From Biotech to Dance and Taekwondo Teacher
Description
In this week's episode we talk to Tyler's dance teacher, Sean Bjerke, about leaving a decade long career in biotech to become a teacher of house dance and Taekwondo.
Sean Bjerke's Media Accounts:
Sean's Website: https://www.seanbjerke.net/
Sean's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shizz_matic/
Transcript
00:00:00.000Tyler T Hamer: Welcome to the Path of Passion Podcast where we hear from people who are living lives they're passionate about. I'm your host Tyler, and this is my enamoring co-host.
00:00:10.080
Jordan Ugalde: Hi I'm Jordan.
00:00:12.390
Tyler T Hamer: And today we're interviewing my dance teacher Sean. Sean was originally a chemical engineer, and now teaches both
00:00:20.100
Tyler T Hamer: house dance, so like electric dance music, and Taekwondo. So let's get into it. So Sean tell us about this like journey going from basically kicking ass what your mind to kicking ass with your body.
00:00:35.160
Sean Bjerke: You had that one saved up.
00:00:37.380
Tyler T Hamer: I did.
00:00:40.680
Sean Bjerke: I'm, I might take that too, I might write that down. So yeah hi guys, my name is Sean Bjerke and like Tyler said I, I went to school to study chemical engineering, I went to Tufts University and I was actually, I can say kicking ass right you did so, I can say it right?
00:01:03.600
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah, you're totally good.
00:01:05.640
Sean Bjerke: I guess you can say I was actually kicking ass with my body, before I was kicking ass with my mind, because I started
00:01:12.090
Sean Bjerke: studying Taekwondo, it's a Korean martial art, I started studying when I was eight years old, when I lived on the Cape.
00:01:19.680
Sean Bjerke: And honestly like kind of leading up to college and then beyond, like I think Taekwondo really set a strong foundation for just, you know approaching life. There's a lot of life lessons that are to be learned from martial artists, not just like kicking and punching.
00:01:39.330
Sean Bjerke: One of my old instructors he had like this famous, well famous to us, but the speech that he would always give us kids were I think it's when we were giving him a hard time he would just sit us down and he said, this is, I'm gonna give you the speech.
00:01:54.990
Sean Bjerke: He would go.
00:01:55.740
Tyler T Hamer: Sounds good.
00:01:57.480
Sean Bjerke: He's like look at the door, so we like,
00:02:00.480
Sean Bjerke: look at me, we look back, he's like when you when you leave the Taekwondo school you're still doing Taekwondo. And then he he proceed to have this conversation with himself as if he was talking as us.
00:02:12.060
Sean Bjerke: He's like well, what do you mean, Mr. Kim well I'm not punching or kicking when I go home.
00:02:16.260
Sean Bjerke: He's like you got chores to do, you got homework, you got to take out the trash, you got a bedtime. Like he's like all these things are, you have to do these things as part of life and Taekwondo teaches you like, you have to be your best self.
00:02:30.810
Sean Bjerke: So if you're not doing these things, you're not, you're not doing Taekwondo and we're all, you know as an eight year old you're like.
00:02:37.650
Sean Bjerke: Well, I still like to kick things I like to break boards and all that but I think just having that as like this voice in the back of my head...
00:02:46.410
Sean Bjerke: Like going growing up throughout life whenever you encounter adversity, I was like, well you know I can either accept defeat or I can push through it.
00:02:57.630
Sean Bjerke: You know? I can, I can make the best of it, and I think that's really helped me,
00:03:02.550
Sean Bjerke: not just in Taekwondo but also in school like it really kept me focused. I was a good, I think I was, I was a pretty good student already when I started in fourth grade, but I think it just,
00:03:13.380
Sean Bjerke: as I got older it just kind of worked in parallel. Like, I felt like when I walk in to the Taekwondo studio it's like focus ready to go.
00:03:21.780
Sean Bjerke: Walk into math class, walk into, whatever it is, English, French, boom ready to go. Like, listen, eyes open, ears open, try to get everything you can out of it.
00:03:30.960
Sean Bjerke: And I'm not, you know not saying I'm perfect, like there are things where I'm like, like I would rather not pay attention to certain things, or like do everything that I do but
00:03:41.010
Sean Bjerke: I think just having that approach, helped me
00:03:44.340
Sean Bjerke: make my own success in martial arts. Like I'm a fourth degree black belt now so I've been I've been doing it ever since I was eight.
00:03:52.950
Sean Bjerke: And it helped me be successful in school and helped me really focus on like the mathematics and sciences, particularly which I'm sure you guys are no strangers to as MIT students.
00:04:05.070
Tyler T Hamer: It's it's it's a good time.
00:04:06.870
Sean Bjerke: It's a bit of a grind. So to kind of cut back to your question, you know I studied chemical engineering in, at Tufts University, graduated with my bachelor's.
00:04:18.300
Sean Bjerke: And Tuft's is also where I started to learn about dance, and it was on more of a recreational level like it wasn't,
00:04:25.470
Sean Bjerke: like all right, you got to make danc your life. Like it was just, you know, there were clubs there that, you know, we, we learned about dance, we did performances.
00:04:33.810
Sean Bjerke: And I'd say, for me the, like, doing performances was what made me really fall in love with the idea of like, okay, well "why do you dance?" "To show it."
00:04:45.600
Sean Bjerke: And I think my Taekwondo help that with that too, because we would do demonstrations, when I was younger we'd go to like you know,
00:04:52.620
Sean Bjerke: local fairs or just local events and we do a Taekwondo demonstration, where we show what we practiced, we do some crazy board breaking, sometimes we do some sparring.
00:05:03.960
Sean Bjerke: And when you, when you show up to something like that and you're, you're representing yourself, you're representing your school.
00:05:10.380
Sean Bjerke: You know the mindset is, if you look really good and know what you're doing, people are going to really enjoy it. They're going to maybe even join your school it's like, wow I want to be like that.
00:05:19.680
Sean Bjerke: You know? The first day I went to my Taekwondo school, all the higher belts were doing like flying kicks like they're flying over each other, that, you literally had kids like I know, Jordan, you said you wanted to show you something but,
00:05:34.560
Sean Bjerke: you'd have kids like like this on the floor like they're like this and you have other kids like jumping over them.
00:05:41.220
Jordan Ugalde: Wow.
00:05:41.940
Sean Bjerke: So as an eight year old when you see that you're like, what?
00:05:48.210
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah that has to be like, I mean eight year old me was just like impressed with everything so like the fact that you see someone literally kicking ass like.
00:05:55.950
Sean Bjerke: Right it's like, same. It's like I'm impressed by like a tomato but, like to see like children flying over each other it's like, what what is this? What is the sorcery? So having that kind of experience with Taekwondo really made me enjoy the performance part of dance and
00:06:17.100
Sean Bjerke: after I graduated I was, you know, I was in biotech for about
00:06:23.460
Sean Bjerke: 13, 14 years, 14 years.
00:06:28.350
Sean Bjerke: And I was concurrently still doing, practicing Taekwondo and teaching Taekwondo in Cambridge and Boston. And also continue to study dance, I was as a part of a dance company which,
00:06:42.270
Sean Bjerke: I was a part of my first company post college for about six years and then I shifted to a new company called, it was called Concept Artists, it's a company that I actually am still affiliated with. I help direct it.
00:06:54.510
Sean Bjerke: We do, you know, we create our own performances and perform around Boston, New England. Right now performances are a little you know few and far between but we're hoping to get back to that.
00:07:05.970
Sean Bjerke: And I started teaching dance about, gonna say 10, 11 years ago and I'll be honest, when I started teaching, like if I, if I, if current me goes back and looks at then me, like I probably didn't know what I was doing.
