The Concert Day Tricks Most Dance Studios Miss

Hello, friends. I'm Amanda Barr.

And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principles United, the podcast.

Together, we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio.

Join us as we talk everything from marketing systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between.

This is the Dance Principles United podcast. Hey, friends, and welcome to another episode of the Dance Principles United Podcast. Bec, I'm so excited to be in the studio with you.

I love being in the studio. I love our studio days. Always such a vibe.

I know. And we've got our new logo on the screen. I'm vibing that you have to check it out on YouTube because you can actually watch us and get us more than, like, you know, three views. That'd be awesome. There's been more than three views. Don't worry. But it would be nice to get a few more now that we're trying to do it on YouTube as well. How's everything been going? How is everything at the studio?

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's that crazy concert time of year where we're getting together with all the costumes and the prep and the, you.

Know, it's all happening. Crazy concert comes up so quickly, and I feel like you always just go, didn't we just do this? What?

Well, we actually did just do it. Yes.

Now we're into it already. Especially, like, when you've got to order costumes so far in advance now you've got to spend so much time researching them.

All the things literally, and it's like, yeah, just trying to make profit off costumes now is getting harder and harder, I have to say.

Yeah, it's hard.

It is hard.

Yes.

Anyway, that's me right now in the thick of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And saying no to people, like saying no to teachers that. Sorry, I know you love that vision, but it's actually way over budget. Yeah, it's hard to.

Absolutely. And getting teachers that understand that.

Yeah, I think you have to educate.

Your teachers on that.

Like, I think you've got to explain to them, you know, the process of costume and how much time, effort, everything goes into that.

Absolutely, absolutely. It's funny, we. I was on a call. This is not the topic of the podcast, but we'll just start talking about this. Anyway, I was on a call yesterday, and one of our members was talking about their teachers not coping with they'd change their rehearsal and how they do a rehearsal for their concert and that none of their teachers were coping with that. And I'm like, yeah, it's really hard Right. Because teachers don't see all the things like, you know, they were looking at it from a financial perspective and wanting more kids to opt into the concert and they're able to keep their prices down by not having a rehearsal. And you know, you obviously everyone's got to make those choices but you know, it's really about educating your teachers and your team because if they don't understand that like, you know, what it might come down to is yes, they'd love that rehearsal because obviously, yes, a rehearsal would be better. Let's be honest. Of course the rehearsal is great, but if half of the class don't do it because it's too expensive or they can't make that day, is it actually worth doing it?

You know, I actually don't think rehearsal is better because the kids get tired making them do that. It's usually the day of. They then have to get there at 8am they're teching all day, then they're exhausted. They don't perform well.

Absolutely.

I do think though I agree with that. And I don't do rehearsal for my concert as you know. And I used to. I was talking about this on tribe the other day but I do think it's important for then the studio owner to educate their staff on how to make the rehearsal happen in the studio.

Absolutely.

And I, I know this is totally off topic but I was talking about this yesterday where you need to get your staff to run into the like your kids to run in. They keep running, they keep running, they find their spots. You need to practice this in different situations. How they're going to Dr. Drop down. You could map the whole stage out quite easily. You should be able to get all the measurements and stuff of your stage. Map it out in the.

Absolutely. Set it up for success.

Exactly.

Yeah, we did the same. We used to even tape up like how you'd stand in the hallway.

Yeah.

Beforehand. Yeah. Practice standing in the hallway in one line. Then we go through and this is how we then fold into the wings from the one line in the hallway to the three lines and the week like all of that practicing that because that's setting up for success. Because you can do that in class.

And like we even do that sometimes with comp. If we've got like a really different side size stage to what we're used to, we'll map it out. But I just don't. Yeah. I don't think the rehearsal is of any benefit to anyone. I think it's expensive and I think it's unnecessary.

Yeah. Personally, I agree, but I, I think, you know, the whole thing is educating our teachers on the why behind this. Right.

Absolutely.

And that's so, so important. So not what we're here to talk about today, though.

Irrelevant. Because, you know, we're talking about concerts.

Absolutely.

About backstage at concerts. And I think, you know, it's all, it's all relevant at the end of the day because I was saying this yesterday because we did concert release for SJC yesterday. I was saying to our people yesterday, and I had the first years that I always used to run concert as an ego driven thing. And we've talked about this before on the podcast. I know. And I've completely flipped now to think what is the best experience for the child and the parent. That's what concerts should be the best experience for the child and the parent, not the best experience for me. And, and my ego doing this huge show that isn't really important at all. Because kids, if they hated the concert, will never come back again.

