Getting to Know Local Educator and Founder Holly Logan Livingston
A Conversation with Former DWC Staff Member and Precision Academy of Performing Arts Founder
Name pronunciation: Holly Logan Liv-ing-s-ton | Pronouns: she/her
By Madison Huizinga, DWC Blog Editor
From pursuing a career in musical theatre to founding her own dance company and launching Precision Dance Academy, Holly Logan Livingston is a dynamic performer and contributor to the Seattle dance community. Read on to learn more about Holly’s dance journey, experience at DWC, and Precision Academy of Performing Arts.
Holly didn’t start dancing until seventh grade when she attended a charter school that specializes in performing arts. “I always liked performing,” Holly says, expressing her love for putting on shows and being in charge of performers. In addition to the dance classes she was taking, Holly was also into sports, including soccer, basketball, softball, figure skating, and cheerleading. While she wasn’t too fond of ballet immediately, she slowly learned to appreciate the discipline that came along with it and found that she picked it up rather well. At the end of seventh grade, Holly’s ballet instructor told her that she would be bumped up to the high school freshman level classes, which allowed her to dive deeply into the practice. By the time she got to her sophomore year, she was dancing 36 to 40 hours a week! While her training was mostly ballet-focused, she also participated in jazz and theatre productions.
“Ballet became a lot on me, mostly mentally,” Holly admits. “I felt happier in the musical theatre realm...I felt more encouraged.” Trying to keep up with the long hours of training and strict standards enforced in the ballet sphere became taxing, and Holly was beginning to feel burnt out. She also shares that she always felt out of place due to her body type, sharing that her body was often described as “athletic,” solely because she was not rail thin. Around her sophomore year, Holly switched from the performing arts school to a public school and focused more heavily on musical theatre training where she felt more comfortable.
In college, Holly intended on pursuing a musical theatre major and a dance minor. However, after taking her first modern class, her dance minor became a major. “I was like ‘this is where I’m supposed to be,’” Holly says about discovering modern dance.
Dancewear Center Director of Operations Samantha Weissbach and Holly met years before Holly joined the DWC team. Both of the dancers were creating and participating in pieces for the same dance concert in Seattle. Holly describes watching Samantha dance and being blown away by her talent. Holly had been planning on producing her own dance concert and reached out to Samantha on social media to see if she was interested in participating. The stars aligned and she ended up dancing in Holly’s first concert Prelude in 2013. Following the show, Holly expressed to Samantha her interest in starting a dance company, but she was reluctant due to all the executive work that was needed. To her surprise, Samantha offered to help her with the executive side of things. “We had barely known each other, but something felt correct,” Holly says about her connection with Samantha. The pair ended up meeting several more times and forming Intrepidus Dance in the fall of 2014. Seven years later, Samantha is still the executive director and Holly is still the artistic director.
Holly joined Dancewear Center in 2021 intending to provide support and fill in any gaps that staff needed. However, after joining the team, her role evolved quite a bit. Holly’s main focus was reorganizing Dancewear Center’s inventory and transferring products to the new DWC Renton location. “I love organizing things. Not necessarily my own personal life, but at work,” Holly laughs.
Holly also has experience developing training programs and orientations for staff. “Nobody can know what to do or what their expectations are unless you tell them,” she shares. “The more we can communicate that, the better [service] we can offer.” She’s played a huge role in training new staff members at Dancewear Center to make onboarding smooth.
Something that Holly enjoyed most about working at Dancewear Center is the freedom Samantha offers as director of operations. There are a lot of opportunities to adjust schedules to work with Holly’s busy life and try her hand at different tasks. “Everything’s very direct and solution-oriented,” she says of Dancewear Center’s mission. “If there’s a problem, Sam’s going to fix it. She’s going to figure out the tools and the resources to provide for the people who need to be provided for. I really love that.”
In the dance world, Holly hopes that professionals work to broaden the perception of what a dancer should be and what abilities a “talented” dancer possesses. Being open with dancers about what’s capable within their bodies and becoming the best versions of themselves rather than chasing an impossible ideal is a principle that Holly promotes in her own teaching. Also, making a larger range of clothing options available for dancers, and more nuanced sizing within dancewear is something that Holly finds incredibly important. “More body positivity and educating dancers on how to be safe with themselves,” Holly says of the changes she wishes to see in the industry.
Holly recently announced the opening of her own dance school, Precision Dance Academy, which has been a dream in the making for a while. Precision is a dance academy where young dancers can train in jazz, ballet, lyrical and more, with the goal of being “a home for every performer.” Precision strives to provide elite training and care for the whole performer, whether dancers are training to be professionals or for fun. The academy offers holistic performance training, providing dance classes, acting classes, and music lessons. Click here to register for classes through the West Seattle Health Club and here to follow Precision on Instagram!
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