00:07:22.530
Sean Bjerke: Like I knew enough to like, present myself a certain way, but I know much more now about what the valuable things are to teach in dance. So you know, I am teaching full time now in 2018 I was unceremoniously or ceremoniously I don't know, I guess, depending on how you want to look at it.
00:07:43.980
Sean Bjerke: Are the company, I worked as Momenta Pharmaceuticals, they did a massive layoff. They're basically shifting directions and they decided half the company was not needed so
00:07:54.720
Sean Bjerke: at that point in time, I was actually considering making a career change to teaching full time anyway, so in a way it was like, oh cool they made the decision for me and they're paying me to like leave.
00:08:06.810
Tyler T Hamer: I'll take that sweet severance yeah.
00:08:10.440
Sean Bjerke: It was, I mean it was it was kind of like really good timing. And since the end of 2018 I've been, you know, teaching multiple dance classes a week, teaching at my Taekwondo studio and just really trying to make
00:08:24.060
Sean Bjerke: a, you know, a career for myself that was based on those things and it's been a challenge but it's also been a fun experience, because when you have like 100% of your
00:08:36.030
Sean Bjerke: brain mass to put towards something, I realized, I was like man, I was really spreading myself really thin and not really getting 100% out of anything I was doing.
00:08:46.170
Sean Bjerke: You know? I think that, and that that is also part of from like the Taekwondo you can sometimes convince yourself, you can do everything, and shoulder everything.
00:08:54.870
Sean Bjerke: And then, when you realize like you don't have to do that you're like man, like why didn't I just focus on, you know X, Y or Z, but it's you know that's experience. So, so, so now I'm teaching and and I like where I'm at.
00:09:10.620
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fair. It's, I think a really good
00:09:13.170
Tyler T Hamer: takeaway from that is just focusing on the things you actually want to, like, dedicate your time to because MIT is the exact opposite like they teach you
00:09:22.320
Tyler T Hamer: first and foremost triage. They're like you're gonna come and drink from a fire hose and then you kind of leave after four years if you only did your bachelor's and you're like I didn't enjoy that. And I'm really good at triaging but it's not like a lifestyle to live at all.
00:09:37.080
Sean Bjerke: Yeah it's almost like they they are like throwing you into the fire right off the bat and it's like yeah all right put yourself out.
00:09:45.330
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I mean that's kind of why I say so often in your dance class, like, trial by fire.
00:09:53.940
Sean Bjerke: Seriously yeah that's how the greats learned. The great had to, had to be pushed into it and
00:10:01.050
Sean Bjerke: you, you sink or swim.
00:10:03.930
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:10:05.130
Jordan Ugalde: So it, from the sound of it, you were doing chemical engineering, and being a dance instructor, and being a Taekwondo instructor all at the same time for quite a while.
00:10:19.410
Sean Bjerke: Yeah.
00:10:19.770
Jordan Ugalde: Was that...
00:10:20.940
Sean Bjerke: Yes, I would say, I, like even before I started teaching dance I was still like, you know,
00:10:27.840
Sean Bjerke: learning with my company and like probably doing that a few times a week. So all in all
00:10:33.630
Sean Bjerke: since the start of like college
00:10:37.560
Sean Bjerke: back in like 2000 like doing all that stuff.
00:10:41.370
Sean Bjerke: With with like minimal breaks like that's kind of the truth of it.
00:10:46.980
Sean Bjerke: I mean.
00:10:47.490
Tyler T Hamer: Were you then teaching Taekwondo while you were going to Tufts or...
00:10:52.500
Sean Bjerke: I, yeah, so there was a there
00:10:54.930
Sean Bjerke: luckily, was a Taekwondo club at Tufts that I participated in and would, you know, because I had a black belt from before, usually clubs like that there's probably, you know, one or two at MIT, I think they actually have a couple of Taekwondo clubs, where
00:11:07.350
Sean Bjerke: if you have experienced from former Taekwondo school, they like people like that coming into the club, because they bring kind of new ideas, new energy in, and they can help out with teaching.
00:11:20.190
Sean Bjerke: And I eventually became I think the head instructor my either, my junior or my senior year at Tufts, and I started training at the school that I'm currently an instructor at, the G H Kim Taekwondo Institute.
00:11:33.930
Sean Bjerke: So yeah I was teaching, then, and, you know, rehearsing dance then, and the fun wacky world of chemical engineering, then.
00:11:46.140
Sean Bjerke: So yeah.
00:11:47.130
Jordan Ugalde: If you were, since you've eventually, I mean now you've dropped the wacky world of chemical engineering for these other pursuits, so, it, what took you so long?
00:12:04.800
Sean Bjerke: What the hell man?
00:12:07.710
Sean Bjerke: Honest, honestly and, you know, I'm going to kind of keep going back to my martial arts training is when you, when you learn certain values or like you develop certain values in something so for me like,
00:12:22.980
Sean Bjerke: you know, loyalty and discipline are like two big things to me and the idea of quitting,
00:12:33.330
Sean Bjerke: like, it can, you can take it two ways right? It's like, one thing, it's like, okay, I want to do this thing that sometimes it's really hard
00:12:43.050
Sean Bjerke: and I can only fail if I quit, so I really want to like stick to it. But sometimes that mindset can work against you, where it's like, oh I don't want to quit anything because
00:12:54.300
Sean Bjerke: it's maybe, you know, I've convinced myself it's a sign of weakness or maybe just the feeling of quitting feels hard, because you have to deal with like people's emotions.
00:13:05.940
Sean Bjerke: So I think honestly man it's just I think I convinced myself, I had to do it all, for a long time. Plus, you know, it can't like, you know, living in Somerville, Cambridge, where there's a lot of biotech, biotech is a very, you know, lucrative industry. It's, you know, it pays well there's like good,
00:13:27.990
Sean Bjerke: what's the, what's the word, like, when people, when I talked to a bit, when I talked to, about it with people like, oh you're you're a chemical engineer, like that's really good. There's a lot of like,
00:13:37.620
Sean Bjerke: good notoriety with it. It just, it felt like I needed to do it for a while, but then probably the last three or four years of my
00:13:47.010
Sean Bjerke: tenure at Momento, you start, I started to feel the attrition kind of setting on. It's like man, like, why do I feel
00:13:56.040
Sean Bjerke: just like, it's a pain to get up in the morning and go to work and I realized like, I didn't see myself, I didn't really see myself
00:14:08.220
Sean Bjerke: 5, 10 years down the line, like what am I going to be doing? I could say something like I want to be a director, or I want to be this level.
00:14:16.560
Sean Bjerke: But I didn't see myself doing the work to get there, I saw myself like, oh, this is what happens, you get promoted.
00:14:24.420
Sean Bjerke: But I was like wait, that's not how it worked in Taekwondo I wasn't given a belt, I wasn't getting my black belt, I wasn't given like teaching opportunities, I had to work for those.
00:14:33.990
Sean Bjerke: And I realized like, I probably am not going to want to work for what I would want to see myself doing
00:14:42.390
Sean Bjerke: in this field. And that's that's one of those like, kind of come to Jesus like, man, maybe it's time, you know? But because of all those other things like the, the financial, the benefits, the security?
00:14:56.280
Sean Bjerke: It was like man that's a tough like balloon to let go, you know, you want to kind of hold on to it. And I think I honestly,
00:15:05.940
Sean Bjerke: that last year I probably convinced myself at some point, there was going to be some type of like signal that I was like, okay, this is the sign that is time to go. And it didn't ever really slap me in the face until they were like hey, you're all fired. And it was like,
00:15:26.610
Sean Bjerke: this is it, this is, it's like, it's like they're calling my number now like, that's me! Oh severance, cool, that's me!
