Author: Denise Caston-Clark

Hi! I'm Denise Caston-Clark, a professional dancer, choreographer and dance educator. I am a former Radio City Rockette and currently direct Tap Dance Detroit and the annual Motor City Tap Fest.

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Artists Careers

More than you think and not enough

Everyone knew better than me. What do I know, after all. How do I know this is the right way to go if I don’t ask people first. The people that know better.

It’s so great that we can now ask anybody what we should do. What song should I use? Which costume do you like better? What school should I go to? But wait. Does the rest of the world really know so much more than me?

Artists are, by nature, often second-guessing, hard on themselves, never quite satisfied with their work, contemplating what they haven’t accomplished. Does this sound familiar?

The truth is that we know more than we will give ourselves credit for. Trust your choices and trust your knowledge, and if you’re down to the final stretch of your endeavor mulling over a small detail, ask a trusted person who knows you a singular, specific question.

We will never have all the answers, but we have many more than we think.

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Artists creating motivation

What is it for?

Why am I taking voice lessons if I’m not a singer?

Why am I taking ballet classes every week if I’m not a ballet dancer?

Why did I study high level math if I’m not an engineer, physicist or astronaut?

If it gives fulfillment, is time well spent, connects me with others or more deeply with myself, gives a needed outlet or a needed place to hide, feels right or enhances other areas of life, that’s all that matters.

Likes, shares and comments are temporarily satisfying. The joy derived from doing things ‘just because’ stays with us so much longer.

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Artists motivation Technology

Pivot, step, walk, walk, walk

One very easy thing to do right now is to worry and ask ‘what if’.

What if I lose my business? What if my job, as I know it, is no longer? What if I have to change my life around completely? Now what?

Worrying takes a lot of energy and accomplishes nothing (we all will still spend some time worrying). We could also wait for things to get back to normal. Waiting is also not a good use of time.

As unideal as it is, it’s important to continue doing the work.

Not everything needs to change.

  • I’m still teaching my classes but they are pre-recorded.
  • I’m still teaching my classes but they are live-streamed.
  • I’m still planning classes for each level I teach, but now I’ve taken the time to separate the levels into different notebooks.

What’s next for me? An online monthly membership for people who want to continue tap dancing at home, or learn from the beginning. Stay tuned!

With slogs come new ideas, or time to develop the unrealized ideas and goals buried inside us collecting dust.

We can worry and wait and rant and let the challenge swallow us, or if we’re talking business-speak, we can nimbly pivot. As dancers, we’re slightly more talented and we can “Pivot, step, walk, walk, walk.“

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Artists Dance and Social Media motivation Training for success

For example

Duck family

It is no longer a select few in charge who get to be heard shouting at others for not doing things the right way or for the right reasons. (Side note: I’m going to narrow this down to the realm of dance, but it’s applicable to any industry or topic.)

Each and every one of us has our own public soapbox to argue about split sole tap shoes, rant about tap dancers not listening to jazz music, bemoan the hypersexualization of competition dance and overall, shame others for not representing the art form in a way that we find acceptable.

This doesn’t work.

Humans don’t want to be antagonized into doing things “the right way”. We learn by following the examples around us. We teach what we’ve learned from our mentors and what we feel is true to the integrity of the art form, while making it engaging. That’s all that matters.

Follow the example I set. Or don’t.

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Artists Careers Educators Training for success

When to stay and when to walk away

Part of achieving success as an artist is having the right training. Having the right training means you have mentors. The best mentors will help you achieve your maximum potential in a way that is demanding without being condescending.

In vulnerable states, artists may rely on their mentors to get them through the roughest patches. If this vulnerability becomes manipulated, it crosses the line into unhealthy.

Your teachers helped you reach great heights under their tutelage and may have believed in you when it seemed nobody else did.

It’s all great until it isn’t. Fifty great things your mentor has done for you cannot outweigh one very bad thing they have done to you.

The effect teachers have on students lasts a lifetime, the good and the bad. If it doesn’t feel healthy, walk away, and cherish the ones that push you to your best and catch you when you fall.

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Artists motivation

That’s the truth

The truth can be quite elusive, especially when it is uncomfortable and feels unsafe, even more especially right now.

Past all of the arguments over minutiae and people bending the truth to their liking, past all the opinions and noise, there’s ballet. It’s right or it’s not. You’re in 5th position, or you’re not. Your leg is behind you, or it’s not. There’s weight on your tendu foot, or there’s not.

In a hyperconnected world of bickering, quarreling, unfounded theories and distress, there’s plié and breath.

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Careers Educators Training for success

Value isn’t cheap

On tour in 2005 in the town of Somewhere, USA, my cast mates and I went to a dingy gym in a hotel basement so I could teach them the audition material for the upcoming Radio City Rockettes audition. I’d been doing the job for many years at this point, so I knew what the open call would entail.

These women are fabulous dancers. I just needed to fine tune some tiny details. Two of the three that auditioned ended up getting hired that season, after being cut from previous years of auditions. Words can’t express how special that was to me. They of course didn’t pay me a dime.

Other times in my career I’ve been hired to guest teach at studios or as a faculty member of a convention or festival where students don’t know foundational tap steps, and I’m paid very well to teach them some basics that they could learn from anybody with some knowledge.

How much I was paid in any case doesn’t matter.

The value of a teacher’s work isn’t measured by how much money they make. It’s measured by what those they teach get out of it.

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motivation

All the little things

I don’t remember what awards I got at any dance competitions I participated in.

I barely remember my graduation ceremonies. I may have had some small graduation party but I don’t remember that either.

As great as my wedding was (all 9 minutes), the best part is the marriage.

My high school was too nonconformist to have a prom, but we did have a dance called ‘morp’ (prom spelled backwards). I’m grateful to my good friend who took me as his date, but I don’t remember the actual dance.

Many of us are missing out on milestone events this year. While those singular days and moments I mentioned don’t live strongly in my memory, the countless moments that led to them or came afterward always will.

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Careers Educators Training for success

Full Circle

It was fun to grow up analog, to be a part of the generation that grew up analog. In the dance community we somehow figured out what was good, which dance studio would provide the best training and where the dance conventions and tap festivals were. When we got home at the end of the day, we were away from everyone. With a few exceptions, everything was local.

Adulthood combined with the ever growing internet made everything very big. I traveled to L.A. and New York City to study with as many dance artists as possible, to know them and for them to know me.

“Hey! You’ve been in my class before.”

Then came social media. Who remembers MySpace? You can now connect with anyone in your industry anywhere in the world. It’s an infinite realm of choices and possibilities.

I’m ready to go back to small. I don’t just mean geographically, although I can’t wait to be able to sit at the counter again at the tiny diner around the corner. I’m ready to continue doing my best work for the small group who shares my excitement and spirit. I’m back where I started, but so much better.

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Artists creating rejection

The Go-Tos

When I feel like I’m running out of time: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/arts/dance/alessandra-ferri-american-ballet-theater-romeo-juliet-kenneth-macmillan.html

When I need a reminder that success is very far from a straight line: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/movies/ethan-hawke-blaze-foley-first-reformed.html

For great music with a mix of esoteric, mainstream and in-between: https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/eclectic24

When it’s time to work out: https://www.sweat.com/

Selected inspiring books I’ve loved reading: You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero & Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham

When I need something comfortable and predictable, for background while I work on other things: Gilmore Girls [substitute any show that you’ve seen all the episodes of that don’t make you think too hard]

Find what keeps you going every day.