Book

Trash the Trophies - Blog Tour and Release Date!

11:59 AM

You guys, I'm so excited about this awesome book I have the privilege to share with you!




 
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From Amazon:


In the world of competitive dance—biased scoring, skimpy costumes, and toxic rivalries are the additional line items of a bill that exceeds thousands of dollars. Time and money are at stake for parents, but reputation is also at risk for students and studios. With no regulation, this third-party industry leaves you asking yourself the same question after every competition: Is it worth it?

 

For Chasta Hamilton, six years of sending dancers to competition was six years too many. She swore off competitive dance and rewrote her curriculum to focus on the whole person within each dancer. In Trash the Trophies, Chasta shows you how she challenged preconceived notions of success in the dance industry and embraced camaraderie, effective leadership, and philanthropic initiative to transform her studio. With the four pillars of her intensive training program—technique, performance, community, and character—you’ll learn how to increase ROI for everyone involved.

 

Dance is a commitment to principles; an art form beyond rankings and judgment. This book will show you how to put meaning back into movement, and joy back into the dance studio. 



I'm thrilled to be able to share this book with you guys! I've worked with Chasta Hamilton for about 7 years now (whoa, what? when did that happen!), and watching the transformation of our studio environment has been incredible! When I found out she was writing a book, I couldn't help but participate in telling the world about it.

Trash the Trophies tackles some very important and difficult conversations that many of us know are far overdue. Hamilton challenges the money-making industry, demonstrating that it does not have our kid's best interest in mind.

Although the competitive dance world may have started out as a fun way for our dancers to get extra performance experience, it has evolved into something far from kid-friendly and appropriate. Parents will often go into debt for extra solos and fancy costumes, often picking up an extra side job to pay for the cost.

She also dives into the actual experiences of the competitions she's attended, and from the conversations I've witnessed from other dance moms and dance teachers, she is not alone in her frustration in unfair judging and lack of technique onstage.

When it comes down to it, we all want to be winners, and that's okay! But one of the points of Hamilton's book is just that - don't compromise on ethics or sell yourself out when you could win so much bigger and better than that.

This book is for every dance teacher, studio owner, or dance mom who is exhausted and frustrated with the toxic culture of the competitive dance world, and is ready to take back what dance - and winning - is supposed to be about!

For a limited time, Trash the Trophies is available for download from Amazon for only $0.99! You can also read the introduction and the first section of Chapter 1 by clicking "look inside."


About the Author


As the owner and artistic director of Stage Door Dance Productions, Chasta Hamilton is reinventing the dance education model by focusing on character development and community involvement in addition to technique and performance attributes. She is the founder and president of the nonprofit, Girls Geared For Greatness, and the founder and former editor of
The Dance Exec

 

Chasta was recognized by Triangle Business Journal as a 2014 40 Under 40, and in 2016, a Women in Business, Future Star. Proud to call North Carolina home, Chasta lives in Raleigh with her husband, John, and their Scottish terrier, Elvis.



Check out the other bloggers and studios who are sharing their thoughts on Trash the Trophies today! (keep checking back for more!)


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