00:15:35.100
Sean Bjerke: So it's kinda like some, I've read
00:15:37.770
Sean Bjerke: stories about like, different people's, you know, professional experience on like, like, how they approach things and like, what, some people literally just go with the flow and the whatever is presented to them they're like, oh, this is the thing that I'm doing now.
00:15:51.210
Sean Bjerke: And I feel like, I kind of fall into that it's like, ih, this is the challenge I'm up I'm forced with now? All right here we go let's make it work.
00:16:00.120
Sean Bjerke: So yeah man I, I don't have a good reason other than just I think I felt like, obligated to,
00:16:06.930
Sean Bjerke: to be this, you know, jack of all trades like, I got to do it all. I have, I my discipline started to work against me, and I see that now, and now it's like, okay, maybe I can, I can foresee something like that in the future, and hopefully work before it, you know, makes me feel some kind of way.
00:16:27.150
Tyler T Hamer: No that's really fair, I mean like, having transitioning out of like, grad school and for like, now working it was like, for a while I was like, oh
00:16:36.390
Tyler T Hamer: I, you know, even before before thesis got really tough, you know, going to your classes, all the time Sean and then still managing
00:16:43.290
Tyler T Hamer: to do a lot of work, I kind of like, right when I got out of grad school, I was like, should I pick up a new hobby? And everyone's like, no just go to dance, and like, don't, don't start something new, you don't have to do everything.
00:16:54.870
Sean Bjerke: Right right, but when you're, when you're really motivated sometimes like, you're you can be like, your own worst enemy, even when you're doing things that you really like.
00:17:04.770
Sean Bjerke: You're like, man, I want to do this, this, this, and this. But then, if you spread yourself too thin sometimes you look back and you're like, wait where am I getting with any of it? You know, I'm just sort of doing it, but I'm just treading water everywhere.
00:17:16.740
Jordan Ugalde: Right right, I think,
00:17:19.950
Jordan Ugalde: I'm not sure if it's common but like, something that I also experienced was
00:17:24.810
Jordan Ugalde: growing up, I didn't have that many hobbies, but then when I got to college I started doing way too many things and, at the end of it, I realized I didn't dedicate enough time to any of these. Like, I was burnt out on everything, because I,
00:17:38.190
Jordan Ugalde: there's only so much time in the day, and if you try and fit 10,000 things into 24 hours you aren't going to be able to actually do all those things.
00:17:50.700
Jordan Ugalde: Part of, honestly, part of loving a lot of different things is you have to let some things go, so that you can actually dedicate the time necessary to things that you care about the most.
00:18:02.730
Sean Bjerke: Yeah, do you guys ever go to a restaurant that has like,
00:18:08.160
Sean Bjerke: a menu that has way too many things on it and you're almost like, overwhelmed that you're going to make a bad choice. You're like, man, I want to get this, but this looks good these look good and you're like, I should order all four of them you know?
00:18:26.940
Sean Bjerke: It almost works against you, that there's too many choices versus like, Tyler that there's that small ramen place down the...
00:18:34.800
Tyler T Hamer: Yume, Yume Wo Katare.
00:18:37.200
Sean Bjerke: And it's like, you can get ramen with pork or ramen with more pork, those are your choices.
00:18:43.590
Sean Bjerke: So you
00:18:44.910
Sean Bjerke: know, on the surface it's like, oh it's not much, but then you're like, well it's it's easy to choose like, you know, I can
00:18:51.960
Sean Bjerke: it's laid out for me. But when you have a lot of choices you're right, you're right Jordan it's like, being a kid in a candy store and you only have 10 bucks to spend and you're like,
00:19:02.430
Sean Bjerke: and, and like, in life that that 10 bucks is like, time, you know, you only have a certain amount of time, you can put towards it. And you eventually find
00:19:10.650
Sean Bjerke: the best way to spend your time in the most optimal way, but sometimes you have to go through those, those first pathways where you're like, I'm doing too much, but eventually I want to settle on something.
00:19:21.660
Sean Bjerke: For sure.
00:19:24.060
Tyler T Hamer: So I guess like, along the concept of time then. Like
00:19:26.760
Tyler T Hamer: I mean, you know, that people like, to say, like, it takes 10,000 hours, of something to become an expert at it, so I guess like, to be called like, a fourth level black belt Sean, how, how many hours, do you think you've put into Taekwondo?
00:19:40.800
Sean Bjerke: I could probably like, do a quick calculation, it's funny I actually use the same exact thing with somebody the other day. I said...
00:19:47.310
Sean Bjerke: Yeah because we, you know, we practicem
00:19:52.260
Sean Bjerke: we call them poomsae in Taekwondo, it's like, just like, patterns that you have to learn and memorize to test for your next belt. And, you know, you're teaching the kids how to do it and they're kind of just like,
00:20:05.100
Sean Bjerke: doing this through it and, like, I can do it. And it's like, yeah you can get through it, but to like, really master it, you have to do it, maybe thousand, ten thousand times.
00:20:16.350
Sean Bjerke: So how many hours, oh my goodness. So I would say I was going to Taekwondo I was probably at the school most like, training wise I'm between 2002 to like, 2000...
00:20:31.680
Sean Bjerke: I'll say like, 2010ish. Like, I was probably training and going to classes like, multiple days a week, in addition to teaching. Now it's primarily teaching.
00:20:43.350
Sean Bjerke: But, you know, if I'm in the school, maybe
00:20:47.250
Sean Bjerke: I'll say like, 5 to 10 hours a week of just like, hitting the hitting the boards, let's say, let's say five hours, if you do that, over the course of the year, what is that?`
00:21:00.240
Tyler T Hamer: Like times 52 weeks.
00:21:02.550
Sean Bjerke: 260ish plus or minus hours.
00:21:07.620
Sean Bjerke: And then you multiply that over let's say 10 years comes out to like, 2600 hours and that's, that's, just like, the training part that's not like, the teaching, part too.
00:21:16.980
Sean Bjerke: Plus I've been doing Taekwondo for 30 years so that's like, a third of just the training.
00:21:22.710
Tyler T Hamer: So it's like,
00:21:23.190
Tyler T Hamer: 10,000 hours per belt level black belt right? Like...
00:21:27.690
Sean Bjerke: Yeah yeah.
00:21:28.680
Sean Bjerke: It's almost, it's almost like that. They actually, the way they like, you promote, usually between the like, the colored belts, so you start as a white belt.
00:21:37.320
Sean Bjerke: Yellow, green, blue red, you know, there's different ranks, probably takes like, two to three months if you're like, on top of your, your stuff. Two to three months to promote.
00:21:45.660
Sean Bjerke: And then you get to black belt and it starts to get longer. It's like, okay, ideally, they tell you it takes like, one to two years to go from one degree to like, the next degree and
00:21:57.510
Sean Bjerke: as a kid you're like, but I'm just memorizing like, the same types of things. Like, they're harder but why would it take two years? And I, as I got older like, the way I saw
00:22:08.970
Sean Bjerke: at my school and just in general, it's people's minds need that time
00:22:15.630
Sean Bjerke: to mature, it's the mind. Like, the physical, anyone can like, I can show people that have been doing Taekwondo for several years, I can show them like, a pattern but, like, the way they do it,
00:22:26.520
Sean Bjerke: if you just, if you just look at after a couple months it's like, okay.
