My body had changed after having babies,
and I wasn't sure what I was capable of anymore.
My body remembered how to move.
“I wasn't quite as flexible or strong as I'd once been,”
but it was coming back to me, and then just that, that joy of movement, that feeling of freedom through dance. It started to change things, and then the more my-- - Jamie Adams is a performing arts educator, entrepreneur,
and the founder and CEO of Gotta Dance Performing Arts Studio. She is dedicated to making the arts accessible to every child by fostering creativity, confidence, and belonging through dance. - We started with just thinking we'd teach a few little classes,
but as we got going, people kept asking for more and more, and now we have a huge, beautiful building. When we took it out of the basement, we'd reach 300. - Okay, so you teach people that are, you know,
wow, I see something in you.
I need to prepare you for, you know,
to go to this school or for competitions. - We don't actually do competitions. I wanted to keep it an environment that doesn't lend to that competitive that comparing. (dramatic music)
- It spans the globe.
“Like a super high school, internet Elvis.”
- Ready, fire, fire, fire. - Today, Apple is going to reinvent the fall. - It's not over, I'm telling how we're-- - The living your legacy podcast, for those who live, to leave a legacy.
(crowd cheering) - Hello, so I'm Jay Slyan. I'll be your host today for the Living Your Legacy podcast. And I'm here with, please introduce yourself. - My name is What do you do?
- Oh, my name is Jamie Adams, and I'm one of those people. - Hello, so I'm Jay Slyan. I'll be your host today for the Living Your Legacy podcast. And I'm here with, please introduce yourself. - My name, what do you do?
- Oh, my name is Jamie Adams, and I'm the owner of God Adance Performing Art Studio in Eagle Mountain, Utah. - All right, so I gotta get you some background info. I'm not a great dancer, you know?
I'm more of the kind of dancer that you see spinning at like a fish concert or you know, and a lots of concerts, and I'm a dancing a lot, but when it comes to like actual dancing and rhythm, I don't have it.
I can't relate that concert dancing to a dance number or anything like that. If someone wanted to do a TikTok reel with me, I'd be like, I am not your guy, you know? I got two left feet when it comes to that.
So, do you get a lot of that experience, you know? Like what am I supposed to do to take my dance experience into, I guess, that dance floor with no concert? - Yeah, we'll take you from wherever you start
and help you get to wherever you hope to be. - Yeah. - With your dance career. - Now, where are you from? - I grew up in Highland, Utah,
but right now we live in Eagle Mountain, Utah, which is just across the valley. - Okay, it's just across the valley from Highland, from Highland, which is south of Salt Lake. - South of Salt Lake, okay.
Now I'm getting kind of my orientation going. - Yes. - And so, give us some background. How did you get into dance? Was it something that you were born a dancer?
Was it a movie in the '80s? I know we had a lot of dance movies going on. So it was a little bit about your background and how did you get into dance? - I liked dancing as a little kid,
but I officially started taking dance classes when a friend invited me to start taking classes with her in about fourth grade. A lot of the little neighbor girls were doing dance classes back then, and that's when I really found
that I couldn't stay away from it, I loved it.
“- Yeah, I remember the first time when I was about that age,”
that I went into gymnastics.
Now, and it's just so fun to answer that first kind of like,
you're jumping around and I'm sure it's very similar 'cause dancing and jumping and all that stuff, it makes such an impact, you know? Now, I didn't open up a gymnastics studio, right? But I did love jumping around and being in that setting.
You know, and I'm sure it kind of felt the same way when you're a little girl in that dance studio. - Yes, I just love to move it. I felt good, it's good for you, so. - Yeah.
- Fun times. - And so how long did you do that? You're with your friends, did you continue to dance during your younger years, or did you drop it like me and go into something else?
- I did continue it through all of elementary, middle school high school and into college. And then when I got married and started having babies, I dropped it for a bit, but found that I couldn't live without it and got back into it again.
I started teaching some classes and eventually decided that we wanted to do things our way and started teaching some classes in the basement.
- Nice.
- Which continued to grow and go, we're here today. - Nice. So what was that moment where you saw, hey, I wanna get back into dancing, you dropped it for a while, you got your kids to complete busy lifestyle,
you're juggling a lot of stuff, why, how'd you get back into dance? Was there a moment that clicks for you? - I'd been dealing with a little bit of postpartum depression after my second child was born and family
that loved me, we're trying to help me find ways to kind of break out of that. - And how intense is that? - Yeah, that's rough.
