Meet Lindsay Taylor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Taylor.

Hi Lindsay, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started dancing when I was three years old back “home” in northern Virginia, right outside of Washington DC. Those first lessons started a lifelong love affair with the arts. My dad invested in our local dance studio when I was in middle school and helped design and oversee a beautiful buildout in a new facility. The owner at that time went through some stressful family events and my father took over the business to keep it going. My sister Suzanne and I had been very involved as dancers and company members, but I really started dedicating my life to the studio in high school. I was homeschooled so I was able to spend all of my free time there learning the business side of running the studio. I trained as an apprentice teacher when I was 13 and started teaching classes of my own shortly after. After high school, I attended Shenandoah Conservatory for a few short months before I was diagnosed with a very rare inner ear injury that was causing severe vertigo. I was unable to attend my dance classes without getting sick, honestly I was unable to walk in a straight line without getting sick. Thankfully after months of testing, I was referred on to the surgeon that was most familiar with this issue, and he was able to operate and fix the problem. The hang up was I essentially have plugs (skin grafts in both of my very inner ears to block a fluid leak) and if I force those out due to pressure, I will be deaf for the rest of my life. Dr Fitzgerald warned me that he had two different patients that did not know each other. They both went to Walt Disney World and rode space mountain and were now both permanently deaf. This is not a knock on space mountain! It just gives you an idea about the perimeters I’m dealing with. I had to entirely change my life plan and my approach to my training. We had no idea what caused the injury but could only think that perhaps it was the more athletic style of modern/contemporary dance in my college courses that may have been to blame.

A few months after my recovery while I was starting to train again, my dad received an audition notice for the Disney College program. We both thought that may be the perfect fit for me since the majority of the Disney shows involved more upright dancing. We both hoped it would be safer for my very strange circumstances. I made it through the audition and received a call offering me a spot in entertainment for the fall 2007 college program. My plan was to go spend a few months/years at Disney, get professional performing experience, and then eventually move home to take over the family studio. Well… it’s 2021 and I am still here! My Disney career has been a dream come true. I was able to perform as a dancer and aerial specialist, open/close numerous shows and parades. Make lifelong friends, meet my husband, and was even able to experience a short-term contract at Tokyo Disney Sea in Japan. I started teaching at a small studio in Celebration, FL because I really missed sharing my passion with the next generation. After a few years that studio went out of business and I was approached by numerous parents asking me to teach private lessons or to try and help figure out a way to keep their children dancing. I was able to form a wonderful partnership with Celebration Parks and Recreation through Town Hall and was able to open as my father’s second location in just a few short weeks. X-factor officially opened right after Labor Day weekend in September 2011. I dropped my status at Disney to part-time, and later to Seasonal where I am still thankfully employed today. I also picked up a short-term serving job when I wasn’t teaching and dedicated myself to making this work. We have been so incredibly blessed with an OUTSTANDING faculty. Every single teacher on our team is either currently or has previously performed professionally.

We are able to keep up with audition trends for the Orlando area and give our dancers valuable insight when it comes time for them to spread their wings and audition for professional jobs in the industry. I like to say we offer professional training in a family-friendly community setting. A few months after we opened the owner of the town’s gymnastics program approached me about buying her program. While it was overwhelming, it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. We have since reimagined that program to be more tumbling and acrobatics based and pride ourselves in giving our students a solid foundation to build upon for cheerleading tryouts or competitive teams at fully dedicated gyms. My father retired in 2016 and we adjusted the business to be a partnership with my sister Suzanne and our Sister-in-law Kara. It is truly a family affair! My sister lives right down the road and is my right hand as well as a beloved teacher on our faculty. Our sister-in-law Kara lives in northern Virginia with our brother and their children, and she manages the administrative side of the business through cloud-based software. Suzanne and I are so grateful that Kara gets to worry about the boring stuff like taxes. We have an incredible part-time office manager who has been with us from day 1. And currently have six additional teachers on staff. We are a small team of 10, but that helps us to keep the family feeling that we want for our program. We truly care about each and every student not just as a dancer or acrobat, but as a human, and I really hope that comes across to our families.

We were having our strongest year pre-covid and survived the lock-down by the skin of our teeth. We are still working on building things back to where they were but are so incredible grateful to have survived when so many other studios were not able to. We were forced to be more creative than ever and spent months researching the safest way to run our program during a pandemic. We had to go through a very intense approval process with our town’s HOA board to be able to re-open, and we are so proud to be able to say as of right now, we have not had a single covid exposure take place through our program. We held an outdoor recital last May, and while it was hot, it was so incredibly powerful to be able to see our dancers perform onstage for an actual audience. We called our show “Perseverance” and it held special meaning to me as it was my daughter’s very first recital. She seems to be hooked just like her mom. We are currently celebrating our ten years anniversary and cannot wait to have a very special showcase this upcoming May back at Celebration High School assisted by our wonderful friends in the theater department.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
The biggest obstacle we have faced by FAR has been the pandemic. The mental trauma we have seen in our students has been heartbreaking. Not to mention the stress of trying to keep our business afloat. I am a firm believer in the saying “everything happens for a reason” and this entire experience has made me reevaluate my life and my priorities. We have students entering our program who can’t remember ever being away from their parents, and the separation anxiety is very real. Nothing is more rewarding then seeing those same faces that used to be streaked with tears running towards you to give you a hug at the beginning of class because after weeks of consistent effort on all ends, they now feel like the studio is their safe space. We have teenagers who are fully vaccinated and still choose to participate in every single class fully masked because they are traumatized by the past almost two years. I hope if nothing else, our students feel a reprieve from those worries in our classroom and know that they are fully supported and loved by our faculty. We strive to be a safe and accepting environment for everyone who walks through our doors.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I spend the majority of my teaching hours working with our youngest students. I like to focus on the preschool-1st grade age groups because I feel that if I can make dance and tumbling fun, it sets the foundation for everything else moving forward. I like to lead my classes with firm boundaries as our students are exploring how to behave in a classroom setting, but I try my hardest to keep things positive and upbeat, and above all else to lead with love. Parents and friends have referred to my teaching voice as my “Disney voice” and we all joke around that whenever I attend birthday parties with my daughter, you can usually find me surrounded by and hanging out with the kids instead of socializing with the grown up’s.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
We are always looking for more ways to be involved in the community. We participate in numerous community parades/shows/events throughout the year and would absolutely love to do more. We have cheered on runners in local marathons, partnered with Relay for Life, performed holiday shows and parades as well as attending local competitions. Please reach out with any potential performance or family-friendly volunteering opportunities. And if nothing else, we are always looking for enthusiastic audience members at our shows!

Pricing:

• We work off of a graduated scale so it depends how many hours of class you student is taking each week. We start at 58.00 for a 45 minute class, 68.00 for an hour long class. Price decreases with each additional class.
• 35.00 registration fee
• 85.00 costume fee per costume for those participating in our showcase
• 80.00 per family (not student) showcase fee. Includes the rental fee that goes towards the facility, two tickets to the show, and a digital download of the professional video of the show.
• Summer pricing is different please check the website in March

Contact Info:

• Email: info@xfactordance.com
• Website: www.xfactordance.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xfactordance/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Xfactordance
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/xfactordancecenter

Image Credits
Amy Alexander AlexanderPhotography