A.A.C.T.

Our Four Pillars extend to all of our future brands, clients, and employees.

Who we are

  • the resilience, honesty, and confidence we want to instill in our students.

  • encourages exploration, experimentation, and creativity.

  • replaces ego and hyper-competitiveness with networking and learning opportunities while building interpersonal skills.

  • keeps our students safe by building the foundation they need.

Community over Competition

The relationships we create with others in our industry are more important than beating someone in business or competition.

What to Expect

We’re not a physical studio just yet, but it’s going to happen. There’s a plan in place for in-studio and online dance classes. Attitude Dance Project is going to have a decentralized and distributed leadership structure because leadership isn’t a hierarchy, it’s about responsibility, trust, and a shared purpose.

  • Not every dance teacher can choreograph and not every choreographer can teach.

    You can be a professional working dancer and not be able to teach a beginner class.

    We’ll require all of our teachers to teach beginner levels because it ensures that the instructor knows their technique inside and out so that they can teach to multiple types of learners and adjust the level as needed.

  • Dancers are expected to mess up. We want to teach them that messing up is part of learning.

    Perfectionism? We don’t know her.

    This is a very prominent thing, especially in this industry. It’s very damaging to our dancers' mental health.

    Our dancers don’t judge each other for trying. They work hard to achieve what they can and they’re proud of their efforts.

  • Dance is a team sport. Dancers, choreographers, teachers, families…we’re all working together.

    We all have people who are “better” and “worse” than us. We want our dancers to recognize the strengths in their teammates as well as themselves.

    Playing favorites is not something we do. We see the value in every student and we want them to be here.

  • Hyper-competitiveness is running rampant in our industry.

    “Win at all costs” mentality is poor sportsmanship and hurts the team as a whole.

    Healthy competition is about doing your best, being a good teammate, seeing the strengths in others, and congratulating the competition when they win.

How Attitude Happened

Alex Nadell - Founder

  • My childhood studio closed on us. We showed up to class and the doors were locked with no explanation.

    My jazz teacher was able to round us comp kids and our teachers up, rented out a school auditorium, and eventually opened a new studio.

    After many good years, my teacher had to move so she left our studio to one of the dance families. We then had to move locations, downsize as we lost some families.

    When all of my favorite teachers had gone, I had an attitude whenever I wasn’t being challenged enough or felt valued enough or when my team was underestimated. I wanted all of my teachers to have higher expectations for us and to help us reach them.

    It’s not that I needed to win at competition because that’s not who we were at the studio. It’s that I wanted to be the best I could be and I didn’t know how to achieve that on my own. I needed the guidance and trust from my teachers.

    But, the 2008 financial crisis happened and 2009 was going to be our last recital. I was a junior in high school at that point so for my senior year, my studio owner took the four of us senior dancers, rented out a space and finished the season.

    Even though our training sort of went out the window, I deeply appreciate our studio owner for keeping us on another year,

  • I graduated in 2010 and went off to California Lutheran University where I had already made the dance team. It was here where I decided I wanted to own a dance studio, the name “Attitude” in the back of my mind.

    I didn’t know how different dance team was from studio dance. I didn’t want to be a cheerleader on the sidelines and I felt like we could do more. I wasn’t supposed to rock the boat and this time, I was dealing with my peers. No coach or teacher in sight.

    My captain and co-captain sat me down to discuss my attitude. No, I wasn’t happy. I knew our team had more in us and it felt like we were playing it safe. I was bored, I craved challenge and community. The only thing that saved my sanity was staying after practice with my friends or by myself to work.

    I fought my way to becoming captain with my friend Kayla. We wanted to lead together to make a change. We introduced Varsity uniforms and custom costumes to the team. We raised the bar in technique and choreography which is saying a lot for a DIII school with no BA in Dance.

    Between the two of us, I was the “bad cop” in some sense. Being in a peer run club isn’t the easiest, but the changes we made helped the team be what it is today.

    I graduated with a BA in Art in 2014.

  • After graduating, I started learning how to teach and teaching classes at the same time. It was a gymnastics center that had a recreational dance program. My mentor inspired my dynamic staging in choreography.

    I saw how she pushed her students with kindness, knowing they were capable. I felt my students could be pushed too, and that I could have a bigger hand in the company. But again, I would be rocking the boat. The pay was pretty terrible so I left and started teaching at a small dance studio.

  • I started by being a long-term substitute while a couple teachers were on maternity leave. This led to finally being able to teach competition groups and have my own class standards. My students thrived because I didn’t underestimate them and I didn’t pressure them to be perfect either.

    And every year, I was teaching beginner classes and mostly elementary aged students. I definitely wanted to teach a range of students and levels and not be type cast as the minis teacher.

    My tap groups were amazing and they grew to love tap just as much as me. I did focused private lessons and choreography for comps and talent shows.

    I felt like I had more to offer and that my students could be challenged more. They were hungry for more.

    2020 changed a lot.

    My experience teaching started going downhill in 2019. All of the momentum I was feeling was breaking, but 2020 was the nail in the coffin. Our hours were slashed, I went on unemployment. My ideas for new classes were ignored so I did them on the side. My boss wasn’t too happy with me for that, but I had to do something.

    The studio closed and I found another teaching job at a large studio. 10 students followed me there.

  • I thought it was going to be just what we needed because I couldn’t open a new studio like my teacher did for me.

    I got to teach more teens, more experienced dancers as well as beginners. It felt well-rounded even though I wasn’t teaching comp. The next year, I was invited to teach comp, but I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to choreograph.

    After practically begging, they let me choreograph a mini tap which ended up being a crowd pleaser. I was disappointed I couldn’t do more, but I was happy with that number.

    I tried asking for the things that I wanted, for classes they took away from me. Ultimately, they wanted what they wanted and my needs weren’t in alignment. Because of this and the cracks in studio culture I’d been seeing, I knew I needed a change.

    I’d been seeing and hearing so much from my own students and from social media.

    Favoritism, internal competition, ego, perfectionism, hierarchy, gaslighting, nepotism, corporatization of the arts, performative social media, the devaluing of technique, private equity taking over dance competitions and buying up studios.

    I started to resent the competitive dance world as a whole.

    It doesn’t have to be this way.

    And I had become so irritated from years of being blocked from achieving my goals. I was burnt out.

  • I started posting online to get some authority in the dance education space. I made over 200 video tutorials for teachers and dancers, met some wonderful teachers and helped dancers from all over.

    Since then, I’ve built a dream that’s a lot bigger than I ever imagined. Even though I’m still burnt out, I’m still going.

    This is Attitude Dance Project.

    Online dance classes for rent rather than subscription to make dance affordable and accessible.

    Studio classes that focus on technique and artistry rather than spectacle and competition.

    A conservatory for serious students including apprenticeships and scholarships.

    A mini-convention that explores dance through experimentation with guest teachers.

    A studio manager and productivity app for the dancers to share their journey with friends in a safe space.

    All of these ideas connect with the four pillars A.A.C.T. They are all brands I want to create and cultivate and grow to change the dance education industry.

    I’ve been blocked from achieving more than what they wanted me to. Now, there’s no “they”.

    My business will use a decentralized and distributed leadership style so it’ll just be “us” trying to create a better world for our dancers together.

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