luminesque’s 2020 evolution

Quarantine has been a time for deep reflection. Although COVID-19 hit us like a meteor, it presented an opportunity to pause and consider the past three years from many perspectives. It was an opportunity to reprioritize and refocus on who we are, why we exist and why it’s so important that we continue to fight to exist despite financial hardship. Conversations with leaders in the dance industry, students and former staff further invited us to reflect on how we can be more transparent, more inclusive and more accountable to our goals, values, team, clients and the world we all want to build.

COVID-19, consultations with local leaders, and conversations about decolonization arising from the Stratagem conference also helped us realize the value of slowing down, being human and thinking before we act. As a small team responsible for a large community, it’s easy to feel alone and overwhelmed. We’ve realized that admitting vulnerability and asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness - instead it’s how you become stronger. Decolonizing ourselves and our business, and practicing anti-racism is a lifelong journey, not a destination. We recognize that learning is a continual commitment and a crucial investment, and we’re excited to grow together.

All of this considered, we’ve made some major changes to our mission, brand and programming to better align with our purpose and vision for a better Luminesque.

intentional mission

Although we’re a program for learning heels dance, we recognize the work our students are doing in-studio and onstage is transformative and political, and we’re ready to be intentional about universal empowerment as a purpose, rather than a byproduct. We’ve updated our mission to reflect the work we’ve been doing together from the start.

mission:

Provide expertly-designed heels dance training and public dance shows that serve as a safe and empowering space to explore and celebrate otherwise repressed expressions of personal power and sexuality.

vision:

While the present world celebrates patriarchal power and sexuality - it often represses, shames and retaliates against all other forms.

We hope that by providing accessible space on our stage for our students to safely express their sexuality, power, and confidence, we work together to unlearn and challenge any sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, ageism and ableism that makes us feel like we’re anything less than brilliant.

When we radiate confidence in our bodies, minds and souls - we serve as shining examples that spread joy and empowerment to our loved ones and communities - thus making the world a better, brighter place for all. We call this “the glow”.

Explore our About Us page and Policies page to learn more about our vision and values.

new + longer programs

Dance is an important cultural art form embedded in history, storytelling and context. Learning to dance is a complex, personal and often deeply healing process. We’ve decided that 10 weeks is not enough to give a student who’s never danced before enough information and skills to confidently perform and understand the movement they’re learning. After considering staff and student feedback, we are confident that many of our past mistakes can be avoided in the future with more time for education, injury prevention, dialogue, and thoughtful review of student costumes and show scripts.

We’ve adjusted our core program (called PROGRESS) to be a five month curriculum, which includes dedicated time for theory, history, injury prevention, workshops with external experts, thorough technique development, ample time for choreography, full dress rehearsals, and prior filming - before the two show weekends as one epic cast.

We’ve also added a new program for dancers who already have this education and technique, called EXPRESS. This program is accelerated - understanding that participating students already built a strong foundation before diving into artistry, performance quality and storytelling in a short 10 weeks. This is why we require an audition, which will be a combination of testing understanding of dance as well as ability to execute movement.

Explore our new Programs page to learn more about our new structure.

focusing our offerings

Part of our new mission is focusing on what we do best - heels dance progressives and shows. Although we will have limited drop-ins on the schedule next year, they’re designed as complementary training for our students to improve stamina, technique, choreography pickup, and performance. These aren’t intended as standalone drop-in classes for the public. Twice a year we will offer a series of Trial Classes, Course Previews and Placement Classes - but all of these will be focused on introducing and assessing heels dance experience.

We currently have no intention of offering public drop-ins, master classes or intensives marketed as deep-dives into styles that have no relation to heels dance. We encourage anyone seeking casual offerings in a variety of styles to go to Ketchdivybz, Culturally Defined, Vancouver Burlesque Centre, iDance, Harbour Dance, or any of the other excellent studios in the lower mainland that specialize in public drop-in offerings.

Explore our Schedule page to see our current Summer offerings. Check back after August 6 to view the full Fall schedule!

expanded lumi team

Balancing a limited budget as a small arts business with paying professionals living wages has proven a difficult challenge. That said, we need more perspectives and areas of expertise at the table if we’re going to achieve all of our ambitious goals and properly serve our incredibly diverse community of dancers. Investing in our team is the best decision we think we could possibly make to continue to thrive.

As we’ve grown from 30 to 300 students, it’s become more and more difficult for our founder to be present in every room and deeply know every student. It’s our goal to properly support our teachers, while providing personal attention, care, and guidance to every single student that participates in our programs - as such, we’ve created a new Student Experience Team. These experts in trauma, transformation, recovery, healing, psychology, sociology and social justice are uniquely equipped to support our students in everything they experience in our program. They will be present in every class, and work closely with the HQ team to set policy, create support resources and make sure every student is having a fantastic experience.

We’re also very excited to announce that we’ve added new teachers to our Course Teachers and Rotating Teachers teams! These talented, passionate and brilliant teachers join us from all different dance backgrounds, and will provide fresh insight and education to our students this year. We can’t wait to see what they create with you!

Where we weren’t able to hire internally, we’re thrilled to be collaborating with consultants from a variety of industries and areas of expertise. These brilliant experts are working closely with us to improve teacher training, staff training, internal policy, dance curriculum, creative direction of our shows, and our ongoing commitment to dismantling systems of oppression.

Explore our Team page to meet some of the new additions to the Glow Giver family!

revised level structure

Removing competition and hierarchy from our dance classes and shows is a core goal of our business. The dance industry is infamous for it, and we actively work to dismantle it. Our previous numerical, hierarchical level structure based on dance ability ran counter to this goal. We recognize that numbers not only inaccurately inferred that dancers would rapidly move through (like grades), but also made dancers in “lower” levels feel less-than.

We’ve completely dismantled our previous system and created a new one for our PROGRESS program that’s focused on long-term goals, intentions, levels of commitment and the overall student experience. We also named them after types of shoes because we’re (obviously) obsessed with heels. Please note these are not literally the kinds of shoes you’ll be wearing to class!

Our EXPRESS and COMPANY programs are not organized by level, and are by audition instead.

We’ve also rebuilt our conditioning warmup to better support all levels of fitness and dance experience. We can’t wait to debut our new Rise + Shine 2.0 in classes this Fall!

Explore our new Levels page to learn more about the new structure.

let’s glow!

Despite facing massive challenges at the start of 2020, we are excited to bring you the best version of ourselves and our business for the rest of this year and beyond. We hope you’re excited to participate and support us in this evolution of our mission, program and team. We can’t wait to see what this year brings with all of you by our side.

As always, we’re here to answer any questions or to discuss any feedback. Please reach out via our Contact page to connect.