't be measured. If it's subjective, and nobody can say if it's good or bad, then it can't be measured. I disagree. You 100% can measure. You can measure almost anything.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: But just by giving yourself the metric for that.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: So, yeah, I encourage students to do that all the time. Always be measuring. Always be clocking in with yourself and your progress at the same time, though. And this is. I don't know where you stand on the progress front. I mean, here I sit with a podcast, literally, about learning and becoming better, and I love my front row seat to all the learning I get to be doing, talking to my heroes, and learning about their way and what they think is important. This is awesome. Oh, shoot. I lost my train of thought. There it went. Just floated by podcast measurement. Got it. I had Jermaine Spivey and Spencer Thieberg on the podcast long time ago, and we were talking about goals. And Jermaine shed some really important light on how progress and having a goal is really not the most important thing to him for a lot of reasons. And I encourage the listener, viewer, go back and give that episode a listen because it's wolf big, pivotal. But I don't think ambition or striving for progress is the most important thing in art. But I also don't think we're talking about people making their art right now. We're talking about people navigating their careers and mastering their craft. And that takes determination, measurement, some kind of analytical, critical eye where you can objectively step outside yourself and say, how am I doing? And for you to be giving a tool for people to do that, I think is awesome.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it depends on what your quote, unquote, goal is. I know we're talking about goals aren't necessary. I'll put it this way. It depends on how dance fits into your life.
The reason the person is asking, what kind of classes should I be taking? Is because we're talking about how to improve. So a lot of hobbyists are asking, how do I get better? I love this thing. This is my hobby, and I want to get better at it. So they want to have measurable improvement.
They want to watch a video of themselves and go, oh, I look good. Instead of, why am I not clean? Why am I not sharp? I'm trying so hard to be sharp, but I can't get sharp right. But there are other people who are like, I just want to feel fulfilled. I dance to get things out of my system. I dance to express, and there's no need for am I queen?
So dance is different for so many different people.
For me, the intensives have such a wide variety of students. There are scientists, there are lawyers, there.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Are.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Data analysts, there are engineers. There are lots of people who come to the intensives that are not pursuing a professional dance career. And oddly enough, those are the people who are like, I want to get better, right?
They really love it in a totally different level and want to see that improvement. Whereas a lot of the people that are pursuing it professionally are just kind of.
There's not that same equal amount of. I'm going to put it in a way that's like getting excited, gratification from improving instead of feeling the pressure to improve.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Nailed it.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: And I think you and I are similar in that I'm going to totally speak for you. You can tell me if I'm wrong. If we were in a class and we were learning the choreography from what I've seen, I've been in class with you, there is like an excitement to, oh, I want to get this right, but it's from an excited, because it would be fun to get it right goal. Am I accurate?
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Whereas a lot of people right now, because they're not having a point of view in what they're doing, they're not having that sense of moving forward with a sense of accomplishment and gratification and excitement to continue on that path in that way. Yeah, that's a really weird blurb going from your bringing up having goals. But what I'm offering is there. If you want to improve in those things, and not everybody needs to or.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Has to, it becomes less about what the goal is and what is the purpose. What's the function of dance in this person's life?
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: And if the function is fun, freedom, expression, challenge, exercise, sweatiness, or if know, I want to buy a house and I want dance to be the thing.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: That does that for me, then, like, good luck. Different in this day and age.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Look outside of Los Angeles.
I made a terrible mistake the other day. There's a place around the corner from me, adorable little spanish style house that has a felice sign up instead of just pulled up zillow. And I was just like, I'm just curious.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: That led down a super wormhole. Okay, this is fun. I really love talking like this. This is great. Also, dance and being in class, I'm there lately kind of a lot. I've been training a lot. I'm having kind of a refalling in love with dance class and training, because during the pandemic, I don't think we talked about this much on the podcast, but we did talk about the weight of the things happening in our world and the need for art. I even said I made a very statement. I was like, I don't think we need another painting right now. I think we need activists. I think we need people in offices making change to policy.
