We were lucky to catch up with Simone Van der Meer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Simone thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
Teaching youth movement classes has been my passion from the very first time I assisted in my childhood dance studio. All the years I attended and assisted at The Dance Gallery made me feel like it was a second home. It’s where I gained confidence and learned the value of self expression. I’ve taken those building blocks with me as I’ve taught gymnastic and dance classes over the past 16 years. The dream of owning my own studio for dance families to call home began after I graduated college and was looking towards what is next. I taught gymnasts and dancers in recreational programs throughout San Francisco for the next several years and I continued to strengthen my teaching voice, but the big step towards owning a business still seemed out of reach. The year 2020 brought a pause to the way our program had been teaching dance and while it was scary, I was ready to creatively problem solve how to keep offering dance to my community. I started teaching classes online for my students to take in their own homes. I quickly learned that there were many ways to teach a dance class and experience dance through alternative spaces. My students and I worked together to explore the use of space, angles and depth of our Zoom camera, opportunities to watch each other through our screens, and ways to communicate even though we were in different places. Working in this way gave me the freedom to try new things without asking for a supervisor’s approval and my dance community responded with positive feedback saying dance with Ms Simone was the highlight of their child’s week. A very good friend of mine was exploring the same avenues and we began to discuss opportunities to collaborate and grow our own program. CANVAS Dance Arts was born in January 2021 when Angela and I filed as an LLC. We expanded our alternative space offerings to classes outdoors in the park and in families backyards. We hosted outdoor performances at a local farmers market, created and edited dance films from our class, and ran DANCEmix summer camp in an indoor/outdoor space. As the year progressed, so did our vision. Angela and I began looking into hourly rentals at local fitness and dance studios. We partnered with our previous employer to offer a pop-up dance program in their studio under our new business name. We started to think about theater performances and a more permanent home for CDA. The support of having a partner made everything feel more attainable. I enjoy talking things out and brainstorming new ideas with someone who shares my passion for dance education. Beyond teaching dance classes, Angela and I have had to learn how to negotiate a lease, set up class registrations, file permits with the city, and much much more! We balance each other well in teaching styles and business operations. It has been such a journey to where we are now and I am so thankful for our community of dance families. CDA now has a brick and mortar space to call home with two beautiful studios and we plan to keep thinking big!
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.
My name is Simone van der Meer and I am a dance teaching artist in San Francisco, CA. I am a co-founder of CANVAS Dance Arts established in 2021. I grew up as an acrobatic gymnast and dancer in my hometown studio called The Dance Gallery. I majored in dance and costume design at San Francisco State University and began teaching for youth programs in the city. Dance has been a part of my life from a very young age. It taught me to realize my self-expression, develop confidence, and think creatively. I was inspired by my teachers and their big ideas for routines and performances and I knew that I wanted to be the inspiration for the next generation. My students now inspire me to keep learning and creating. They teach me something new each session; whether it’s how to listen to individual needs or how to reimagine a particular activity in class. Our program provides recreational dance classes and camps for youth. We encourage students to explore, create, and connect through our positive coaching styles and reimagine a performance through alternative spaces like video and outdoor. I strongly believe in emerging curriculum and meeting an individual’s needs, even in a class setting. Our program works towards fostering a community by allowing the classes to watch each other at our performances and support every dancer who attends. We celebrate the performing arts in a joyous collaborative way where everyone is seen as an artist with activities like ‘dancer’s choice’, ‘spotlight dance’, and ‘partner explorations.’ CANVAS Dance Arts aims to bring artistry to our community and community to our artistry.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My cofounder, Angela, and I met through teaching at the same dance program. While we each had our own classes to teach, it was great to catch up at lunch or outside of class time. We began sharing stories about experiences in our classes and soon started giving each other advice. We collaborated on performances and I found it so inspiring to step inside her classes when I had the time. It is a wonderful experience to observe a fellow teacher at their craft. As the years went by we were working more closely on curriculum, students progressing through levels, and creating productions. The years of collaboration gave us a strong stepping stone to become business partners. We discussed our individual visions for the future long before deciding on a partnership together. When our teaching positions came to a pause in 2020, we began discussing how those visions aligned and strengthened each other.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The experience of teaching dance through Zoom from my apartment while launching my own dance program was a strong test of resiliency. I struggled with feelings of loneliness and uncertainty while trying to continue reaching my students in a positive way. My small space made taking dance class feel frustrating and difficult, I craved the open space of a dance studio and the community of other dancers around me. The classes I was taking as a student seemed to ignore the fact that everything had changed and teachers would give combinations that didn’t fit in my space or work on my carpet. I felt isolated and separated from my usual freedom of movement. So as a teacher I wanted to recognize the fact that we were working in different conditions. I found as many ways as possible to disrupt the follow along dance class format that I had seen other teachers using. We started class off with sharing time and a prompt that students could answer while I took roll. We found ways to tilt our camera or enter and exit the frame. We worked our across the floor as depth discovery coming towards the camera and making expressions at each other or moving away to a pose. Each time I felt like I was talking into empty space, I asked the students to turn their microphones on and reflect how they were feeling. We shared ideas on how else to dance in our individual spaces or brought audience members in to watch. Along with creating new curriculum for online classes, my efforts to schedule classes, accept registrations and payments, and come up with a business plan took my entire brain space and was so exhausting. I was doing less of my own dancing, but the collaboration with my youth dancers kept me going.
Contact Info:
- Website: canvasdancearts.com
- Instagram: @canvasdancearts
Image Credits
Angela Yuen Uyeda, Noah Garcia