We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sydney Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sydney thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

The moment I knew I wanted to take this path seriously and give it my all was when I started High School!

When I was 14 I started my high school journey at Santa Susana High School where I got to take dancing at school. I’ve only been dancing for about 2-3 years at that point and I it was still a hobby where I got to compete. But since I was being educated of the history of dance, I started falling more and more in love with it! From there I was wanted to take my dancing to the next level and take as many different styles of dance. As well as expanding more in Hiphop all the different hiphop styles!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I got my foot in the door by just putting myself out there!

I took as many classes as I could and started networking from there. I got to meet many amazing dancers and choreographers that helped lead me to where I am today. They provided me with so much knowledge and work at such a young age where I was able to take it and run as fast as I could to make lots of my dreams come true! Even till this day, I’m in contact still with a lot of people I met over the years and I still gain more knowledge that continues my growth.

As of now I’ve really been enjoying the field of choreographing for children! I love spreading knowledge in Hiphop to the younger generation and providing resources that they can continue their learning and grow in the direction they’d like to go! I take my job very seriously and try my very hardest to make sure I keep educating myself and learning to provide more knowledge and resources for the children I teach. I absolutely love seeing the growth and excitement they get when they are understanding movement that is foreign to them.

I’m very proud that I’m still creating and still teaching! Choreographing can be very hard when producing so much where it doesn’t look all the same and I’ve learned how to produce lots of work but keeping it all different. That way my clients don’t have the same choreography as other groups I choreograph for!

How did you build your audience on social media?

For me social media was getting popular right around the time I was starting my dance journey! The best thing to do is STAY CONSISTENT!! It can be very exhausting and hard to keep up, but if you plan things ahead of time and stay on a schedule you will definitely be on the road of success. I still could build my following and I do have a plan, but the best advice I can give is start now! Start with creating content as much as you can and once you have a ton of it you start posting. That way you already have a ton of content to post and you wont have to be struggling to do something everyday and you can have some breaks. As well as stay true to yourself and how you want your content to be viewed, don’t let anyone tell you how to brand yourself if you already got an idea.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Through my journey I definitely didn’t live a regular life! Since my journey started during high school, I didn’t do much but focus on my career. I was not into school activities unless it involved my dancing, I didn’t party much, heck I even went home schooling to further my career in dance and have more time for training and networking! Once I was about 16 I was home schooled and it’s definitely not for everyone, but for me it was the best choice. I started going to Hollywood, my mom would take me to classes where she got me an unlimited pass for the month. So each week I would be there at least 3-5 days just taking as many classes each day. I was so focused on training and learning that this got me so educated and so many contacts to work with but also grow with! The beauty of the dance community is that all we want to do is just create and with each other. So doing this I got to collab with so many talented souls who helped me believe I can achieve anything! Even though sometimes I struggled with going to class I couldn’t rely on my parents to do that for my whole life. I started bussing, I was couch hopping to be closer. To a point where I stayed on my older sister’s couch for a couple years just so I was closer to all of my projects. This journey helped me be self efficient and self reliable. I learned how to be responsible at a young age that it carried into my career and help me succeed in my journey!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sydney_sassydancer?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SydneySmithDancer?mibextid=wwXIfr
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@sydneysmithdancer?si=pEqFeQq1A4sEYrEj