Really good conversation. Please go watch that episode. I'm just going to say it again, but during that time, I just didn't feel called to comment on things that I hadn't experienced. I didn't feel the need to get better at dance.
I didn't feel the need to be joyful, even particularly. And dance, for me, is such a joy source that I just kind of. It was sort of off the table, but at that time, because it was so accessible, people filming themselves dancing in their kitchen. You can learn of this. You can learn of that. I started doing drills. I started just doing technical things at that time. At that time. Not to express myself, not to get better at my craft, but just to continue to move. And because I know you don't have to be artful with it, I didn't even need to be emotionally in touch to do it. I just had to plug in and go. And it's so funny. Thanks to that chapter, I'm now encouraging myself and others to perform drills. There's no reason why an eight count can't be emotional or expressive or whatever, but it really took me because my dance studio that I come from was not drills focused. The people who I've studied under since leaving my home studio aren't. They're very technical, but not drills focused.
I think the world that I've been attracted to and the world that I work in most often is style based. It's about the fingerprint that you put on it, less about the mechanics of what you're doing and more about how it feels. Or is it that? And now I'm really finding this bridging of these two things, the technical idea and the emotional expression as one. And I'm finding so much gratification in that.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Really. I'm digging the being a class person and approaching things technically and approaching things, which is the only way I know how, which is emotionally. It's the most driving force in my life, is my feelings. And hell, since then, we felt all the feelings under the sun, and I love bringing them to my work and to my training.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: You're so intuitively, like, I can't imagine you really even approaching. I could picture you in a ballet class fully being like, yes, expressing. I can't imagine a situation where you wouldn't emote, even in the technical training.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Dude, I have been getting casting after casting of people looking for that deadpan. The body's doing so much dance, and the face does nothing. I can't. I actually need to take the workshop. That's like how to not use your face while you're doing something riveting because the body's doing all this movement, and they want nothing on the face. Smack is so good at it. Arden is so good at it. There's, like, a few people who I could watch do it forever, but mostly I just call it boardcore, and it bores me to tears, and I don't like it. So, anyways, that's my area for improvement. Maybe by next time I have you on the podcast, I'll have progressed measurably. But for now, I'm just like, I'm shit at that.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: What are these castings for?
Where do they want that?
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Anything that involves a TikTok style dance. Oh, okay. Got it. Which is kind of a lot of things these days. Yes. Whoa.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Understood.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: Okay, question for you. This is kind of. I will redirect from the educator Galen and the person who I think is very good at seeing a hole in the dance ecosystem and then filling it, like, exactly what you experienced when you were an assistant. And you were like, okay, what's happening on the other side of the audition table? They don't know that. And I really think it's better for everyone if that person knows, like, you saw a hole and you filled it with the Galen hooks method or with the audition workshop. And I think you're very good at doing that in many areas. But I want to shift from, like, educator Galen to maker Galen, the choreographer, the creative director, the so and so. And I don't know why this popped up for me, but I'm dying to hear your answer to this question. I had dinner at a friend's house.
Angela Kohler. Shout out, Ange. Love you. You have to come on the podcast. Holy shit. Um, she is an artist, photographer, painter, creative director, director. Many wonderful things, including mother and her kids. Wow. The greatest. And we had dinner recently, and not recently. This is a long time ago, actually. We were talking about the seaweed sisters, and she explained this kind of pyramid way of like a food pyramid, of explaining your work to somebody who doesn't understand it. And on the baseline, you have, like, my work is always this. Okay, most often it's this. And my very, very best work is this. Occasionally I really knock it out of the park, and it's this. I don't know what brought this up for me, but I would love to hear the way you explain your. What is your work? Always.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Wait, can I hear your seaweed sister? Answer to that.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: I don't think the three of us together hashed that out, really locked in those points. But for me personally, I did one when I got home because I was with myself. And so, yeah, I'll tell you about that. Okay. My baseline is bright in that I include intellectually bright. It's thoughtful. It's not like low hanging fruit or. Yes, there's almost always more to it than meets the eye. I like to think. Or I'm just going to tell you that that's what it is, and you can watch it and find out. So it's bright, meaning, thoughtful, but also in energy. It's joyful. Usually the second tier is almost always of character, so it's less about a dancer dancing, more about somebody who's not a dancer dancing. And then the very top one was contagious.
