Building Confidence with Choreographer Julie Cadena
In this edition of WCT’s blog I Have Notes, guest author Julie Cadena takes us on her professional choreography journey and explains why her favorite dance steps to teach are unconditional self-love, courage, and having the audacity. Julie joined the WCT community in 2019, and is currently our Registrar, Associate Producer, and choreographer for our 2023 production of Seussical, KIDS!
By trade, I am a dance teacher. My professional journey choreographing for musical theatre started years ago at a westside independent school for their middle school productions. One year, if you haven’t already heard the story, on closing night of The Wizard of OZ, Jerelyn and I met! We tell this story on repeat to anyone who will listen. Approximately one hundred years ago, I was positively glued to the monitor in the green room during “The Merry Old Land of Oz,” holding my breath in excited anticipation for the upcoming dance break I’d lovingly rehearsed with the cast for months. As the kids absolutely nailed it, I turned to the volunteer stage mom next to me (that I’d never seen before) with my hands on my heart and said, “They did it! I’m so proud of them! Man, I wish I could do this all the time!” I meant I wanted to teach theatre kids dance every single day if I could. That stage mom turned to me, smiled, and told me they did amazing. She shook my hand and said, “I’m Ava Newman’s Mom, Jerelyn, and I own a children’s theatre company and happen to be looking for a choreographer.” You can guess what happened next.
Joining the teaching team at WCT was a no-brainer. The mission and teaching philosophy was completely unique to anything else I had encountered in the industry. Through my years at WCT, that commitment to the heart of every child has not wavered one bit.
As an adult, I had to unlearn pretty wack ideas I was taught growing up as a dancer and performer. Back in my day, your worth as a dancer was intrinsically linked to your look. Your body, your size, your height. Whether you were a Rockette or a 7-year old. I watched so many dancers get burnt out as teens and leave the arts entirely because they couldn’t fit that ideal. But you will never catch me talking about diets. My students won’t, either.
That stops here.
My priority as a teacher is to guide children and teens toward self love, regardless of what they have, what they can do, or what they look like. We have protocols for negative self-talk, which can be developmentally appropriate for children learning something new or not “getting it” at a rate they feel is fast enough. In my class, you accept critical thoughts as something you cannot always control, and re-commit to trying again. I rotate the lines kids stand in while learning choreography so everyone gets the opportunity to be brave enough to dance in the front. Hopefully, by the end of their time with me, students have the audacity to dismiss what the status quo may have told them they could be, and then go far beyond that.
Peers, media, and even the day’s trending TikTok will try to influence a child’s self-image, and much of that is out of our control. What is in our control is the space we create for these precious theatre kids to be themselves. Whether it’s a game of zip-zap-zop or opening night of a musical, our kids should believe and experience that they’re a valuable part of the community, and that they are always enough. Always.
With WCT, I am able to help raise a generation of performers who are both excellent at what they do and confident in who they are. While those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, it can sometimes be hard to find. But not here. No matter if it’s our students who are training to go off into professional theatre or those looking for an after-school activity, all of our kids are valued equally.
Teaching with the well-being of each child at the center of what we do is much harder than simply copy-and-pasting old methods. The path less traveled is worth it when our students grow into confident adults with the tools to advocate for themselves, to turn inward when seeking approval, and to say “yes, and…” even when they’re not entirely sure what’s next. When the curtain closes on their childhood theatre career, they’ll be ready to take on the world. And I’ll be in the green room cheering them on every step of the way.
