Dance Church Launches Platform For Dance Artists To Start Classes In Cities Across The Country

Community phenomenon Dance Church, the beloved movement class led by practicing dance artists in Seattle, New York, Los Angeles and Portland, has announced their plans for expanding the Dance Church offering to new communities across the country and equipping dance artists with a comprehensive suite of support to launch classes including a new model for compensation, and self-serve digital tools for event creation and community engagement.

Developed over 12 years of iteration, including a viral pandemic pivot which led to launching an online platform hybrid between in-person and online classes, these resources aim to create a new paradigm for career growth and community connection in the Dance and Fitness industries. Practicing Dance Artists who want to bring Dance Church to their communities can apply here.

A large part of Dance Church's mission is to create new sustainable models for the dance industry that are not solely reliant on grant funding and philanthropic giving, rather, on consumers paying to engage with dance experiences and dance artists. Dance Church's cathartic and inclusive class format invites a broad audience to discover the dance world, by welcoming dancers and non dancers alike to dance it out and work up a sweat. People enter dance spaces they may otherwise not have known about, discover the teacher's artistic career beyond the class, and leave knowing they are supporting working dance artists across the country. This represents a growing audience for the teacher in their dance career outside of class, and for dance venues that host other artistic experiences.

"The more people come to Dance Church, the more people support the dance artists. This model as a community flywheel has been fueling Dance Church and Dance Church teachers from the moment we started training new teachers." says Kate Wallich, Founder of Dance Church. "It's nearly impossible to have a career as a dancer alone, Dance Church is part of a new zeitgeist of dance makers who are championing models for entrepreneurship, leadership and sustainability in the dance world."

Once dance artists apply and pass the screening process, new teachers will receive comprehensive training, and access to the go.dancechurch.com platform. Training is a combination of live conversation and asynchronous tutorials in order to provide an equitable format for learning and to continue a culture of collaboration and community between teachers. New teachers are equipped to lead the in-person class experience, choose and set up a venue, and begin offering classes and growing their community. Dance Church offers ongoing support through marketing, music licenses, training, and engagement with the broader Dance Church teacher community. On the digital platform, they can create their teacher page, schedule and offer in-person events, engage with their followers, and publish photo and video content.

"We wanted to package up everything we've developed internally and share it with dance artists in a very broad and inclusive way," said Clara Siegel, Dance Church CEO. "This is years of work, capital investment, engineering teams, all now in the hands of the artist."

This expansion model offers flexible and supportive career pathways for dance artists. Most other offerings, like Zumba and Pilates, charge facilitators to get trained and started, contributing to a systemic issue around sustainability in the dance industry. Dance Church will not be charging dance artists for training and start-up fees, rather new teachers will be W2 employees and compensated hourly for their time training. Teachers will be paid $100 per class plus $3 per class taker, and reimbursed up to $100 for their venue fees. This ensures financial support as they are getting started and allows them to share in the upside as they grow their Dance Church community. Other benefits include access to a 401k.

"It was important to everyone in the organization, from a place of mission, for teachers to be W2 employees," Siegel said. "It means they aren't taking a financial risk to get classes off the ground, and dance artists aren't paying us as customers. We are invested in their success and partnered together on the best experience for class takers."

In 2023, with this new expansion model, you will see Dance Church classes popping up in more cities across the country as dance artists are trained and new cities are launched. Dance Church is on a mission to empower dance and dance artists everywhere, and this launch brings us one step closer to this vision.

Take Dance Church classes online or in person at go.dancechurch.com, IRL classes are $20 per class or $49 / month, On-Demand classes are $19 / month.