Trash the Trophies

How to Win Without Losing Your Soul

By: Chasta Hamilton

Narrated by: Chasta Hamilton

Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

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 competitions 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.

©2020 Chasta Hamilton (P)2022 Chasta Hamilton

Inspiring

I am a dancer currently at Stage Door Dance, and I love this book. I’ve never had the opportunity to participate in any of the competitions because I was too young, but I do remember the trophies that always used to be displayed in the front lobby when I was younger. I remember a lot of my other friends were always in the competition groups, and that, even as a young age the environment started to become pretty toxic. I am so happy to be part of ITP or the Intensive Training Program to this day, and to help spread Ms. Chasta‘s ideologies. Ms. Chasta has been such an amazing and inspiring instructor to work with and over the years. It has been inspiring to watch her grow. I love all the teachers at Stage Door Dance and I want to thank them for helping me express myself, helping me find myself, and teaching me all that I know today not only about a dancing, but about how to be a better person.

Great for anyone associated in the Competitive dance world

Being in the Dance world for over 35 years, as a dancer, teacher, studio owner and mom of a dancer, I have watched the changes in Dance Instruction become negative and toxic in dancer development. This book is a breath of fresh air and I hope it continues to create the movement back to dance as an art, passion, performance and a way to enhance growth in young dancers. Competition can be positive for practice and experience but the points made and “behind the scenes”insights in this book factually outline the way the industry has taken advantage. Behind a facade of trophies and accolades, the current culture of competitive dance is doing more long term damage than good and bringing attention to it, is the first step to choosing better. No matter where you stand on competitive dance this book provides “things to think about” for studio directors, dance teachers, dancers, parents of dancers and even Dance adjudicators simply for another perspective.

Good outlook

Great story and great outlook. It’s incredible to see the transparency the curse on the business side of dance competitions. It truly is not like a sport like track where are the stopwatch tells all. I feel that a good portion of the book was a play, motivation for dance studios to move away from traditional dance culture. I was more interested in seeing the inter workings of dance competitions not a pitch and confidence boost to move away from the standard.

Insightful

Thank you for helping me understand the dance world as I try to navigate it for my daughter. Very helpful! Keep up the good work- and expand, we need more people like you!