- It's really hard and you don't always
“recognize that that's what you're going through.”
So now, of course, in hindsight, oh, this is what it is. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's hard. - But, and what's it kind of stem from? Like, it just comes from a piece of you that was inside of you, kind of leaving and you feel empty,
or what is the depression or the feelings with postpartum depression? - For myself, I know like scientifically, it's the changes of your hormones and things like that, kind of, throw your brain chemicals off balance,
and lead into that, I was feeling more and more of a sense of like a loss of my own identity. I just was kind of just a caregiver for my children, which I loved doing and knew that it was a good thing to do with my life, but I kept feeling like I wanted something
more and I think with those chemical imbalances, that can be pretty hard, that's so. - Yeah, as a reference.
With the music, with the movement, exercise,
it helps to release serotonin, which got your energy levels back up. - Yes, for sure.
“- I'm sure it was a joy from your husband”
to watch you get back into dance and talk about how that was with the family of getting back into dance, and does they see the changes? - It was scary at first. I was nervous 'cause my body had changed
after having babies, and I wasn't sure what I was capable of anymore, and I wasn't sure if I would be welcomed back into the world of dance after so many changes in my own life, and I found that I was welcomed back.
I ended up taking a class from a teacher that I'd taken from when I was younger, and she recognized me, and welcomed me back, and the other classmates were very welcoming and kind, and I was, my body remembered how to move.
I wasn't quite as flexible or strong as I'd once been, but it was coming back to me, and then just that joy of movement, that feeling of freedom through dance, was it started to change things,
and then the more my body and mind healed, the more I was dancing, and it started to just really click back into place for me. - And what kind of dance were we talking about? When you were younger,
and when you got back into it, you look like you're crunking and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. But seriously, is it jazz dance? Is it like self-expressionism?
What were you in ballet? - I really enjoyed trying anything that people were willing to teach me. So I took a lot of jazz, I loved hip hop, I was horrible at tap when I was younger,
but I did just like to try. I'm actually trying tap again, I'm taking tap classes again to try, and it's clicking a little better now. Let's see, I did ballroom, ballet,
electrical and contemporary just about anything. But as I jumped back into it, I was taking contemporary and hip hop, were the fun classes that they had available for adults at the time, and so that's--
- So you got to dance and cranking, remember? - Yeah, so, and what level did you get to? Like you've done dance classes for so long, were you doing competitions, were you doing shows? - The places I didn't do competitions,
mainly performances back then, when I was in high school, and did the ballroom dance company, we did compete then, and we placed pretty high. We did fairly well, it was really fun.
- I'm sure, it looks fun. - Yeah, it's a good time for sure. So I was pretty good, I got scholarship for college because of my dance skills,
and I never considered myself like the best dancer.
- Yeah. - But I held my own, I did okay. - All right. - Yeah, I made it to some feet,
“but I had my knee, but it's okay to brag, you know?”
- I was just like growing up, I never really thought of myself as the best, but I did make the companies I tried for usually, and I don't know, maybe I just didn't recognize it myself. - So you got some original clients in your basement,
and where are you today? What's the growth journey like? - Yeah, it's been an adventure, for sure. We started with just thinking,
We'd teach a few little classes,
well that I would teach a few little classes to like the neighborhoods,
“but as we got going, people kept asking for more and more,”
and luckily I'd had training in a lot of different styles.
So at first, I was able to offer a lot just myself,
but the more it took my time, the more I wasn't able to be a mama, and so I ended up hiring some other teachers to come teach her my basement, bless their hearts for being willing to teach there.
It was a tiny room, and they put us a lot. - And they put us a lot. - And they put us a lot. - Yeah, we have airs on the walls of the house. - We gotta set this, we gotta set the stage here,
because when you talk, yeah, I got dancers in my basement, so I got think of my basement, and it's not that greatest. - Yeah, no, we had like the wood floor, and the mirrors on the walls, but it was a small room, so like it limited how many people we could have.
Oh yeah, yes, I could definitely see who was there the whole time, but yeah, it continued to grow, and then got to the point where I was employing other teachers to work for me and with me,
ended up expanding another room in the basement
to be like a tumbling area,
“and we could do a couple forms of dance in there.”