00:22:31.740
Sean Bjerke: But like, spending the time with it, and like, understanding, you know, not just the details, but just kind of the greater
00:22:39.540
Sean Bjerke: purpose of like, what all these basic things are doing for your body and whatever, it's like, oh man there's actually a lot to kind of absorb that you can't just do it
00:22:50.460
Sean Bjerke: and expect that it's just going to come naturally in a short period of time. You need that time to marinate and sometimes you look back you're like, man that thing that my teacher said six years ago, now it makes sense.
00:23:03.150
Sean Bjerke: You know, it just, it's like, you have that "Aha!" and not many people want to put the time in, you know, they just want the,
00:23:10.320
Sean Bjerke: like the reward or the, they reach a certain level and they're like, oh cool I got it.
00:23:15.720
Sean Bjerke: And it's like, well like, it's all the stuff in between, actually, that was the learning, though, you know? Like, what did you get from that? And sometimes people I tell people
00:23:24.870
Sean Bjerke: who, sometimes takes them longer to get something so like, sometimes like, you, you spend that time that maybe this, this person over here, it took them this much time to get.
00:23:34.920
Sean Bjerke: But when you have to like, make yourself work that hard to like, get what this person got really easy you're going to appreciate that time, a lot more you're like, man, it took me so long, but
00:23:45.480
Sean Bjerke: like, I actually learned a lot more, and like, push myself over a longer period of time than this person did. Maybe they're really talented.
00:23:54.840
Sean Bjerke: And what I see is is like, as these two people progress this person tends to be there for the long haul, this person usually gets to a point and they're like, all right I'm good.
00:24:04.680
Sean Bjerke: And there's nothing wrong with that, that's just I think when you make yourself work for a long time, you have a better sense of discipline.
00:24:12.270
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fair and I definitely agree with that, like, having especially like, having to take a couple months off from dance because I need to like, actually finish the grind on my thesis. Like,
00:24:23.790
Tyler T Hamer: even though I was like, really out of shape when I came
00:24:25.650
Tyler T Hamer: back I felt like, my the way I was doing everything and changed like, fundamentally. Like, I was like, okay I'm back since I'm out of shape I'm back to like, square one,
00:24:35.190
Tyler T Hamer: but now I know all these things I didn't know before and so just practicing to get back into shape and going through it, I felt like
00:24:42.570
Tyler T Hamer: I could approach everything from a different way, I was more focused on like, instead of just like, in the beginner class doing
00:24:48.360
Tyler T Hamer: the steps, looking, focusing on like, how did the steps look in the mirror, is this the type of, like, trying to identify like, personally what is my style.
00:24:56.220
Tyler T Hamer: I like, obviously the dance move shuffling so like, I like, to now, I think I begin to realize I like, more bouncier style when it comes to
00:25:05.100
Tyler T Hamer: how I want to move.
00:25:06.510
Sean Bjerke: Yeah you have like, a reference point, you know? You're like, oh I've learned this before I get to do it again now, huh, okay now I can like, focus on different things, as I learned, versus having to learn it from scratch.
00:25:19.350
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah yeah.
00:25:20.190
Sean Bjerke: Focus is just like, staying afloat when you're learning from scratch, but then when you've, you've gone through it a few times you're like, akay, I feel a little different I think a little different.
00:25:29.010
Sean Bjerke: What am I, what am I feeling, what's, what's going on here so that's, that's great that you noticed that yeah.
00:25:34.290
Jordan Ugalde: Actually Tyler I think in our friend group you tend to learn slower, but, you know, it's true but you're
00:25:45.060
Jordan Ugalde: I think, also the most diligent of all of us, and I think one of the consequences is you're better able to explain a lot of the things you learned
00:25:54.210
Jordan Ugalde: than, most of the rest of us because, because you've stewed so long in what you're learning that you have such a grounded fundamental understanding that makes it easy for you to like, teach others, and I think that's like, very much a skill and talent.
00:26:08.310
Sean Bjerke: That's mighty praise bro, that's mighty praise. That's, that's what's up.
00:26:12.720
Tyler T Hamer: Well, I mean it also helps, though, like, being surrounded by like, the
00:26:16.050
Tyler T Hamer: right people, right like, so like
00:26:17.910
Tyler T Hamer: being surrounded by Sean.
00:26:20.520
Sean Bjerke: I'm surrounding you.
00:26:23.370
Tyler T Hamer: Last week, you know, like, we interviewed Jared on bartending and like, having taken bartending classes for six years, like, I guess,
00:26:31.500
Tyler T Hamer: you know, and like Sean was saying, the people who stick with the longest, they're in it for the, or they're learning slowly but they're in it for the long haul and I guess
00:26:39.540
Tyler T Hamer: it's kind of like, a feedback loop right? You get lucky. You're you're learning slower, but then since you're dedicated you are more likely to come out appreciating it more at the end.
00:26:48.750
Tyler T Hamer: And I guess if I just then try to take that and I, you know, try to show people, you know? And
00:26:55.770
Tyler T Hamer: I mean like, literally right now I'm like, repping Sean's merchandise so like, I'm on every single like, dance class I'm like, oh keep coming to Sean's class you'll get like, so much out of it it's a great time.
00:27:06.480
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:27:08.070
Sean Bjerke: Did you guys, do, you know, the TV show The Walking Dead, like, I think sometimes when we talk about uh what is it just like, like, the life timeline.
00:27:23.070
Sean Bjerke: Kind of, I have this tendency to kind of equate it to video games where it's like, you know, you level up and video games are nice because they literally, like, most of them
00:27:34.800
Sean Bjerke: give things to you in a certain order where it's like, okay, this is the next test. Okay now you're ready for this next test.
00:27:42.840
Sean Bjerke: It doesn't really go out of order, too often. Maybe there's some games now that do that. But generally it's this, it's like, this and in life
00:27:52.020
Sean Bjerke: I think sometimes you'll meet people on your path that sometimes, like, you, you meet them and it's like, it feels like, okay, this is the person that I need right now to take me to that next step.
00:28:05.670
Sean Bjerke: But sometimes you meet people that, maybe they're not quite what you need at that moment but they're valuable and you don't realize it.
00:28:15.120
Sean Bjerke: But it's not to say that you can meet someone like, way far out and say like, okay this,
00:28:22.020
Sean Bjerke: this person is above everyone else because I'm meeting them later. It might just be you met them at the right time and the stuff that they say, or they teach, or they give is like, what you need in that moment.
00:28:33.390
Sean Bjerke: And I think dance is a great thing because you, it's, it opens up the door to connect with so many different types of people, especially like, through social dances.
00:28:42.780
Sean Bjerke: Like Tyler can talk about his experience with going to the club and just, you know, people that, whether he knows it or not, like, people that have been in the club scene for a while they'll see him and they're like, who's this guy with like, this amazing energy that he just
00:28:59.100
Sean Bjerke: is getting down he
00:29:01.170
Sean Bjerke: doesn't care about like, anything in a good way. He looks like, he's just getting down. He's, he doesn't look self conscious, he doesn't like, look timid, he's just here to live.
00:29:13.470
Sean Bjerke: And, you know, like, based on like, those experiences sometimes you do things when you're ready at the right time and sometimes things are presented to you when you're not ready for them but uh, yeah man, I totally agree with with what you were saying on that.
00:29:30.360
Jordan Ugalde: So on the topic of community and how important it is meeting the right people at the right time, which is part skill, part luck, part just persistence.
00:29:43.110
Jordan Ugalde: With both dance and Taekwondo, what were the communities like, for you to help you keep with it and get to where you are now?
00:29:51.840
Sean Bjerke: I'll just, I'll start with Taekwondo so the the school that I'm at now that the Jay Kim school.