I think if I really do my job very well, the person who just watched it will walk away feeling differently. So it's like the best of the best rubs off.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: That's so sweet, Dana.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: I think you nailed it.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: But I can't really think of a time when you're not contagious. I think that's part of.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Is that my new baseline?
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Do I need a new top? Wow. I don't know.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Well, that's a measurable sign of progress then, isn't it? If, like, it used to be, and this was years ago, but I really used to feel like when I really nail, it's that way. But now that you mentioned it, if I were to toot my own horn.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: It would sound like that.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's been a while since I did this exercise. I'm probably due back to the drawing board again because since then, I've gone through a lot personally, and this is part of the struggle I had during the pandemic. I didn't want to dance joyfully. And when that was my baseline, I really thought that that's what I had to be doing. And I see. I think I would restructure my things a little bit more. Always emotional, often joyful or bright, and then always, I don't know. I'll get back, really. But when it's the sharpest, I have to get back to you. I have been exploring more of the negative side of the spectrum, the darker, deeper things, and I would love to share with you. It's private. I haven't shared with anybody yet. Ps, I need a drink break because there's so much going on here. I'll tell you what it is. It said, I'm exciting. I'm exciting. I'm excited. And my mouth has been open. If we watch this episode back, I think I've been like, this whole time. So let me wet the whistle.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: I'll say something while you're drinking. Yeah. When you say sometimes joyful, I think part of. Because you're such an emotional, you draw from emotion.
I can't think of one of the darker things you've done, but I know you've done something dark and you can do everything. It's like the joy isn't necessarily what is the driving factor to like, what you do. It's just that you are a joyful person. But if someone was like, I want you to do something really dark and sad, which might be what you're about.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: To explain a project in my acting class where it's been a while since I movement coached someone on a character, actually since Austin Butler for Elvis. And it's been years and years, and I want to get back into that. And I recently watched Marvelous Miss Maisel loved Luke Kirby's portrayal of Lenny Bruce. Big fan. Okay. So I decided that I would coach myself towards Lenny Bruce. And in my class, I performed Lenny Bruce three ways. I did his exact version of, I think it was the Steve Allen show where he sang a song, and it was great. So I coached myself to be him, and then I choreographed a dance to that song, and then I sang and danced that song. Galen, you know me and my relationship with my voice. I was terrified. I was terrified.
But it brought up a lot. A huge emotional reservoir, like, allowing this to go, whoa. I thought I was an emotionally in tuned person. That exercise cracked me so far open to get comfortable enough with a thing with dance, to get analytical enough with it, where I could make my body that of, like, a six foot tall man who is not a dancer, and then try and effuse the two. It was a really fun thing.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: I can't wait.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Anyway, I will 100% share it with you and would love in that trusting, safe place for any feedback.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: That'd be awesome.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Shit. It was fun.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Okay. Have you thought about your triangle?
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Not particularly. Let me see, though. I don't analyze my work.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: It's a weird thing to do. And I think our reason for it is because we needed to write an art blurb, or we were. That's hard writing for a grant or something like that.
We don't just sit around and do this sort of thing. But, yeah, if you.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Vehicle to use. Okay, so what is it always?
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Right?
[00:46:31] Speaker B: I would say it's probably always story driven. Whether it's like an acting based piece or a pop jazz funk thing or whatever it is, it's always story driven. And then it's. What is it sometimes? Are you trying to guess?
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Very good if it's very good, and.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Then the best if it's very good. I don't know. I know it's awkward. I'm going to say, like, what I think is good. Yeah. If it's very good, it's also technically difficult.
Sometimes it's story driven, but it's something everybody can do. And then sometimes it's, like, story driven, but also very technically difficult, which is so hard to do, maintaining the story driven aspect.
