Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shantel Grasdal Ramos. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Shantel, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I come from a working-class, immigrant family. My mother escaped communism on the island of Cuba, settling in Canada, when I was still very young. I have learned many lessons from watching her live life, such as you need to take risks if you want to see a brighter future for yourself, and that you cannot wait for doors to open or opportunities to fall into your lap. If nothing presents itself to you, you go out and make an opportunity for yourself. It may not be at the caliber you want it to be, but I have realized after implementing my mom’s life lessons that they will eventually reach the caliber you want.
After being in the dance and entertainment industry for 10 years now, carrying out this logic has been my saving grace. There have been so many periods over this decade where the industry has shifted, and I am not what they are looking for, what is happening is not fulfilling me as an artist, or maybe I am dealing with an injury, or I feel I am not being challenged enough in the city I am in. I could have easily sat stagnant, (which in my younger years in this industry I most definitely did), but as the years have gone on, I have realized that if I wanted to stay in this industry I needed to pivot. Even to just try something new. Staying engaged with my growth as an artistry has always been the main goal. I always felt that if I could accomplish that, more opportunities would come my way.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Currently, I am based in Vancouver, Canada, working as a dancer on TV, film, and commercials (Hugo Boss, Walmart, Neutrogena, Bose, Riverdale, Grease). I have had the opportunity to also work with local Canadian musical artists, such as AP Dhillon.
As lucrative as tv/film/commercials are, my preferred lane of work is with musical artists. These opportunities for dancers to work with a singer in the form of touring, award shows, music videos are far and few between in Canada. My long term goal is to work with more artists and inspire Canadian talent to hire from the vast and talented group of Canadian dancers that live here, as opposed to outsourcing from LA and NYC.
Until we are at place where artists are doing so, I would love to move to London, and LA to gain more opportunities to work with artists. Gain knowledge of what they are expecting from the highest level of professionals in the music industry and bring it back to the next group of Canadian dancers.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Looking back, one of the most impactful things I learned is to be flexible with everything. Flexible with the styles you dance, the jobs you take, the people you train under, the cities you decide to live and train in. It is when I had tunnel vision and was holding on to certain goals, I missed other opportunities which would have been as lucrative, or helpful in my growth. Of course, it is good to have goals, but finding the line of whether this goal is helping or holding me back has been such a learning curb for me. It will take time to be able to figure it out whether a goal is helping or holding me back, but being able to reflect on past experiences, time versus pay versus knowledge gained from the job, and overall intuition help me.
Another quality that has helped in this industry is building confidence. With confidence I have been able to grow quicker as an artist and performer. In my personal experience, I have found that due to the confidence I have not been as scared to try and fail, and I am failing a lot less just because I have created true confidence in myself. Audiences and the people in charge of booking you feel secure when they realize an artist is confident in the product they are showcasing. Now, how you get confidence looks different on everyone, and everyone is starting in a different place due to how they raised and their experiences prior to them starting their journey. Something that has helped me is working on my internal dialogue. ways I do this is by speaking to myself in useful ways as opposed to getting down on myself for minor mistakes, and visualizing my success in the moment, whether that mean seeing myself execute hard choreography correctly, or visualizing myself performing to the my highest level on stage or one set.
Lastly, finding a good work life balance that functions for me. Now, this does look differently on everyone, and has looked differently on me over my 10 years in the industry. At the beginning of my career, I still ha so much to learn, so many styles to work on, and needed to grow a lot of my technique. Therefore it made sense that I was spending most of my time in LA training 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Now a days I do not train like that. I have built a strong foundation from that period of time so I can now focus on training to maintain that high level I gained, and also still have time to train in learning the new styles and techniques that come out every year. This also allows me time to focus on the health and restoration of my body, so that it is ready for my next training session.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
What I like to do when I feel overwhelmed is to look inward to check if I am doing everything I need to maintain my bodies health or restoration. I find that I get overwhelmed when I am letting one of those factors falter.
Am I sleeping enough? Drinking enough water? Eating enough nutrients? Did I warm up and cool down properly? Am I giving myself anytime to focus on me? Have I deplete myself of time with my friends and family for too long? Am I jamming too much into my schedule for too long amount of time? Am I looking at everything I need to do in my schedule instead of taking on my tasks one at a time or day by day?
Chances are, I need to fix one of these issues and once I have done so things slowly but surely start to feel better.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_shantel/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shantelgrasdalramos
Image Credits
Image credit Bao Nguyen, Evan Morash, Jarod Gatica Romero, Meghan Gipps.
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