Absolutely.

And I used the funny anecdote that Phoenix has done one dance concert was the worst experience of his whole life. Just letting you know, I'm hand done.

And I'm sure he tells you about this all the time.

He does. It was Covid year, and that year we decided to make them sit in the audience because I don't know if we weren't allowed to be backstage. You know, there was all the rules.

Yeah. So many rules. Yeah.

So many rules with COVID So we were like, okay, we'll let the preschoolers watch. And he could not have thought of anything worse than having to sit there for an hour watching his friends dance. Sit quietly.

Yeah.

Which Phoenix is not quiet.

Yes. And be well behaved in a theater.

Yep. Now, he loved dance up until that point.

Yeah.

He absolutely adored it. And now he could not hate it more and will never, ever go back. Isn't that interesting?

It's so interesting because, you know, you might have other student students in your studio that are the same. Right. That they've had one little thing that they didn't like. And that's so the case with preschoolers. You know, Bec and I both have very similar youngest children.

Thank God we do. Otherwise we wouldn't understand each other.

That are very. Should we go? Spicy. Spicy children that have very big opinions. But the same Sassa is the same as Phoenix. Whereas they get an idea in their head and they shut down and they're like, I am absolutely never doing this again. I hate this. Because even though there was so many Things they loved about it. I hate this because of whatever that little reason is. And so I guarantee you have kids in your studio that are exactly the same that have hated one aspect of concert and then gone. I'm not re enrolling for next year. I hate it as have parents for sure. So we wanted to chat about some of our ideas because the concert should be for the kids. It should be such a memorable day. And we've had the conversation before on the podcast that us as dancers, we weren't like most of our students. We were like our top soloist comp kids. Right. Right. We were the babies of the world.

Right.

We were the kid that was in 15 routines at the concert, lived for it, had, you know, so many quick changes. It was all about them. But there is a large percentage of most of our studios that aren't like that that might just be in one routine or two routines. And I think flipping it and seeing the concept from their perspective is really important.

Well, when you think about it, that BB is on stage for the majority of them.

Absolutely.

Of her concert. Those other kids are backstage for the majority of their concert.

Yeah.

They might only be on stage for six minutes of a three hour concert. That's. That's not long.

Yes. We're gonna try and work it out as a percentage, but we can't do that. So it's not very long.

It's not.

It's not.

So what are they expected to do for the rest of the time? I've heard some horror stories about these and I don't know if I've told you this horror story. I think I have. So my bookkeeper, she's not in the dance world and she went to niece at a concert. Fair enough.

Yep.

And she went backstage for some reason during the middle of the concert to check on her niece. I have no idea why.

Yeah.

And they had put these little people who were four into a cubicle, like a shower cubicle and closed the door so they wouldn't leave the cubicle. They were all in there crying.

What the.

Yeah. I'm not kidding.

I've not heard this story.

Yeah.

Okay.

And she ripped her out and ripped all of them out and said, that's so unfair. They shouldn't be doing that.

That.

But I mean, that's an extreme story.

Absolutely. Yeah.

But I also think there is too much expectation at concerts of children sitting quietly, being quite. And. And doing nothing. And doing nothing.

Absolutely.

Like, why are we expecting that? I. There's no way I could sit. I don't know about You. I could not sit for three hours with nothing to do without a device.

I'd be bored out of my brain.

I would go crazy. Like I, I would probably cry.

It's like being in a padded cell. Right.

Literally.

Because we all have such short att. So do our five year olds. So do the six year olds. And I think, you know, there's that whole thing that, you know, we always used to expect the kids to sit backstage and be quiet because someone was on stage because the audience could hear them. You've got to keep quiet. But that's not making a great day for them.

No. So the worst day possible.

Absolutely. That's boring as batshit. There's a long time they're sitting there, they're bored, they have to be quiet. There's no games to play. That's not encouraging them to re enroll because that is a big thing about concert. Right. It's at the time that we're asking them to consider, consider coming back for next year. So we need to make it a fantastic day, a memorable day, a day that they like absolutely live for. So let's talk about it. What are some of the ways that you've seen or you've done that work really well to make that backstage, backstage experience super fun for the kids?