And then at the peak, it's the hardest part. I don't know.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: We might have to get back to you with my top tier and with your top tier, because it's hard.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: I don't know. I think maybe it's like, if I actually like it, there's a lot of things that I do that I'm like, I don't like this at all. And I'm not connected. I'm not in it, but I'm just kind of going through the motions. But I like of stuff that I do, and I'm like, I'm satisfied with that thing. It's usually if I like it, because if I don't like it, I'm like, no, this is really okay.
[00:47:49] Speaker A: I really like that as a top tier. Actually, as somebody who's very critical of their work, and that has probably served you very well to be a harsh critic of yourself and of your work.
You don't get to be as good as you are at what you do without having a critical eye on it.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know that.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Okay, this is great. Terrible. Okay, we're going to. Hard left. Hard left. In the last episode, we talked a lot about advocacy and this kind of two pronged approach to it. On one level, with the big shit. We talked about Dancers alliance. We talked about Sagaftra. And then there's the kind of more personal way that you advocate for dancers, which is answering the phone when somebody asks, like, hey, how much should I be making for this? Who should I hire for this? There's the very personal ways that we advocate for our community, and then there's the bigger, broader policy ways. And since that episode happened, the Choreographers Guild is an official guild. There's been a lot of change. Kyle Hanagami, in his epic Games lawsuit, things happening in the choreography world. I would love to hear what you think of choreographers as a group, our progress, and the work that we have yet to do.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: Let's see. Let me preface this by saying that just in case, because the stuff we did with Dancers alliance was so long ago, but I wasn't fully 1012.
Yes. At least ten years ago, maybe 15 years ago.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: I served on the SAG board for several years and worked with Dancers alliance for several years. And so if I share my thoughts on this, it's, like, from an organizing perspective, and not just, like, as a regular, just, like, not just as myself.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: As a choreographer, or as a member of these entities, but as, like, a person who volunteered their time for years and years and years to organize our community. Yeah.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: And we successfully unionized music videos, which was a crazy thing, and unionized a tour, which was a huge deal.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: Good job. I'm very glad about that.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: You should be so proud. I'm very proud of that.
So I think that it's disappointing where we are. I think there's obviously what you just named are really exciting.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: Big wins. We've had wins.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: Yes. There's absolutely no denying that. But I think that's a low bar. I guess I put it that way. So if I'm being brutally honest.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: And.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: It'S built off of decades prior to when we even were a blip in the dance industry's eye trying to do anything, there's so much from the 30s until now that has led us down this disappointing road of where we stand now. Like, literally from the beginning of dance being on film, when cameras first started capturing movement, that just kind of has all led to this, I would say it's exciting.
Gosh, I don't even know what to say. I think there is so much that I wish we had that what I've seen in the last few years has made it clear to me why we don't have those things.
And it's something, like, really unique to choreography. That's not the same for songwriters, for example, or directors or other people who are creatives that do have a lot of protections.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: What is it?
Well.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: One of the major things is just people's understanding of what we do. It has nothing to do with us. It's not our fault. Actually, I'm totally striking that it is our fault. It's 100% our fault, because we have the ability to change the perception of, in a microcosm, what a set thinks we do, what the production thinks we do, what the people who are hiring us think we do, and on as.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: Each other think we do, what we.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: As each other think.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Community.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: Yes. We're not a professionalized industry.
Meaning there's not a school you go to to be a choreographer. There is no specific curriculum you have to have done to be a choreographer.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: Yeah. There's no one institution, or there's no bar exam that you pass. There's no degree that you receive. That means you've done it and you can do it and you should be doing it.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: There's no formalization to it. So, anyways, on a micro level, we have the ability to change how productions view us, which is the number one road to fixing things like our rate or those simple things. But then on the macro level, just in how the general public, and especially these days, the court of public opinion is so valuable. So if you get the public, who has nothing to do with your rate, to see what choreographers do as a different thing than what they currently think choreographers do, I think those two things are really important and unique, and a lot of that has to do with a choreographer is not needed on every job. A director is all, they're ubiquitous. So it's like different when you can't have the song without the songwriter, but you can have the song in the music video without a choreographer, totally blah, blah, blah. There are dozens of things that put us into a position that makes it very difficult, where a tiny proportion of the greater industry, even the stunt coordinators, they're more ubiquitous on a set than we are. And we're generally younger, we generally are more quote unquote fun. The way that we present ourselves on a set, there's just a ton of things that kind of all compiled together have put us in this strange position.
