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

Jenny, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

I’ve been a country dancer and instructor most of my adult life. Started teaching professionally in 2005 at the Wildhorse Saloon. Little did I know that job would shape my whole career. Working there as a dancer meant you would also learn to be an entertaining Emcee, a Dj, a Tour Guide, Promotor and well…the face of the Wildhorse to our guests.

In those early days I would watch seasoned instructors and soak in everything they did. I wanted to be just like them. I would try their jokes, I would try their techniques but it would never land quite right. Something was off. I knew I wanted more. I knew I had more. Over time I found me. I found the way I did things were more comfortable and guess what? Those things worked! Over many years I worked my way up to senior instructor in charge of auditioning/hiring new instructors, developing new choreography and put together the very first performing Wildhorse dance team.

As my skills and comfort level grew I found myself always looking for something that could set me and my skills a part. Something that I still do to this day. I knew I had to be different. Otherwise I would just land in the mix of great dancers fighting for the next role or job. I hated being in the mix. (I still hate it, lol)
I’ve known in my bones since I was a little girl that I was meant for greatness. Sensed a deep feeling my whole life that success would happen someday but I just couldn’t figure out how.

Around 2010 I started a dance production company called Jenny Cain Productions. It has been somewhat steady over the last decade. For most of those years it felt like the company that would never really grow but would never die either.
I started it because I would watch the Wildhorse host all these private corporate events that wanted us to teach line dance lessons but some were not able to afford to rent the whole place out or even a room but they wanted to line dance. So it was simply seeing a need and thinking about how I could meet it. I can go to them, no problem. Well there was a problem. Work was based on when parties happened and IF they called me, so steady income was just not possible. It forced me to always have another side job to make ends meet.

I began to dabble in the music industry and starting doing choreography for major country artists music videos, providing dancers for productions and live events. My big break came when I was asked to choregraph the Good Time line dance to the song by Alan Jackson. It’s in his music video today. It’s worth nothing that it took almost a week to shoot that video and I casted all the dancers in it, training all of them on set before each shoot. The Good Time line dance has become a staple among country dancers around the world and is still done in country clubs today. What a massive blessing! We went on to perform it on the CMA Award show that year during Alan Jacksons live segment. Good Time is the work I am the most proud of. It really put me on the map as a choreographer. No one asked or questioned my skills after that. As I continued to work with music industry productions, although it was a bit glamorous, there was just no steady income… In fact it was terrible. The pay was low and the work was intense. Long days on sets and sometimes waiting 3 or 6 months for your paycheck. Once the glamour started wearing off of working with these artists, I really had no desire to work that hard for pennies anymore. All just to be in a project or associated with a major artist or A-list project.

I have always been a deep faith based person and believe God moves on our behalf if we trust in Him. In 2023, my world drastically changed. My “word” for that year was Alignment. As I mentioned, the low income of dance always had me working other day jobs. I had been in the property management business for the past 10 years all the while dancing at any event I could book through my production company. In May of last year one by one, doors in the property industry started closing. Big doors. Doors I thought would be stable income forever. Each for very different reasons. It felt like my world was shaking. In the span of 2 weeks I had 3 different streams of income come to a close. Then 4 days later, the last blow happened… I hosted a weekly dance event downtown on Thursdays. It was a big enough source of income that I knew it could float me until I could figure other work out. But they informed me through an email that they no longer needed my services. So just like that I had been replaced by another dance company who I assumed were just cheaper. I was desperate for answers as to why or a chance to fix something, anything, but got nothing. I never got a response.
As you can imagine, these are scary things in life. Even under all the fear something felt oddly right about it all.
Then I remembered my “word”… Alignment. You can’t have alignment without change.

I had recently read the book Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey (gritty, but highly recommend) – It’s about going through your green lights in life. Looking for them, actively moving toward them.
Man did I need a green light. I was at nothing but red lights. At times I felt so angry. It was fear. It was frustration and I wanted more.

Nashville has become a Convention city over the past decade. It had really changed since the days of waiting for events to happen. I started considering trying to teach dance at parties full time… what would that look like? I found myself dreaming again about doing something I loved full-time. But how? How could I make this work?

I thought about all the things I could do with country dance to bring in an income I could live on. Over the years I’ve had talent agents, but this really wasn’t a dance town back then so I felt like they never really knew what to do with me. There I would be, lost in the mix again. Getting to dance in a music video once in a blue moon and getting paid $100 for 10 hours of work. Awful. I didn’t want that again.

I started thinking about that. I was watching this boom happening with country dancers Nashville. They were moving here, starting dance companies, taking my work, winning dance competitions and they’d only been doing it all less than a year. How is it that my 19 years in the dance industry I’m competing with so many others that do what I do? But I have the most experience in this town! They were younger, they had better marketing, they had tiktok. I had zero desire to even know what that was, much less use it. But they had followers. Thousands of followers. Somehow that mattered to the ones hiring them. Their lower rates mattered. But I didn’t want to fight against them for jobs. How can I rise above all this and build a support system for all of us?

I went back to that all familiar question…what makes what I do different? How can I be different than all the rest? Where is my lane. This was important for me to know.
I kept thinking about the Music Industry and the huge holes in it regarding support for professional dancers. The lack of pay and long hours for feature/principle dancers.

