Promoting Empowerment and Body Positivity Through Movement
Santina Rigano-Lesch on Breaking the Stereotypes of Dance
By Nicole Barrett, DWC Blog Writer
Like many, Santina Rigano-Lesch found the COVID-19 pandemic to be a time for herself to hone in on what she’s really passionate about. From this time of reflection, projects like Unstoppable You and Unstoppable Babes were born. Read on to learn about these projects and more about Santina’s dance journey and upcoming work!
Santina is originally from Australia and started dancing when she was four years old. Later on, she ended up managing a performance company, while she was coaching national hip hop championships and touring around Australia. What brought her to the U.S. was being an au pair in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she began dancing there as well. In her job contract, she got moved to Seattle and wanted to stay here. She met her wife in Seattle and realized that she wanted to start her own dance studio near her where she could create a space for people to engage in the “alternative styles of dance.”
“Seattle has such a big contemporary and ballet scene,” Santina recalls being in Seattle’s established dance world. When she was building her studio, she realized that she had to start from the ground up to create a name that people would recognize, like in Australia. In the U.S., she faced challenges building such a name. Because of this, she worked with Seattle Parks and Recreation to get her name out there and to forge a partnership to help create what she envisioned.
One thing that was important for Santina regarding her dance studio was creating a space for people to explore their creativity. She started teaching children through daycare and elementary enrichment programs, along with teaching studio classes to 400 kids weekly. Santina wanted to create a non-traditional dance space, where she taught ballet to reggae music and worked to foster a safe, body-positive, and inclusive environment for everyone.
Once the pandemic hit, everything about the studio changed. Regulations based upon quarantine guidelines created a nearly impossible environment for Santina to continue doing the thing she loved. So, she made the conscious and bittersweet decision to shut down the studio in May 2020. She then pivoted her focus to create a new business called Don’t Do It Yourself Virtual Assistance Services where she started her work with studio owners who were having trouble with their social media and virtual assistant tasks.
Adding to her many other projects, she started her podcast Unstoppable You, which is all about empowering women in the body love space and crushing the body standards in society. Tagging onto Unstoppable You and her larger Confidently You brand, she started an online monthly membership Unstoppable Babes that is aimed at women wanting to get involved in loving their skin and their body. Santina’s main goal in creating these spaces was to speak up about the empowerment of women. She shares that because of COVID, she was able to sit down and assess what she was truly passionate about. She realized that what she was truly enthusiastic about was working with women like herself and helping empower them by bringing them in closer touch with their femininity. “[There’s] this avenue that I’ve gone down of helping women get confident within themselves, whether that’s dance-wise or business-wise,” she shares.
Santina’s favorite thing about dancing is the ability to express yourself in ways that in everyday life you just can’t. Growing up in Australia, the “you can only speak when you are spoken to” mindset was prevalent and she shares that she struggled with expressing herself verbally. Dance is what allowed her the ability to express herself and show how she feels without the hassle of using words.
One of Santina’s biggest struggles in dance has always been the way that she looks. She recalls being told by one of her ballet teachers that she was “too fat” to be a ballet dancer and she shares that it completely crushed her. Santina struggles with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) which inflames the entire body and can cause weight gain, among other things. This thin-bodied stereotype in the dance world is what made her look into other styles of dance, which is what she mainly practices now. Because of this, Santina’s advice for anyone going through the same issue is “don’t care about what anyone else thinks.” She shares that everyone struggles with something in or out of dance so if you love to dance, it doesn’t matter what your body looks like, just get moving.
Something that Santina would like to see change in the dance world is breaking the stereotype that dance is only for a trained dancer. “Based on conversations I have with women every day that want to dance, they feel this judgment that they didn’t start dancing sooner and feel immense anxiety attempting a dance class full of trained dancers,” Santina shares about the expectations in the dance world. She believes that dance is for everybody no matter who you are or what you do.
When asked about what steps can be done to help alleviate these often harmful expectations, she shares that normalizing the concept of an everyday person dancing is something that needs to be more globally understood. She expresses that it can be hard for trained dancers to look at others’ dancing and not critique them in certain ways. Therefore, Santina believes that the mindset of seeing everyone as a dancer is something that needs to be adopted by dancers, and by all, around the world.
At the same time, Santina mentions that she doesn’t like to use the word “normalize.” She shares that her wife has experiences with mental illness and has developed an unfavorable opinion of the word. “The reason why I don’t like using the word normalize comes from me educating myself in mental health and being there for an advocate and [in] support [of] my wife,” Santina shares. The word “normal” can be perceived in a marginalizing way and Santina doesn’t use it out of respect for the way it makes her wife feel and to show more understanding to the community that experiences mental illness as well.
Santina has many different projects coming up! Free Your Body, a dance-inspired bootcamp that ran from May 17th to May 22nd using movement to unleash trauma, is now available in recorded replay format. She also has her Unstoppable Babes membership program online that has classes on Wednesdays and Saturdays allowing the everyday woman to tap into their sensual and embodied side to reclaim themselves, let go of stories holding them back and put themselves first. Lastly, something that is in the works right now for Santina is a group coaching program for female entrepreneurs that aims to help them feel more comfortable with getting visible online in their businesses.
Be sure to check out Santina’s work on her website www.santinarigano.com for more information!
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