00:29:59.520
Sean Bjerke: I went there in 2002 because one of the students I trained with at Tufts recommended it, she said oh, if you want, like, I think I was coming up to the end of my
00:30:09.900
Sean Bjerke: sophomore, sophomore year and I was going to be living up in Cambridge for the summer and I was, like, all right, I want to, I want to have like, something to do, and she said, you should, you know, train at the school because the the instructor there is like, the best.
00:30:26.340
Sean Bjerke: You know, like, old Seinfeld the best Jerry the best.
00:30:31.050
Sean Bjerke: And he was, you know, he's a former his name is Jay Huang he's a former like, literal world champion fighter for his weight class at the time, like, in the early early 90s.
00:30:43.530
Sean Bjerke: You know, studied Taekwondo in Korea. And like, I walked into the the school and it was it's kind of like, two things are happening. One I, right away like, I totally verified what my friend said is like, this guy's the best like.
00:30:58.860
Tyler T Hamer: That's awesome.
00:30:59.430
Sean Bjerke: He just had this, he had this aura that he was the top and, but he was nice. Like, he was a good guy, he's very he's actually very like, shy, and like, in like, a kind of a funny way, because he's such a badass right? He's like, a badass, but he's just shy quiet. But in class, he was like,
00:31:20.160
Sean Bjerke: you know, he gave it to you. So like, as like, building that teacher student relationship was really important for me like, and it, but it wasn't something that I realized until I
00:31:31.350
Sean Bjerke: saw it happening. I was like, man, we have like, a really good rapport and he's really keeping me grounded. I thought I knew a lot and I got to the school and I like, right away, I was like,
00:31:42.360
Sean Bjerke: man I don't really know a lot, I thought I did, but it opened up my eyes, like, man there's so much more. Like, it's the iceberg right? Like, I saw this, but then there's like, all of this underneath.
00:31:55.530
Tyler T Hamer: Right yeah.
00:31:57.240
Sean Bjerke: So we had that and then also just the students that train, there were like, on the whole very just cool people to be around, you know? Like, I walked in and I didn't, I never felt like, oh man I hate these people like,
00:32:13.320
Sean Bjerke: you know? It was like, there were, you know, students that were more advanced and like, very, you know, they are very skilled, but there were also very grounded as people like, they were just cool to talk to.
00:32:24.030
Sean Bjerke: There were people that weren't as experienced but they, they really respected the people that were above them so they really, you know, they would come over and ask questions they pay respect.
00:32:34.050
Sean Bjerke: And then you had, you know, other other types people too, but everyone was there to like, to train and
00:32:39.900
Sean Bjerke: get better and also be a, you know, community like, when we go out to lunch, sometimes we go get ice cream after dance class you have stuff like that happened. You have people that make plans on the weekends and it felt like, a very,
00:32:53.190
Sean Bjerke: just, positive space to be a part of and that's probably a big part of why I've been training there for about 20 years now.
00:33:02.430
Sean Bjerke: And then, and then as a teacher trying to like, reciprocate that and like, create a good environment just, not just for the adults but we teach kids too.
00:33:12.810
Sean Bjerke: And kids are challenging because you're sort of like, shaping how they do everything like, mentally and physically so yet there's a lot of trust building.
00:33:23.280
Sean Bjerke: You know you have to like, with adults, adults usually come in and they're just like, they'll take it or leave it, no matter what, at least for a little bit, and then they decide if they want to do it, but kids like, right away, you got to kind of figure out how to emotionally connect.
00:33:38.820
Sean Bjerke: Because they're all very different right?
00:33:43.230
Sean Bjerke: Go ahead sorry.
00:33:43.980
Tyler T Hamer: I was gonna say it's like, the speech your teacher gave back when you're like, eight years old, like, he, right, he was trying to teach you like, this is a, since you're so impressionable, this is the mindset that you're going to need to follow through with this.
00:33:55.050
Sean Bjerke: Yeah for real, and and even then like, this, like, all the students were different, but when he gave that speech everyone was like,
00:34:04.140
Sean Bjerke: listening but yeah.
00:34:07.470
Sean Bjerke: So I think about things like that, and when I talked to the kids it's like, some like, today, for example. We have a lot of new students like, right now, like, a lot of new kids who are young, and I think part of it is like, they're adults or, ha they're adults, their parents
00:34:23.220
Sean Bjerke: want,
00:34:24.840
Sean Bjerke: they, they're like, hey we want you to do something, it's a new activity. But at the same time, they look at martial arts and they're like, yo this is going to kind of help snap some of you into shape.
00:34:35.190
Sean Bjerke: And, like, some of them are, you know, they're a little emotionally like, needy I'll say, you know, like, when they're tired they're like, I don't want to do it anymore, you know, like.
00:34:45.450
Sean Bjerke: And I expect it, but at the same time, like, I'm not going to be dishonest with them, I'm like, you know, this is the Taekwondo school like, it's not,
00:34:55.140
Sean Bjerke: it's not the playground, it's not your bedroom, it's like, you come here to get better at this, this martial art and I have to teach like, there's 20 of you,
00:35:04.200
Sean Bjerke: one of me. I have to teach all of you, so like, if one of you is kind of slowing us down with kind of like, a, you know, a, not a great attitude everyone else loses because of that.
00:35:18.570
Tyler T Hamer: Right yeah.
00:35:19.470
Sean Bjerke: Yeah it's like, like, just having those talks with them in a very like, honest way just say what needs to be said.
00:35:26.010
Sean Bjerke: And sometimes they're not, you know, they're like, well screw that, you know, I'm still going to be kind of obnoxious today and I was, like, all right well over time, you know, we'll see,
00:35:33.780
Sean Bjerke: we'll see what happens. You know, we'll see if this is for you or maybe it's not for you, but I'd say more times than not as long as you're honest with kids they like, eventually start to recognize like, huh,
00:35:44.670
Sean Bjerke: it's not all about me it's like, you know, like, they you learn good life lessons from that that help you as you become older. So yeah that's, that's the Taekwondo part of the question, but I'll let you guys if you don't know if you want to.
00:35:57.000
Tyler T Hamer: Oh I was gonna say, yeah I mean just having, you know, some days when I go to your dance class like, I'm not feeling it but like, just to keep up with it, I go and I just know on those days I'm like,
00:36:08.940
Tyler T Hamer: yeah, I'll just like, kind of focus on like, I won't push myself as hard, but I'm not going to ever try to slow down the rest of the class. Especially,
00:36:15.750
Tyler T Hamer: right, you know, and especially, in always, even if I'm not feeling it at least try to put on a good face for, especially on the Thursday class the beginners like, you know, everyone's really pumped and excited.
00:36:27.600
Sean Bjerke: Yeah dude, that's I mean you have just good intrinsic values that help you be a good community member, you know?
00:36:35.640
Sean Bjerke: So, like, with dance it's like, it's the same it's, you know, dance, especially because it's more of a social activity.
00:36:42.960
Sean Bjerke: Like the idea of training martial arts can be social in the sense that you, it's almost like, a team sport it's like, man, we all have to do this exercise and
00:36:52.200
Sean Bjerke: I just, I want to keep up, but with dance it can literally be social it's like, you do it to like, spend time with people and exchange with them and
00:36:59.910
Sean Bjerke: sometimes it leads to more beyond the dance like, you develop relationships with people that you want to see and
00:37:06.870
Sean Bjerke: the fact that, you know, like, you, kind of see like, how I say it sometimes I'm like, everyone brings a certain energy into a classroom or into any space, that whether they accept this or not, or whether they realize it that energy rubs off on people.