Well, let's, let's start with preschool because I think preschool and main school are very separate. I know some people do those concerts.

Together, but how you treat the kids. Yeah.

For preschool we have this new thing that we just started last year where we really deck out the change room. So we have like three little rooms that our preschoolers sit in and we have a different princess or character or whatever we're doing theme wise in that room. So we had princesses in each room. But then our theme was out of space last year, our little groovy theme. So we then had stars hanging down from the roof and we had that shimmer, like, you know those shimmer curtain things and just had.

So it looks like a party room.

It looks like a party room. Exactly. And, and we had bubbles and we had, you know, and books for the, the princesses read them and it's just a whole experience in that change room.

That's amazing. Yeah, I love that. And so they walk in and they already feel like it's like a magical. Like this is going to be fun from the second they walk in.

Correct.

Through the shimmer curtain. Is that what happens? They walk through the shimmer.

Through the shimmer curtains. They got pulled down a lot though, Amanda. So we need to rethink that next year.

Yeah. Make a big mess on the.

Imagine, preschoolers are just, like, good every time y. But it's just. It's creating magical moments for them.

Yes.

That's the important part. Right? Absolutely. And, yeah, they're backstage having a great time. You know what? They love preschoolers, if you have room for it. They're mats you can get with the letters that go inside the mat. Have you ever seen those? It's like just. They're foam mats.

Yeah. Yeah.

You just get them from Kmart, I think. But they love, like, we just take all the letters out and put the foam. And they've got to match the letter to the foam. Simple things like that.

Absolutely. And just actually putting some time into it and thinking about it. So we always did, like, you, like, princess groups, and they'd be dressed up and in full. Like, you know, you'd be in the rapunzel group, and Rapunzel would be their leader. She'd be decked in a full rapunzel costume with a Rapunzel wig, you know, to make it special for the kids and to really also help with that separation. If they're going backstage, I think that's really important. And whether that's princesses or space characters or whatever it is, you know, making it super exciting, I think can really help, like, boost those levels backstage and make it fun.

Yes, absolutely. And giving them something to do so they're not bored.

Absolutely.

You can't expect preschoolers to sit and wait.

No, absolutely. So my other top tip would be that we had, you know, big boxes of. Boxes of fun, we called them.

Okay.

Boxes of fun that every princess had. And it was like a kit of things for the. To entertain their group of 20 kids or whatever they had. Right. And so in their boxes of fun, there was coloring in, you know, there was some games. We used to go to Kmart and just buy some, like, crafty, like, foam stickers or beads. I know you used to do, like, loom bands and.

Yeah, not with free.

Not with preschoolers.

With the older kids.

Yeah. But, like, you know, things like that, that kept them busy. And I. Anything you can do like, that is so great. We also used to feed the preschoolers, and we started doing that just because so many of the parents, and I'm sure you've all had this experience as well, that they're like, oh, do I pack food? And you're like, please do not pack gross food. That's going to get all over my costumes. So we were like, hey, we're going to feed them and more so not because they need to eat while they're backstage for that period of time, but more that it just gave them something to do as well. So we, you know, I spoke to a couple of daycare teachers and they said, you know, like, jats are really good. Very few kids have allergies to jats.

Right.

So we used to. Or tiny teddies and stuff. So we just used to buy packets of like little packets of jets. We used to buy little packets of apples to give to them all like, you know, already pre cut up kind of apples or carrot sticks and stuff. Cute things like that. Because it was not too messy, which I liked. But also just gave them something to do.

Absolutely. I love that we don't do that, but we do have tiny teddies and bottles of water. But I never. They never get used. We have. We have them stuck.

We always ran out of them. Like, it's funny, isn't it? Because it's like how the person gives it to them sometimes.

Well, yeah. She's never made a moment of it. I've never even thought to do that as a moment. We just have them there in case a child comes up and says they're hungry.

Yeah.

Totally off topic. But we are now at the point with our preschool concerts where the kids do not even bring a bag in.

Yes.

Or shoes. Not even shoes.

Yeah.

So they either come in their first pair of dance shoes or nothing else. That's it.

That's it.

No jacket? No. We're just like. That is because it's too hard to keep all of their stuff together and.

They start pulling out random toys that get lost. And there's all of that as well.

Yep. So we get them to take their shoes off at the door and they walk in with their dance shoes on only.

Absolutely.