I would say if I'm being real and not just like kind of blowing fluff, I think we should be so much further than we are. But if I'm being real, real, and obviously we've worked together on a lot of this advocacy stuff, I've presented what I think we should do, and I think it's really hard for choreographers. So when I'm saying this, it's not like I'm sitting there going, I know what we should do, and I'm just going to sit here and not say anything. I've presented over probably six or seven years, lots of ideas of what we should do and have done a lot of work in making slideshows and presentations and paperwork and lots of stuff that I've presented what I think would work. And I still think that those things would work if we had a different dynamic within the commercial dance choreography industry. Because when we talk about choreography, there's our world that we work in, but there's the ballet world, and there's obviously the Broadway world. And we're talking about this specific issues that commercial dancers face or choreographers face.
So I'm disappointed that we aren't as far along as we could be. And I think if it's like, what's the dream of where we get to?
There's a small number of things that we all know. Rights like protection over our IP rates, et cetera. There's like five core things. Credit health care, credit residuals.
It's not a large amount of things.
It's five things.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: Like you mentioned, very low bar. It's what a lot of our creative counterparts are already getting.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: Well, it's a low bar conceptually and ethically. It's a very high bar, practically. Getting even one of those things is very difficult. And for songwriters to have the publishing rights they have required, Congress. It's not an easy thing to do. For directors and costume designers and all these other heads of department to get what they had, it wasn't easy for them to get what they got. It'll be very hard for us to get what we want, but it's possible. It just requires a lot of vision and teamwork. That hasn't happened up until now.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Vision, teamwork, and something else that I'm only just now identifying, which this might also be my rose colored glasses that I love to put on all the time.
I think one of the things that makes our community unique is exactly what we've spent the last hour talking about is that we actually are, most of us anyways, teachers. And if one of the biggest problems that we have is people not understanding what we do, then the unsexy truth is that we need to teach them, and we need to be teaching them always.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: Which, to me, that's not that hard of a sell. Like, I worked on the handbook internally. We all know in the choreographers guild what this handbook is. That is just a matter of us as a community getting together and saying, we want to use this thing. And so in my head, there's a lot that we could have forever ago started to implement that is sitting right there, ready for us to do. But I can't force other people to.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah, you can't want the trigger and all of a sudden, say, you, the one person can't say, this is it, guys, this is the new standard.
[00:57:02] Speaker B: Nor should I. And I think that's the big challenge, is I have really clear ideas based off of doing dancers alliance stuff, being on the union board, doing all the stuff, knowing, but it's all my opinion. But I do have a really clear idea of what would work, but I'm not going to be the one to do it on my own, nor should I be, because that's not how this.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: Should be on any one person, which is my biggest excited element of the guild. And I'm very curious to see what happens in this. Next year, we'll be having our first election. People will be able to nominate themselves and their friends, and I'm really curious to see who steps forward into weighing in in a democratic way, because it won't be up to any one person. That's why this is wonderful, but it is also why it takes longer.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: Well, this just popped into my head, so I think there were two things I said that, oh, you need vision and, oh, shit, something else. Teamwork. Those are fluffy. You also need people to be willing to risk something. No. Well, yes, of course. Which we know that is so much of the trouble is executing, which, for dancers alliance, I feel like we were really good at executing. Everyone was like, well, get it done, get it done. Choreographers are a different story. You are ahead of a department, you got a lot of shit going on. There's not a lot of extra time. So that's a big difference. But you have to be willing to risk something, and for choreographers, that's really difficult. Kyle's risking something, and I, as you know, don't give a shit if I have to risk something. It's like, if I am not going to work for a while, I'm not going to work for a while. And I've experienced people using my choreography without my permission on a big level, and I do something about it, but I'm willing to risk that. Not everybody's willing to risk that, and that's everyone's own battle. So you don't expect everybody to risk it. But if you're trying to say we as a community need these things, we all collectively have to be willing to risk something to make those things happen, because that's the only time things change, right. If you're thinking of the sag strike, you have to risk something for that thing to happen. That's how it works in any industry, whether it's restaurant workers, taxi drivers, domestic workers. The only time things change is if you're willing to risk something. And for choreographers, there are five choreographers that work all the time. So it's hard for choreographers who are still trying to build a name to risk something when the pool is tiny. And the worry of the downside of risking that thing. And when I say risk something, I mean Risk pissing off a producer.