00:37:24.600
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
00:37:25.080
Sean Bjerke: So, if you come into a space and you're, you're, you know, maybe like, a model citizen, but your facial expression is like,
00:37:34.920
Sean Bjerke: you just look sour it's like, the people around you're going to be like,
00:37:39.720
Sean Bjerke: you know a little on edge, you know, little things like, that. And then behaviourally when people have like,
00:37:46.530
Sean Bjerke: I don't want to say poor behavior but, you know, what I mean like, sometimes people will like, do things or say things that just make people feel a little like blue, like, that person is going through something right now.
00:37:57.900
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah just.
00:37:59.040
Sean Bjerke: You know it's like, like,
00:38:01.620
Sean Bjerke: adults sometimes they, they, they, they've had certain experience, where they get to a certain age and they're like, well I've earned my right to kind of like, say what I feel.
00:38:12.690
Sean Bjerke: You know kids do that, but then they're told right away, though it's like, yo like, know your role.
00:38:19.980
Sean Bjerke: But with adults, sometimes adults like, don't like, to be checked like, that.
00:38:24.180
Sean Bjerke: So I just, you know, I try to I try to lead by example it's like, I come in, I have my my agenda, I make my agenda clear and then I try to adapt to people who are trying to understand my agenda.
00:38:38.790
Sean Bjerke: And I don't bring my outside stuff in, you know? If I, if I missed a like, a credit card payment or no let's say,
00:38:47.760
Sean Bjerke: my credit card bill came, it was really expensive and I'm like, God how am I gonna pay that? I'm not gonna bring that energy into class, because no one else cares like, no one else needs to know about it.
00:38:57.810
Sean Bjerke: But people will bring stuff with them like, relationship stuff, work stuff like, you said Tyler, and it's nothing against like, you're you're like, sometimes I'm just not feeling it.
00:39:07.140
Sean Bjerke: You know I'm just like, I'm going and, but the fact that you can navigate the space and not make it about you.
00:39:14.190
Sean Bjerke: You know, like, if, if I, if we're in class and I'm doing something I see you're kind of like, you know, doing your thing I'm like, hey Tyler like, try it this way.
00:39:22.620
Sean Bjerke: You could choose to be like, you know, Sean I don't have the energy today all right so just leave me alone. Like, the fact that you could probably take that and be like, okay,
00:39:33.240
Sean Bjerke: you know, and then you, you do what you need to do with it, without making a scene that's really valuable as like, a like, for me as a teacher like, to have a student like, you'd be able to do that. Not everyone does that.
00:39:45.120
Sean Bjerke: So I just try through, you know, consistency it's like, trying to create a nice space where people feel like, they can come in, they can learn something it's okay to mess up.
00:39:57.060
Sean Bjerke: And there's all, there's something beyond the class to it's like, there's other stuff you can do with this beyond just this if you want to pursue it. If you want to just take class,
00:40:06.960
Sean Bjerke: that's cool I'm not going to I'm not going to like, force you to do anything you don't want to, but I think as a team, especially with us, you know,
00:40:14.640
Sean Bjerke: street club dances like this, it's important to know, like, the classroom is, it is not where this stuff was born. It was born in very, very different space.
00:40:25.110
Sean Bjerke: Very different lifestyles we're doing it in ways that are very different than we're learning it.
00:40:31.380
Sean Bjerke: But if this is how you start to learn, great. If you enjoy it, great! Just know there's something beyond it, that is also worth pursuing if you want to learn more about it. It's a culture, you know, that every culture has its things where you're like, egh.
00:40:49.500
Sean Bjerke: But if you want to, if you want to learn about it, like, you got, you gotta, you got to do it if you want to be about it.
00:40:55.590
Sean Bjerke: So, and for some people like, that's the it's the club. It's like, for you Tyler, like, you're like, yo I want to go to the club that looks, that's, that's fun.
00:41:04.320
Sean Bjerke: But some people are really like, oh man I don't want to run into people that are, that I don't know, or maybe they're going to say something, or maybe I don't like the music, they get in their head about it, you know? Like, all these, all these preconceived things like, ugh.
00:41:19.290
Sean Bjerke: But if you just kind of go in with an open mind, and, you know, as long as you feel safe, you know,
00:41:25.140
Sean Bjerke: you're going to get a lot out of it.
00:41:27.720
Tyler T Hamer: Well I think that's also a credit to you as a teacher, though, because I remember the first, I remember originally like, right, Mike and I,
00:41:35.460
Tyler T Hamer: for context Mike's another student of Sean's, the dance studio, Mike and I,
00:41:41.910
Tyler T Hamer: you know, when you first started talking about the club events, Mike and I originally like, well I'll go if you go right? It's the fact that we had
00:41:48.270
Tyler T Hamer: this healthy community that maybe take that jump from going to, from just out of class into the club scene, so I think it's honestly that's really a credit to the culture that you've,
00:41:59.490
Tyler T Hamer: that you've created in your classes and stuff like that. Because I, I could easily see it like, if I were in a lot of other dance classes, I don't know if I would have taken the leap to going to like, the club and exploring that avenue, because it is really intimidating.
00:42:14.250
Sean Bjerke: Huh.
00:42:15.690
Sean Bjerke: Yeah to like, show up and then like, try to get down in front of people you don't know,
00:42:19.950
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
00:42:20.730
Sean Bjerke: that's very vulnerable, it's a vulnerable space.
00:42:23.880
Sean Bjerke: Some people are really good at letting themselves be vulnerable, that they can walk in and just do whatever and they don't think two things about it, but a lot of us, you know, especially
00:42:35.730
Sean Bjerke: the, the,
00:42:37.710
Sean Bjerke: the region that we live in in Cambridge, you guys being from MIT, you're used to being under like, pressure like, lots of
00:42:46.440
Sean Bjerke: pressure.
00:42:48.750
Sean Bjerke: Like a lot of consequences if you don't live up to the pressure, you know? If you, if you let the pressure, you know, do this to you like, literally,
00:42:58.410
Sean Bjerke: like there's consequences to that. And I think through experience like, that it's easy to take that mindset to things like, dance and be like, oh God like, if I make any mistake I'm going to get
00:43:11.970
Sean Bjerke: squished right? But that's that's my big thing with dances like, I wanted, I think I used to feel like that with a lot of things and then, when I met the right people,
00:43:24.000
Sean Bjerke: I,
00:43:25.530
Sean Bjerke: I saw how many different sides to it there were and how many different ways there were to approach it. It's like, it's not a one size fits all it's, you know, there's many different
00:43:35.010
Sean Bjerke: things that you can get from this and if you don't get it this one way,
00:43:39.480
Sean Bjerke: you know, there's there's other ways that you can you can enjoy it. And sometimes that's a class thing, it's like, people can come to my class and I don't think my teaching style is for everybody, you know, there's people that come in and they're probably like,
00:43:52.260
Sean Bjerke: I want something different, you know? Like, I don't want to just do like, foundation, I want something different. Cool! So sometimes like, just taking my class might be like, I want something else, you know, and it helps people, you know, going in another direction.
00:44:07.440
Sean Bjerke: And then, some people come in and they think it's like, the opposite they're like, man, I was expecting to be like, terrified
00:44:14.400
Sean Bjerke: of this class, because it was so new, I didn't know anything about house, I didn't know these people, and then they come out and they're like, but I feel like, rejuvenated, because it's such a, like a positive atmosphere at least I try to create it like that.
00:44:29.910
Sean Bjerke: But yeah everyone has different experiences I have to be, you know, aware of that and not like, try to force it, but the people that, that have been on the journey with me they they seem to really have gotten a lot out of it, so I appreciate the kind words.
