Tippy Toe: Taking over the TEDx stage

As if there wasn’t enough to see and do, atten­dees of this year’s TEDxSalem event “Through the Look­ing Glass” will be treat­ed to a per­for­mance by Salem’s own Tip­py Toe Dance Stu­dio.

The stu­dio focus­es on bal­let, but also teach­es hip-hop, con­tem­po­rary, and pas de deux, along with fit­ness class­es and com­pet­i­tive danc­ing.

Those who came out to 2015’s “Fear­less” event will remem­ber their lights-out com­bi­na­tion per­for­mance with the Tru­Root break­danc­ing squad.

We sat down recent­ly with stu­dio founder Rebec­ca Swish­er, 32, and stu­dio man­ag­er Nicole Tea-Pel­ley, 20, about their upcom­ing per­for­mance.

TEDx Salem: Tell us about the start of the stu­dio.

Rebec­ca Swish­er: “We cre­at­ed it in 2009, and I had been work­ing local­ly as a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er for quite some time. And I kept being asked by friends and peo­ple that I would meet in the com­mu­ni­ty: ‘Oh, could you just teach my child dance, or my friend dance,’ and so I start­ed with just a hand­ful of stu­dents, actu­al­ly in my back­yard, we built a small stu­dio for it.

And I just kept think­ing, if I’m going to have a stu­dio, I want­ed to do it dif­fer­ent­ly than stu­dios had been in the past. So, we’ve real­ly grown into this family…We real­ly focus on dancers find­ing their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, their own cre­ativ­i­ty, and just feel­ing free to express them­selves in any way. And we’ve real­ly become a fam­i­ly out of that.”

Nicole Tea-Pel­ley: “From the ground up from the lit­tle kids to the old­est dancers – We have peo­ple who are in their lat­er twen­ties here – every­body knows every oth­er per­son who dances at the stu­dio, and we all can build off of that, and we become bet­ter dancers off of that.

We all have dif­fer­ent traits and you’ll see that in every stu­dio, but com­pared to oth­er places that I’ve seen, we real­ly embrace that, and we use that to make our­selves bet­ter and more well-round­ed.”

TxS: How do you feel your per­for­mance will align with this year’s theme, “Through the Look­ing Glass?”

RS: “…when I think of TEDx, I think of a safe place where peo­ple come togeth­er to share ideas, and how it has this rip­ple effect with­in our com­mu­ni­ty when we share ideas with each oth­er. When think­ing ‘through the look­ing glass,’ I thought of that and put it on a larg­er scale.

Our piece express­es not always going with just the norm, not always just fit­ting in a par­tic­u­lar social group or way of think­ing… We’re try­ing to express to peo­ple being open to new ways of think­ing and real­ly expe­ri­enc­ing free­dom from that.

Once you’re will­ing to chal­lenge the way you’re think­ing a whole new world can open up to you.”

TxS: What can the TEDx audi­ence look for­ward to? What are you going to hit us with?

NTP: “They won’t just see dancers on a stage — they’re going to see real peo­ple, and the real emo­tions that peo­ple go through, as they, as Bec­ca was say­ing, break out of the norm of soci­ety and real­ly con­nect with some­thing in them­selves.

Because no mat­ter what somebody’s jour­ney is, every­body has gone through some­thing sim­i­lar to that, in one way or anoth­er. With this piece we are real­ly try­ing to con­nect with peo­ple on that lev­el. We get real­ly real, we get to points where we’re not doing spe­cif­ic moves, but we’re just being our­selves, and I think that peo­ple will real­ly be kind of shocked by that. And it’ll make them think real­ly hard.”

RS: “There’s also a lit­tle bit of sur­prise ele­ments in the dances, of pair­ing togeth­er dif­fer­ent styles of dance that you wouldn’t nor­mal­ly think of putting togeth­er.”

TxS: Tell me there’s going to be break­danc­ing!

RS: “There’s a lit­tle bit of break in there, yeah.” (laughs)

TxS: How do you keep it fresh?

RS: “Well, I don’t pay atten­tion to what oth­er peo­ple are doing. We def­i­nite­ly do things our own way, and we all play a part in chore­og­ra­phy, and we move the way we’re feel­ing.”

TxS: What do you want to accom­plish at TEDxSalem this year?

RS: “I want to feel like our mes­sage has been heard, and I think TEDx is a real­ly good plat­form for that. For me as an artist, when I have some­thing that I need to express, I need to be able to know that I was heard or I was seen, and it’s like some­thing in me that has to get that out.”

NTP: “I’m excit­ed about the con­nec­tion between the audi­ence and us. TEDx has audi­ence mem­bers from all walks of life, but def­i­nite­ly there’s a strong sense of peo­ple who do have the artis­tic and cre­ative minds there. And I think that if we can con­nect with some of those peo­ple and impact some of those peo­ple, that’s where we get real­ly cool new and big ideas, and that’s where that flow starts to go that we real­ly are inspired by.”

TxS: Now this is real­ly impor­tant — How are you going to avoid hit­ting the TEDxSalem sign when you dance?

RS: “That’s a real­ly good ques­tion. We’ve actu­al­ly been tap­ing out our stu­dio [floor], to say if you cross this line of tape you are going to be hit­ting the TEDx sign. So right now that’s our plan of attack.”

Learn more about the stu­dio at www.tippytoedancestudio.com, and join us Jan. 6 to catch ’em live on our stage.

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TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, 2018, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.