[00:59:36] Speaker A: Yes, risk not working.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Exactly. That artist not wanting to work with you. There are lots of choreographers who have made that risk, but I think as a whole, as a community, we would get a lot farther in getting the things we want if that was an understood, cohesive mindset.
[00:59:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I wonder if we will see it. I kind of hope that we do. And I think that it's a good climate for unions right now, and what we saw happen with Sagaftra, with the writers is inspiring. And I hope that our community gets hip to what was required for that to happen. And I hope that there's some big change on the horizon.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: It would change everyone's life.
[01:00:17] Speaker A: Who's a yes?
[01:00:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: I hope that by the next time you are sitting in that chair, we have some more big, big ones.
Okay, are you ready for this? Wrist roll with it?
[01:00:28] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:00:29] Speaker A: Okay, another hard left.
Light and bright.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Go with your gut. Whatever. Light and bright.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Light and bright. That's my new baseline. Light and bright.
[01:00:39] Speaker B: I didn't make that last conversation. Light and bright. I apologize.
[01:00:41] Speaker A: No, that's great.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: High dynamic. You are heavy and dark.
[01:00:44] Speaker A: You know what I actually love? That's my new baseline. High dynamic range. Okay. Either way, no matter what is bright as fuck, my dark is like, oh, you're going to need a flashlight to get out of here. This is going to hurt. HDR. Okay. I love acronyms, which, by the way, I wrote down on this page, Wri, which means wrist roll with it move that you would delete from move history of all time. It's like the worst move.
[01:01:09] Speaker B: Get rid of it.
Oh, Lord. Maybe like. No, I don't know. Wait, you said light and bright.
[01:01:18] Speaker A: What was the dark one?
[01:01:22] Speaker B: Well, I'm like, taking it seriously, right?
[01:01:25] Speaker A: It's not actually going to go away.
[01:01:27] Speaker B: Just because I saw this a bunch recently. I'm just going to throw it out. Light and bright. I'm not going to think. This is not. Don't put this on my tombstone. Like a center split with a jazz hand with like, inverted feet.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[01:01:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: Yes. When the knees are not tracking the toes and the ankle bones are thinking out the sides. Yeah, great. Love that. Favorite move of all time.
Maybe let's just say your default move, like, what's your go to move if you want to start moving?
[01:01:52] Speaker B: I don't have one.
[01:01:53] Speaker A: What? It's not a pot of array.
[01:01:54] Speaker B: Are you sure?
[01:01:55] Speaker A: Because that's mine. If I step onto the floor and I like, well, first it's a two step, and then right after it's a two step, it's a deep deep da deep deep da little pot of beret. I mean, just watch me in a freestyle circle. 100% of the time it's a pot of bray or run.
[01:02:10] Speaker B: Maybe like a little shoulder because I'll do something stupid and silly and like.
[01:02:15] Speaker A: Okay, I love a quirky shoulder accent.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: These are terrible answers.
[01:02:19] Speaker A: No, this is wonderful. This is perfect. You should have answers to these questions in the future. Just in case somebody sees you at Starbucks and they're like, hey, you're a dancer, right? What's your favorite move?
[01:02:27] Speaker B: But it's because you dance socially, and I don't dance socially. I dance totally in my head, only choreography. So that's why I'm like, I don't know.
[01:02:35] Speaker A: I love the idea of watching you dancing in your head.
[01:02:38] Speaker B: No, I'm dancing cerebrally, and I'm not doing social dances. Not to say that what you're talking about is. You know what I mean?