- Now, were you DIY and doing it yourself with setting up the basement? - Yeah, we would, so we would actually-- - She's nodding at her husband, that's-- - I'm sorry, yes, so we would actually,
my husband and each of my father-in-law has helped build the original dance room, and then we actually would work in trade with other people in the community. They would have dance classes for their kids
and exchange for whatever work we needed done on the basement to help us finish out spaces. - So it worked out well? - The neighborhood community, or how did you remorm it, so is that the Mormon community?
- Both, both, we had a mix, summer, summer LDS, and summer not, and everyone was welcome. - So you're expanding in the basement, you're hiring new staff, you're growing in your bookings. How are you out of your, have you expanded out of the basement now
and what was that like? - Oh yes, we had to, we got to where we were running both dance rooms at the same time, and then parents would come and hang out in our living room and our home floor plan was so crazy.
You'd walk in the front door and through the living room kitchen down to the basement to find the dance room.
So it was basically like the whole house
was being taken over by dance studio. So the home was actually a dance studio from nine a.m. to nine p.m. and it became very intrusive, even though like we had a wonderful community and everybody was just great to support us.
It was getting to be kind of hard on our family. - Yeah. - So much of the home time. - Don't try not to bring your work home with you, but when your work and all the real same thing.
- It's a little rough, yeah. And so anyway, it was growing to the point that we got to, was it like, "Mom, where's the meatloaf?" - Yep, yep. - And we would have like occasionally the neighborhoods
would just sit down and eat dinner with us. They just thought it was the free for all. And that was fine, but it did become something where we need to either downscale or get this out of our home. And so we found a great realtor
who helped us find the perfect location, helped us find the right resources to build our own building. And now we have a huge beautiful building, custom floors because we have a really interesting climate where we're at.
And so the floors have to be able to adjust to that. - Okay. - Is that a just between the summer and winter? - Yes. And yeah, summer winter.
- Now, did it take some learning about that? And the winter time came and your floors were all, you know, you had some injuries are, I don't know. You know, like, we just knew and you did your research. - Well, yeah, and we worked with Harley Quinn floors.
“And I think they know what they're doing.”
- Okay. - So they paid attention to a lot of those details to make sure that we got the best floor for what our area was. - 'Cause you're making an investment. Did you have investors or you're bootstrapping this company
and this next level, what's going on? - Yeah, we did have a little bit of help with the investors to help us make sure that we could get it off and rolling in this direction. And from there, it's just been, I suppose it was a community,
people on the community that wanted to invest, like friends and family, or was that you had the whole pitch to business investors and what was-- - No, it was just people who wanted to see our vision grow and show support that way.
- Great. - Yeah. - And the reader investors are happy to this day? - I believe so. - Okay, and how many years have you been
in this new dance studio and how is it grown? We've been in our new space almost 10 years now. - Okay. - And so this fall will be our 20th season in business. - Hey.
- And we were 10 years in the house and moved out and so we'll be starting our 10th year. - Wow, 10 years in that basement. - It was wild. - Okay.
- It was, yeah.
- It was definitely not for everybody.
- How many kids do you have?
“- So when we took it out of the basement,”
we'd reached 300 kids. - No. - And now you're on kids. - Oh my own. - The dance kids are my children too.
I have four of my own personal children. - Okay. And did they dance? - Yep. - Okay.
- Yes, we tried not to push it too much for them, but encouraged if they were interested. So each did have classes here and there. My two girls still continue dancing and now they teach for me.
- Hey. - And that's great. - As of right now, they say they want to help take over the business, but you know, I don't want to push them into something
if they have different dreams. I have another confession. I did love the show. Do you think you can dance, right? - Yeah.
- And they do.
- It was so amazing to see, you know,
there's all kinds of ages on there,
“but the level of dance is just incredible, right?”
What levels do you teach? And do you teach people that are, you know, wow, I see something in you. I need to prepare you for, you know, to go to this school or for competitions.
Tell me about the range of lessons that you offer in the dancers. So we have a good range of abilities at our studio. We start classes as young as 18 months. And so, you know, obviously they're beginners,
they're learning all the skills, but and then we have, you know, dance companies that perform locally and things like that. We don't actually do competitions. I wanted to keep it an environment
that doesn't lend to that competitive, that comparing some of the negativity that can be drawn out by competitions. I know that they're working on eliminating a lot of that, but I feel like it tends to bring out the drama moments
when we have that kind of vibe. So we definitely, you know, encourage the kids and try to help them reach their full potential. But once they get to a point where they are looking for a competition type environment, then we know which other studios
to point them in the direction of to be able to achieve that. - Okay. What about older people that are looking to get back into dance as you did? - Yeah.
