This month’s episode is the first part of a two-part series of interviews with Dance Data Project! Dance Data Project is an organization that promotes gender equity in the dance industry, including in ballet companies, by providing metrics-based research that is free and accessible to the public. Through its research, programming, resources, and advocacy, DDP showcases and uplifts women throughout the dance industry and provides data to inform decisions on inclusivity and moving the industry forward. The organization was founded by Elizabeth Yntema, who will be joining the podcast later in February!

For this episode, DDP’s external communications lead Nancy Dobbs Owen and senior research consultant and team training lead Junyla Silmon are in the studio!

Junyla is a performer and choreographer whose career spans concert dance, immersive theater, and contemporary companies. She began with Dance Data Project as an intern and now leads research and training. As a performing artist, she has worked with Susan Marshall, Roderick George, and Kayla Farrish, among others. Junyla is also a company member of Company SBB//Stefanie Batten Bland. As a choreographer, her work was presented at the 2022 Upsurge Dance Festival.

Nancy has decades of experience as a professional dancer, choreographer, educator, and arts administrator alongside a career in academia. She’s served as external communications lead for Dance Data Project since spring 2025. Her research focuses on how training, tradition, and embedded power systems intersect, affecting equity and accessibility in dance leadership. She currently serves as an assistant professor of dance at Southern Utah University and is a staff writer for LA Dance Chronicle. She’s danced with regional ballet, modern, and contemporary companies and has numerous theater credits, including the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera. She is also an award-winning choreographer for both stage and film, with award recognition from the Ovations, Stage Scene LA, and BroadwayWorld.com. Check out their interview!

• Learn about Dance Data Project: dancedataproject.com
• Follow Dance Data Project on Instagram: instagram.com/dancedataproject
• Donate to Dance Data Project: https://dancedataproject.com/donation-page/
• Subscribe to The Adult Ballet Studio on YouTube: @adultballetstudio

Music in this episode:

Waltz of the Flowers - Tchaikovsky

Barroom Ballet - Silent Film Light - Kevin MacLeod

Barroom Ballet - Silent Film Light by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100310

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

@eblosfield | theadultballetstudio@gmail.com

Support this podcast on Patreon! https://patreon.com/TheAdultBalletStudio?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy new year! Claire Waite Brown is in the studio this month! She’s the host of the Creativity Found podcast and the founder of the Creativity Found directory and community, all dedicated to helping grown-ups reconnect with their creative spark. On her podcast, Claire speaks with people who’ve found — or re-discovered — their creativity later in life, unpacking their childhood experiences with the arts, the detours that pulled them away, and the brave, often joyful journeys back.

But Claire doesn’t just share these Creativity Found stories — she’s living one herself. In her 40s, Claire joined a hip hop dance group for adults, stepping into an entirely new dance style after studying contemporary dance for years. She talks openly about how challenging, humbling, and joyful it was to be a beginner again. She’s also returned to her love of theatre through improv and pantomime, and even started Creativity Found having never podcasted before, proving that you don’t need permission, experience, or a perfect plan to begin.

Claire describes herself as someone who isn’t afraid to take creative risks, and through her work, she’s realized something powerful: she has her own Creativity Found story coming back to so many of her creative passions in adulthood. She’s also a book editor and a dance fitness instructor! If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to start something creative, or if you’ve felt the pull to return to something you once loved, this episode is for you. Check it out!

• Check out Creativity Found: https://www.creativityfound.co.uk/
• Follow Claire on Instagram: @creativityfoundpodcast
• Subscribe to Creativity Found on YouTube: @creativityfoundpodcast
• Subscribe to The Adult Ballet Studio on YouTube: @adultballetstudio

Music in this episode:

Waltz of the Flowers - Tchaikovsky

Barroom Ballet - Silent Film Light - Kevin MacLeod

Barroom Ballet - Silent Film Light by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100310

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

@eblosfield | theadultballetstudio@gmail.com

Support this podcast on Patreon! https://patreon.com/TheAdultBalletStudio?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This month’s guest became a professional ballerina, not because someone told her she could, but because someone told her she couldn't. When an early ballet teacher told young Emily Sayre Smith that her leg shape meant she’d never make it, she did what any stubborn kid would do: she set out to prove them wrong. And she did.

Emily is a former pro dancer and memoirist, and she’s in the studio this month! She’s danced her way across two continents and discovered that even the most disciplined ballerinas aren’t perfect—they’re brave. Emily is a classically trained ballet and modern dancer who found an escape in ballet, a way to move out of the fear and chaos of her life and into her body and the music. She earned scholarships, traveled to London to dance at the Stella Mann College of Performing Arts, and ultimately, found love waiting for her in the dance studio and on stage.

Her debut memoir, Smartass: Memoir of a Mouthy Girl, published this year in October and is a blend of humor, grit, queerness, art, and survival—written, as Emily admits in this interview, because she really, really didn’t want to clean her house. Emily’s own journey includes addiction, sobriety, reinvention, and more than a few brushes with dance royalty. She speaks about how ballet shaped her, saved her, and sometimes nearly broke her. She also discusses body image in the ballet world, the culture shock of dancing abroad, what it meant to come out as gay as a young ballerina in 1981 during the AIDS crisis, and why she thinks everyone - even basketball players - should try ballet. Check it out!

• Purchase Smartass: Memoir of a Mouthy Girl: https://www.amazon.com/Smartass-Memoir-Emily-Sayre-Smith/dp/164742982X
• Connect with Emily on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61583660417526
• Learn more about Emily: emilysayresmith.com
• Subscribe to The Adult Ballet Studio on YouTube: @adultballetstudio

Music in this episode:

Waltz of the Flowers - Tchaikovsky

Barroom Ballet - Silent Film Light - Kevin MacLeod

Barroom Ballet - Silent Film Light by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100310

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

@eblosfield | theadultballetstudio@gmail.com

Support this podcast on Patreon! https://patreon.com/TheAdultBalletStudio?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.