[01:02:48] Speaker A: I hear you.
[01:02:48] Speaker B: I'm not going into studio going, like, I'm just going to dance for fun. It's, like, all cerebral. So I'm like, well, what move? I'm like, what's in the choreography? What's in the choreography?
[01:02:57] Speaker A: What comes before and then what comes after? That depends.
Actually, I do want to talk about that. I'm saying it out loud on the record. I want more social dance.
In particular, partner dancing. Yes. In my life in 2024. Yeah. There's, like, three or four different styles of dance that I've always said I love, I love. And I'm not getting any better at them because I don't do them. So look out, tango. I'm coming for you. Also west coast swing and also zook, which I am God awful at. I even have a private coach, and I'm still very.
I haven't met that many times. Okay. Cats or dogs?
[01:03:34] Speaker B: Dogs.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: Okay. Coffee or tea? Tea. Nice.
[01:03:37] Speaker B: So here we go. Here we go.
[01:03:39] Speaker A: Okay. What color of apparel is not in your closet?
[01:03:44] Speaker B: Orange.
[01:03:44] Speaker A: Okay, so if somebody was like, you have a Home Depot audition, you'd be like, shit, can I be the manager? Last song that you sang, like, balls out. Just like, really?
Wait.
[01:03:58] Speaker B: Oh, I just have, like, a karaoke playlist.
[01:04:00] Speaker A: Yes, you do.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is very.
It's Jonas Brothers. Heavy in the back in the day. Like, lines, vines, trying times kind of stuff. And it's got a lot of hazel. This is very specific. Hazel Dickens, who is, like, one of the pioneers of bluegrass music, belting her music, which is filled with a lot of pain. There's a lot. So, yeah, Hazel Dickens and Jonas Brothers were fantastic.
[01:04:25] Speaker A: Riley and I just the other day were singing with full blown vocal fry and everything. Total eclipse of the heart. Oh, when was the last time there is music in there? The lyrics. It's talk about dark.
Once upon a time, there was light in my life. Now there's only love in the dark.
[01:04:41] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[01:04:42] Speaker A: Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.
[01:04:44] Speaker B: Oh, that's where the eclipse comes from. Yes, exactly.
[01:04:48] Speaker A: It's so good. Okay, last one. What are the words that move you the most?
[01:04:56] Speaker B: I love you.
Good one.
[01:05:01] Speaker A: It's such a good one. You know what? My mom and my aunt, before my grandparents passed away, interviewed their parents, so my grandpa and my grandma, and they asked a lot of these kind of wrist roll with it type of questions. And they asked my grandpa, what is a word that you. That you. Or what's.
Oh, no. What's a word that you love? And he said, love. And she said, what's a word that you hate?
[01:05:27] Speaker B: And he said, hate.
[01:05:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was.
Yeah.
[01:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:05:34] Speaker A: Totally. Same.
[01:05:34] Speaker B: Nailed it.
[01:05:35] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Nailed it. He nailed it. You nailed it. Galen, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate this. Round two. So much fun.
[01:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
[01:05:43] Speaker A: My pleasure. Thank you for watching, listening. Be sure to subscribe. Click the bell for notifications. I'm still new to the video thing. It's not my.
[01:05:50] Speaker B: Smash that, like, button.
[01:05:52] Speaker A: Smashing the likes. Smash the likes and get out there in the world. Keep it very funky. I'll talk to you soon.
This podcast was produced by me with the help of many big, big love to our executive assistant and editor, Riley Higgins. Our communications manager is Ori Vajadares. Our music is by Max Winnie, logo and brand design by Brie REits, thumbnails and marketing by Fiona Small. You can make your tax deductible donations towards that move me. Thanks to our fiscal sponsor, the dance resource center, and also many thanks to you. I'm so glad you're here. And if you're digging the pod, please share it. Leave a review and rating. And if you want to coach with me and the many marvelous members of the words that move me community, visit wordsthmoveme.com. If you're simply curious to know more about me me in the work I do outside of this podcast, visit thedanawilson.com.