00:44:44.760
Jordan Ugalde: So to elaborate on this a bit more you teach specifically house dance, you've been doing, specifically like, edm house dance. There's a lot of types of dances like, ballroom dance, tap dance, B boying, what led you to take this specific dance route that you've taken?
00:45:05.820
Sean Bjerke: Huh that's a really good question, so I, like, when I started dancing I didn't really have any like, particular focus, I was just learning choreographed routines that
00:45:17.250
Sean Bjerke: might have been like, inspired by certain styles, but ultimately, I was, I was like, yo if this group is dancing to this music that I like, I'm gonna I want to learn what the dance is.
00:45:28.740
Sean Bjerke: Excuse me, and then, when I graduated I, I met my first, I guess like, dance mentor. His name was Ricardo Foster jr. And he still lives in this area, he teaches over at the
00:45:42.480
Sean Bjerke: Funk Phenomenon Dance Complex in Everett. And he, he was actually somewhat, and still is like, a like a dance prodigy like, he could learn all of it.
00:45:55.080
Sean Bjerke: And he had really good teachers, hard teachers that like, you know, made him really
00:46:00.150
Sean Bjerke: be honest about like, what it was like, yo you want to be good you gotta like, you got to go in. So he learned so much and he had a really strong street dance background like, hip hop, he knew how to, he can pop, he does house, locking.
00:46:15.540
Sean Bjerke: He was actually a very big kind of figure in the crump community when crump was starting to become more popular around here in the early to mid 2000s.
00:46:25.530
Sean Bjerke: Now it's very, actually there's a lot of different crump communities, but he was like, a jack of all trades as it came to dance.
00:46:33.480
Sean Bjerke: He was classically trained too, he could do ballet and all this stuff. So he was the first person to show me house and when I started learning it, like, again, these are just kind of like, what we learned Tyler, just, we learn it as the steps.
00:46:47.430
Tyler T Hamer: Right yeah.
00:46:48.750
Sean Bjerke: But he like, puts some like, routines together for us and the music was what really was like, hyghh.
00:46:56.310
Sean Bjerke: Like when I heard like, deep house music like, like, New York house music, for the first time, I'm like, what the bleep is this? And it's,
00:47:06.630
Sean Bjerke: that it's not everyone's going to have that response to it, but for me that was my response I was like, this music is great. I was actually not a big music person growing up.
00:47:19.290
Sean Bjerke: And I felt weird about it, because everyone in middle school and high school,
00:47:23.820
Sean Bjerke: like, was always talking about like, what bands they liked what rappers they liked whatever, and I never really had anything to like, contribute to that conversation.
00:47:33.030
Sean Bjerke: But it wasn't to say that I didn't listen to music I just didn't, I wasn't like, invested in it, you know? Like, I would hear something and I'm like, this is cool.
00:47:41.970
Sean Bjerke: I like, this. But when I started hearing house music, I feel like, that kind of like, changed, and I was, I wanted to really explore that space.
00:47:55.080
Sean Bjerke: And what helped me, what helped me, really get into the, I guess the culture of house, outside of just learning the dance which Ricardo was my first teacher.
00:48:06.000
Sean Bjerke: There wasn't anyone teaching house in like, a studio. This is just an our dance company that we worked in, it was just a little bit.
00:48:13.050
Sean Bjerke: I had to let go on YouTube and, basically, I was like, I want to learn more like, house dance tutorials.
00:48:19.260
Sean Bjerke: You find some things, and, you know, that's a whole nother rabbit hole I could get into but basically you find some things, I started to teach myself what I what I learned.
00:48:28.710
Sean Bjerke: But I didn't start to really like, dance dance until I met a couple guys in Boston, their names are Sammy SavSoul and Steve Garcia, who invited me to like, yo, you should, you should, you know some stuff, you should come to the club and dance with us. And I was like,
00:48:47.280
Sean Bjerke: a little apprehensive because they, they, if you saw these guys get down like, they know what they're doing and they they look good at whatever they're doing.
00:48:55.650
Sean Bjerke: So when I started going to dance with them, with their experience at first, I was like, shit, I don't know, it was like, the Taekwondo thing like, I don't know anything I thought I knew stuff but I don't know I don't know what they're doing.
00:49:09.780
Sean Bjerke: And
00:49:10.230
Sean Bjerke: I spent more time around them and I started to like, you know, change my mindset about how to approach the dance and like, what was actually important about it and
00:49:20.670
Sean Bjerke: the kind of going like, just going back a step, I, you know, apart from the music, the movement of house felt like a
00:49:30.840
Sean Bjerke: a smoother version of my Taekwondo. Like, it was movements that I was like, I can do this move, and it feels really good, and I don't have to get hit by somebody to like do it.
00:49:48.510
Sean Bjerke: Though, you know, I, the movement felt very like, almost like, second nature in a way, but at the same time, I still I had to work on the qualities that made it smooth and that made it effortless. I couldn't go into it like, bah bah bah.
00:50:05.100
Sean Bjerke: You know I can use that to inspire my dance which I'm kind of that's kind of the journey I'm on right now is actually putting my Taekwondo inside of my, my house which is kinda like, my own thing.
00:50:16.380
Sean Bjerke: But then I was just, I was doing literally the steps, I was shown and, but they felt good.
00:50:22.560
Sean Bjerke: So the moment felt good, the music felt good, and when I started going to the clubs, the vibe felt really good I was like, oh like,
00:50:29.940
Sean Bjerke: I see these same people every time I come out, I don't necessarily know who they are but I can like, get down with them and they're cool. So seeing the power that it had to,
00:50:39.330
Sean Bjerke: to bring people together, house, I would say, out of like, a lot of the, you know, the club styles of dance the street styles of dance is more of a communal
00:50:48.120
Sean Bjerke: type energy. Like, people don't really go into the club space to like, battle each other. You might get people that are like, you know, they, they're high level, and they want to just kind of like, throw down, just to be like, all right, let's do it.
00:51:00.120
Tyler T Hamer: Sure, yeah.
00:51:01.950
Sean Bjerke: You know, but it's more of an exchange. It's like, all right, like, I'm going to give my best, let me, let me see what you got.
00:51:07.530
Sean Bjerke: But it doesn't, you don't come out of it feeling like, somebody won or somebody was better it's just, you know, they experienced the music in that moment, and they got to put on a show.
00:51:19.470
Sean Bjerke: So I think I liked that it wasn't a very, it's a dance you could be competitive in if you want it to be, but you don't have to be to like, enjoy it.
00:51:29.760
Sean Bjerke: So yeah all those things.
HERE 51:55
00:51:32.250
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fair, I remember, before I found your class I thought I was going to do, like, hip hop and it was just so it was always choreographed, very rigid and then
00:51:41.790
Tyler T Hamer: when I went ended up going to your class, it was very much like, okay yeah I'm going to teach you a certain set of moves, and this is the language we talk with, but now you're,
00:51:49.830
Tyler T Hamer: you're free to express yourself with that language, you're not, you're, and then share ideas with it because, like, you were saying,
00:51:56.640
Tyler T Hamer: you know you're not necessarily going down going to battle each other I'm going to show you something and then maybe you'll sync up with me or will, you know, do a bunch of the same moves together.
00:52:05.100
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah I think there's a lot of in what what type of dance you choose to pursue says a lot about you. Like, if you commit to it there's a lot that that style says. Because for me, I actually really enjoyed doing ballroom dance and tap dance which both of those have.
00:52:23.790
Sean Bjerke: You tap?
00:52:24.360
Jordan Ugalde: I tap yeah I tap.