Makes it so much easier.

You know, the other thing we always had just thinking about as I started talking about toys always in our box of. Of fun for each leader was we had some like teddy bears and stuff like that as well. And we had those because that worked really well, like for a crying child if you wanted to give them the special. And we used to have like mascots as well, like toy mascots. So there was always a toy mascot for them to cuddle.

That's really smart.

And I thought that worked really well. The other thing, like when we had Chantelle and Sampson from Little Groovers on the podcast is they always had. Had fairy dust in their, you know, backstage kit that they would sprinkle on the kids that were feeling a bit nervous, and it was magic, I think.

Bravery.

Bravery encouraged us.

Courageous.

Yeah. And that. Sprinkle that on. And I thought that was such a good idea. And I don't think it actually matters what you actually have for the kids to do. There's so many great ideas. You can go to Kmart, you can buy stuff. You, you know, you can do whatever. But I think it's actually putting time, energy, and effort and actually thinking about it, as well as training whoever's back backstage to use those tools and not just go, hey, kids, just sit down and entertain yourself. Give them a list of games to play. Give them a list of what's inside the box that they could do. And I think that makes. That's what makes a difference, right?

Absolutely. And I. With the older kids, and I totally got this idea from you, so I'm not going to take any credit for it. We have the party room now.

Yes.

And, oh, gosh, Amanda, our party room was so epic last year. Like, it was amazing.

Yeah.

So we hire a party DJ kind of person, and she looks after it for the night, so we don't even have to worry about it. It's $500 really well spent. Can I just say, we had those, you know, those glow, light up ones. Like, not the. Just the foam ones. Yeah, yeah, we had those in there.

You can buy from Timu or Sheen or whatever. Yep.

We also set up a quiet corner that had the loom bands in it, so they could go and do the loom bands if they wanted to. But it is epic in that party room. They are having the best time with her. She's doing the Macarena, I was gonna say.

So they're playing, like, disco games the whole time.

Our critical paths say, you know, go get such and such out of the party room because you don't want to miss a child, obviously.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's just right next to our dressing room. Yes. It costs me extra to hire it, but it is so worth it.

That's really interesting. So you let the kids go in both before and after, just depending on how many routines they're in. All of that kind of stu. So good. And just the DJ kind of like, runs it like a school disco where they have the games. I presume they play other games, like, you know, freeze dance or whatever.

Look, haven't been in there.

Not really sure tell you what's happening in there.

All I know is it is a vibe and lots of fun.

Oh, so cute. I love that. And so when the kids come out, this is what I'm interested to know. So let's talk about a kid that was in one or two dances in your show. They came out afterwards. Kids, what's the most memorable part of the concert for them? Was it the dancing? Was it the trophy or was it the party room?

I guarantee you the party room.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I guarantee you the party room. And like they, yeah, kids didn't want to leave the party room, you know.

Like they want to know you've done a good job.

They wanted to stay in the party room and they got changed real quick so they could go have a turn in that party room before they went on stage.

So I love that too. So you'd let them with the costumes in there. They were like pre dress. Yeah. Go and have a ball.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, obviously, you know, the kids that are doing 10,000 routines don't get to go into the party room.

But. But they're people that are fully invested in dance. The kids that are in 10,000 routines, they don't need that extra stuff. They're there to perform and they love that. It's the other kids.

Yeah. And they, they have such a good time and some of them weren't even dancing till second half. So first half they're just in the party room.

So good. I love that so much. So if you're listening to this, we want to encourage you to really think about the backstage experience for the. Make it something that's super memorable. No matter what it is that you do, it needs to be memorable because it is such a big part of the concept for so many kids. Like Beck said, if they're backstage for three hours, like think about from the time they get dropped off to the time they get picked up. Even if you're trying to do short shows quite often, that is three hours.

It is, yeah.

You know, if they're only dancing in one dance or two dances, they might be only on stage for four minutes, you know, five minutes, six minutes. There mightn't be a lot of time. So what are you doing for the rest of the time to make sure that they are going home with these incredible memories?

Absolutely. I'd love to hear everyone's ideas as well. So make sure you let us know your ideas because you guys might have even fresh ideas to share with everyone. The more we share, the better, right?

Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today, guys. So great to have you. We would so appreciate if you click that little subscribe button or follow button on Spotify or Apple would mean the world to us.

Thanks friends. Bye.

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