We were lucky to catch up with Meghan Burgess recently and have shared our conversation below.

Meghan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Ignite Dance Competition was founded in 2019 and would host its first event in February of 2021. While Ignite is a dance competition, its mission is much larger than you may imagine.

Many dance competitions are known for being unorganized, unfriendly, and overbooked. This leaves studios and dancers feeling discouraged and disheartened after a long weekend of competing. At Ignite Dance Competition, we’ve created a competition that thrives on building community between dancers and studios first. We provide a space not only for dancers to learn and grow but be recognized for their efforts and talents. In addition, we cap the number of entries each weekend so that there are no early-morning starts or late-night award ceremonies. We provide 1-2 free convention classes each weekend so that dancers can continue to train while competing against top talent. We provide additional opportunities for growth for dancers through our Ambassador Program. Lastly, each weekend Ignite not only recognizes and awards the dancers competing but the teachers who make it happen.

Each weekend our goal is to leave studios and dancers alike feeling inspired, valued, and recognized for their talent and technique knowing they are a part of the Ignite community.

Meghan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Meghan Burgess and I am Executive Director and Owner of Ignite Dance Competition. I grew up dancing and competing and would later go on to judge and teach both regionally and nationally before starting Ignite. Before owning Ignite, I previously served as a Vice President for a prominent local non-profit where we raised over $50 million per year. Right before COVID happened, I made the decision to leave my full-time position and “ignite” my dreams which is where Ignite was born. I had one goal – to bring community to the competitive space.

As you can imagine, leaving your full-time position to start a company can be intimidating and shortly after the entire world shut down from COVID. To say it was quite daunting would be a kind way to put it, to say the least – we couldn’t travel let alone be in an auditorium with over one thousand people. We had to be creative in the beginning building our client list while engaging with our audience with free online classes and small convention series. Almost four years later, we have hosted over 50 live competitions and conventions, met over 5,000 dancers, and over 600 studios have participated in our events. What felt like an unknown beginning has turned out to be a beautiful start for our company.

Ignite was built with community in mind and it is ingrained in everything we do from free convention classes each weekend to our ambassador program, and even our staff and judge training in the preseason. The reality is that the dance world gets much smaller once these dancers graduate high school and we wanted to make sure we could be a part of providing them the tools to be successful and work together on the other side of competing.

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

Consistency.

It sounds simple but just like community is ingrained into our mission we aim to consistently show up for our dancers and studios that choose to compete with us. From creating our schedule to opening registration in August, hosting events from February to May, concluding our regional tour in June, and finishing our year with two conventions – our studios learn what to expect from us each season.

To when we are onsite for events, our full-time team works tirelessly with our crews to make sure each Ignite event has the same feel and culture as the next. It’s no small feet but our goal remains the same. We want studios and dancers to leave feeling inspired, seen, and valued, and it drives everything that we do.

To our social media, each day we hope to share new and inspiring clips of dancers, teachers, or events to inspire our audience.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I left my full-time position, I never knew what would happen six weeks later when the entire world shut down to COVID. As many of us remember, it was scary and times were uncertain. As a business owner of a company that hosts live events, it was tough to see the light at the end of the tunnel or to even know if we would be able to host live events in the foreseeable future.

Weeks passed and then some more and we realized there was a tiny light at the end of the tunnel but we would have to pivot how we operated to survive until things went back to “normal”. Our entire first season (2021), we operated one-day events out of hotel ballrooms. We would bring in staging and lighting and only one studio was allowed in the ballroom at a time. Looking back it is wild to think that was what we did but we did what we had to do to be able to show up for these studios and dancers who were also experiencing the same uncertainty.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ignitedancecompetition.com
• Instagram: ignitedancecomp
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/ignitedancecompetition
• Linkedin: –
• Twitter: –
• Youtube: –
• Yelp: –
• Soundcloud: –
• Other: TikTok – @IgniteDanceComp