- Because I'm like, okay, if I was looking into taking a class, like I did when I was living in Vegas, but then I was like, oh, man, I don't want to be stuck in a class with like, you know, the 15 year olds and 18 year olds, not even the 18 year olds
but like the 15 year olds, right? Do you offer? It's almost like adult swim. Is there like a adult dance class? - You bet.
We have adult dance classes. They're usually more popular in the fall. I feel like the spring adults tend to get very, very busy. So we'll have the full offering again, this coming fall. We'll have like the lyrical contemporary hip hop,
adult ballet, and adult tap. Tap seems to just do really well no matter what. Which is kind of fun. - Yeah.
- Maybe that's the thing adults have always wanted to try.
And they're finally ready to try it, and yeah. - Okay, and couples dancing? - Yes, we have adults. - That's also when you get to older, you get to appreciate just, you know,
the romanticism about it, and it's beautiful, like the connection that these two get on the dance floor
“and those competitions, but do you also teach some of that?”
- Yes, we have like adult ballroom date night, and we also have country-lined dance night. - Okay. - Our country swing, and those are usually really popular, depending on how busy things are in the community,
and how crazy things are for the adults, but those are really fun, and we do a Valentine's dinner dance. - All right. - That's become a tradition at our studio, and we serve a dinner, and they get a ballroom dance lesson,
and then open dancing and dessert,
that's always like Valentine's.
- Yeah. - Super fun. - And, you know, with the age of social media, and everyone has to be a TikTok dancer, or any of that, does has that changed your lessons, where you prepare them to do a choreography
for a quick TikTok dance? - I think I'm not teaching anymore, and so the teachers that are teaching right now, they do, they are aware of what the TikTok trends are, and sometimes they'll do a TikTok trend dance
as a reward for their class. You know, they are fun, they're fun to do, but we all are making sure that there's a technique. - The choreography, it's the satisfaction you get of memorizing all your moves, right?
And if you're a beginner, and then you get through your team, there's got to be a level of, hey, you know, now then there's the different aspect of it, is like, okay, you don't have to do a TikTok and bust out your phone everywhere we go.
- Yeah, exactly, I mean, unless that's, I mean, there's a, there has to be a balance with everything,
You know, everything in moderation, even moderation,
because some of them are just so skilled,
and it's a platform, right? - Yeah.
“- So it's just about, you know, teaching your kids, right?”
No, when's the right moment, you know? They say don't dance in the middle of the roads, right? Man, be aware of others, right, respecting others. - Exactly. And lastly, what about like, you know,
the elders who need to move around and like old folk homes, do you do any work with them? - We have, we've had, I think it's called Silver Sneakers, 'cause we have a fitness program. - Yeah. - And so the seniors in our community
reached out and asked if we would offer them a class,
“and we offered it until they said, okay, now we're too busy.”
So we usually will reach out and see if when they want it and accommodate whatever they're asking for. - Wow, well, that's a beautiful journey for where you came from and what you've become, and following your passion to open a studio,
getting your family involved, where they like it so much, that you might be able to hand down the business to them. It sounds like a wonderful journey. Now, how can the viewers find you?
- www.gotadanceut.com. - Got it danceut.com. That's right. - All right. And, you know, if I'm in Utah,
“I might hit you up for some of those dance lessons,”
and it sounds good, you're very welcome to come. - Get my two left feet into a left and right foot, and, you know, I'm half Filipino,
so my parents are my mom and her friends are always like,
"Oh, the Lombada, the forbidden dance." So if I'm gonna go into it, I'm going for a bit of dance. Well, thank you so much for joining us, I've been a pleasure talking to you. And, is it your first time in South Beach?
You got any plans here? - Second time, and we're just enjoying the beach so much. - Love and you love it, yeah. It's a beautiful beach. Just watch out for the warnings.
There was a high tide, no, I'll be a rip-tide warning, until Tuesday. - Interesting. - Yesterday was quite strong, so. - I know how windy it is.
- Yeah, so just be on the what?
Look out for that, you never know.
It's safety first, I'm sure it's the same with your dance. - Yes, for sure, I'm not a great swimmer, so I don't plan to go out anywhere near a rip-tide. I'll just stay where, like, up to my knees. - Well, we glad that you came into our studio today,
and thank you so much for joining us. And, thank you for joining us out there. (upbeat music)