It’s a problem. My next thoughts rolled in like this…Country Dancers need help. They need a dance an agency designed specifically for them. I’ve been in this industry for 19 years. I know it well. I can do it. In fact, I don’t know anyone else that could do it better. This is what I’m suppose to do!

In January of 2024 a new division of Jenny Cain Productions officially launched…and the JCP Talent Agency was born. A Dance Talent Agency for Elite Level Country Dancers. This is it.
This is how I will build the support system. I’ll give them a platform, a place for representation.

One of the first and probably most important steps I ever made was contacting a lady in New York that is a Talent Agent for dancers. I didn’t know her. I read some articles that said she started the first ever dance talent agency in LA back in the 80s and I wanted to know how she did it! I decided she’s someone I need to speak to. I googled her name and somehow found her email. I thought, I’ll shoot my shot to try and get some advice. To my surprise …She replied.

Finding her and her having willingness to help me has been everything. I consider her my mentor in this process. On one of our last calls a couple of weeks ago she said, “Jenny, there’s no one in the Nation that is doing what you are doing with country dancers. This has incredible potential to go Nationwide” Today she runs one of the largest Dance Agencies in the US to date and although this work is hard and there are days I want to quit – I think about her words. My advice to anyone starting a new business, find someone who’s done it that you can trust. Learn from them but don’t forget who you are and what makes you different. That’s your power.

My company continues to teach line dance at private events all over our city and are now supplying dancers at conventions nationwide.

In closing, my story is not over. It’s beginning again…I know I’m destined to do great things. I don’t want to settle for crumbs and doing something I don’t love. I want to help country dancers with true potential do great things. Over all – I want the “more”!

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.

Jenny Cain Productions is most known for our wildly popular live event line dance instruction. We provide a fun Nashville experience for our guests! We give them a taste of Nashville through entertaining dance instruction. Another thing that sets us a part – We don’t have a studio, we come to you! If you don’t have a venue and need one, we have multiple options around town we can assist in booking for your lessons with us!

We also provide partner dancing instruction (two step and country swing), we can do team building dance activities for work events and even flash mobs!

We recently added Party Dancers and Country Glam Models.
Party dancers are our dancers (line or partner) who simply stay out on the dance floor dancing to a band or Dj during your event while informally leading the crowd or simply providing atmosphere.

Our Country Glam Models (cowgirls and cowboys) often get hired to dress the part and be “atmosphere” often greeting your guests as they enter convention halls, or they can assist with prize giveaways etc. This option is completely customizable.

Lastly – Our JCP Talent Agency represents the most elite country dancers in Nashville, available for any larger production work such as Film, TV or Live Events needing feature/ principle country dancers.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

By nature I am an over achiever. I want to over deliver every time. My goal has always been to have integrity and do the job better than they expected. My main target clientele are event planners. The big DMCs. (Destination Management Companies) They know that my company has been around the longest. They know us. They know we will show up early, we will WOW their guest and we will be the best product they can give their client. We make it a point not to make their jobs harder. We don’t come into a corp party eating the food, drinking from the bar and making a mess. We stay professional. We get in, do our job well and get out.

Keeping their trust is vital to our growth.
The best resources for us and in this particular category has been joining networking groups. This may seem costly at first, but it’s been worth every penny with the amount of connections and work I’ve gained over the last 2 years of investing time and money into these networking events.

Any advice for managing a team?

Treat them how you would want to be treated. That’s it. Every dancer that has ever worked with me knows I will not go back on my word. I will not say one thing and do another. I pay them exactly what I told them I would even if I made a mistake and over quoted. They can trust my word.
I also pay them within 1 day of their work with me. No exceptions.

If you want to keep good employees or even contracted workers, you have to take care of them. My dancers also know they get paid more with me than with any other company in town. That’s on purpose. If I need them, they will be there.

I try to find workers that do the job like I would do the job. In most cases mine are better than me. So I take care of them.

I don’t do shady things like take part of their cash tips or hide their tips. For goodness sakes, if they do a great job – Let them have all their tips!

Have their back. If a client or vendor tries to make them stay longer than the contracted time frame or put them in an uncomfortable situation…take care of them. Clients can be replaced, great employees are harder to replace.

Lastly – Listen to them. Listen to their ideas.
Just because I’ve been doing it longer doesn’t mean I know everything. These younger dancers are coming in with all these tiktok things, reels etc and they know how to capture the attention of a demographic I know nothing about.
I had another dancer a few years ago suggest that we start dressing alike when we were on stage. Game Changer.
Upped our level of professionalism and added the extra WOW factor we needed with just the purchase of a couple of matching rhinestone boots and matching tops.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jennycainproductions.com www.jcptalentagency.com
• Instagram: @jennycainproductions @jcptalentagency
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063769231283
• Linkedin: Jenny Cain Productions
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jcp-talent-and-jcp-line-dancing-nashville?override_cta=Get+pricing
• Other: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g55229-d27638432-Reviews-Jcp_Line_Dancing-Nashville_Davidson_County_Tennessee.html

Image Credits

Michaela Potterbaum
Nicole Young
Caroline Stremic