00:52:26.820
Jordan Ugalde: It's been a while it's been a while.
00:52:28.530
Jordan Ugalde: But I started in high school and I did it in college as well.
00:52:33.390
Jordan Ugalde: But yeah like, tap dance there is some freedom, but you are very strictly on the rhythm, you are, you are the drum.
00:52:41.730
Sean Bjerke: You make your rhythm.
00:52:43.260
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah, yeah you make the rhythm.
00:52:45.270
Sean Bjerke: That's sick.
00:52:47.040
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah.
00:52:47.850
Sean Bjerke: Tap is.
00:52:49.920
Sean Bjerke: Yeah.
00:52:51.270
Jordan Ugalde: It's fun, I think it's under appreciated, it's, some of the moves are really hard.
00:52:59.940
Jordan Ugalde: But also some of the greats have been heavily influenced by tap like, the Michael Jackson's moonwalk is influenced by a tap dance step. I forgot the name of it, but like, there, is, it's a, it's not a pullback.
00:53:16.770
Sean Bjerke: I know what you mean.
00:53:17.250
Jordan Ugalde: Exactly he.
00:53:18.750
Sean Bjerke: Cuz someone has talked about that.
00:53:20.550
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah but yeah, like, you saying you you like the freedom of house
00:53:28.770
Jordan Ugalde: is, I think that says a lot about who you are, as a person.
00:53:33.960
Sean Bjerke: Yeah and honestly I think it's like, even like, you know, my perspective is evolved and changed a little bit over time, too, because initially when I was presented with it
00:53:45.330
Sean Bjerke: it was actually structured. It was like, you know, the movements went together in a way that made sense and I liked the flow of it, and then, when I started to be more free I was like, oh man it's like, the iceberg again like.
00:54:01.950
Sean Bjerke: I was presented with this, but then, when I saw what you could do, it was like, holy cow there's no limit. There's actually no limit. Like, the fact that I'm trying to put, you know, my martial arts experience in it now that's like, a different iceberg.
00:54:16.500
Sean Bjerke: Right? Next to my, oh man I got to explore that one, and I just wanted to touch on something that Tyler said, where Tyler, you said uh, you know, you wanted to try hip hop and I guess like, maybe the class you took just didn't know it didn't work out like.
00:54:30.390
Sean Bjerke: Depending on the teacher, I think the teacher actually makes a big difference with whatever you're studying, which is why, like, my Taekwondo school,
00:54:39.510
Sean Bjerke: if the teacher relationship wasn't as good as it was I might not have stayed there. But the fact that it was I was like, oh shoot I recognize it right away I'm like, I can learn a lot from this guy.
00:54:51.480
Sean Bjerke: And I think that's something that's helped me over time is like, I can identify the right people to, you know, learn from the right people to be around, and I can sense when it's not right.
00:55:06.030
Sean Bjerke: Like pretty quick, you know, like, you can walk into a space you're like, it's like, the record scratch like, errrrr.
00:55:15.030
Sean Bjerke: But like, if you if it feels right in that moment instincts are it's probably right. Then maybe over time, who knows, maybe it changes, a little bit, but like, in the moment I think if you can identify the right energy for you that's really, really critical skill that can help a lot.
00:55:34.320
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah actually directly on those lines, I think that it's very much a learned skill to be able to identify who to learn from because that is not always easy.
00:55:48.330
Jordan Ugalde: And we all develop our own heuristics to try and best guess who would be best for us to learn from so I'm just curious with what you're doing,
00:56:01.650
Jordan Ugalde: what, what kind of things you look at to try and identify
00:56:06.120
Jordan Ugalde: who is someone good to learn from.
00:56:09.150
Sean Bjerke: That's a, that's actually an excellent question and I think what helps me determine that is the fact that I've had a lot of good teachers from when I was young.
00:56:21.990
Sean Bjerke: So that way, I could formulate like, I don't like, I don't know if I could like, write out like, bullet points like, exactly what it is, but like, in the moment, having had
00:56:32.850
Sean Bjerke: you know, good mentors good relationships with teachers from when I was very young, to now, I would say, with as far as like, dance goes the closer somebody is to like,
00:56:45.750
Sean Bjerke: I don't want to say, like, the center but kind of like, the the source material like, house is a club a freestyle club dance.
00:56:54.150
Sean Bjerke: So the people that spent a lot of time in that atmosphere, when it was like, coming up when it was like, becoming a thing and then those people that started to create methods for teaching it effectively. Some people create methods that aren't effective some people do.
00:57:12.450
Sean Bjerke: Those people that created effective teaching methods, over time, they kept the essence from where they came from.
00:57:20.820
Sean Bjerke: Added their own methods into like, structure it and communicated the importance of both of those things to their students. So if you don't know really what,
00:57:33.120
Sean Bjerke: if you don't have much experience with learning something like, dance or like, just movement, mobility in general you're gonna probably go with the first person that you find that
00:57:45.840
Sean Bjerke: their personality is a good fit, you know? That's like, oh this person's nice I like their teaching style cool I'll learn it.
00:57:52.350
Sean Bjerke: But I think over time you start to you see the the quality. Quality in a teacher. Like, you, if if you go to a class and, like, the teacher, you know, looks amazing and the students look like, boo boo chowder.
00:58:11.430
Sean Bjerke: That's nothing, nothing against like, beginners like, beginners are obviously going to be very far distance from the teacher, but if the beginners look like, they have an idea of what they're following.
00:58:22.230
Sean Bjerke: What, if their quality is not as good, then it's like, oh okay this teacher knows how to communicate, right? So communication is key good communication.
00:58:32.520
Sean Bjerke: The quality like, you look at, you know, kind of like, the gradient of students like, oh, those are the advanced students, they look sharp, the beginner students, they might not look sharp but they, they're, they're into it right? They know what they're doing.
00:58:47.160
Sean Bjerke: So, like, you look at the quality of the students too over time and then, as far as like, the teaching
00:58:55.170
Sean Bjerke: curriculum, or like, what they teach, I guess that's just yeah. That's another reason why you want to kind of invest time into stuff like, this, as if you get
00:59:06.930
Sean Bjerke: it right away, it feels good, but then you feel like, oh it's just I'm not really like, I don't see where I can evolve.
00:59:13.260
Sean Bjerke: Teachers that teachers that give you the next steps to evolve, not necessarily like, they're going too fast, like, oh, we have to go here, here, here but it's like, okay we're doing this today,
00:59:25.920
Sean Bjerke: but this is going to lead to this up here.
00:59:30.240
Tyler T Hamer: Right yeah.
00:59:31.260
Sean Bjerke: Those bridges, and you're like, oh shoot that's what like, pulls you into want to learn more from them right? If it's like, you, they give you this and it looks like, this is it, it's like,
00:59:43.710
Sean Bjerke: I don't know if I'm going to go anywhere with this long term. But, you know, sometimes that's good, sometimes like, you realize you, you get to a certain point where you've, you've, you've gotten what you need.
00:59:56.310
Sean Bjerke: And then it's like, okay now I'm going to find someone else that maybe it can,
01:00:00.000
Sean Bjerke: take it to that next level. When you start you don't necessarily know what goals you have like, I always hated it when people in, when I was in college they're like, yo what are you gonna do, you know, when you graduate and I'm like, fuck if I know like.
01:00:14.130
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
01:00:15.660
Sean Bjerke: You know, and my mom was always like, not to not to rag on my mom, but when I, y'know my wife now like, when we were dating my moms like, when you gonna marry, when you gonna marry her, when you gonna marry her, and I'm like,
01:00:27.210
Sean Bjerke: I'm gonna marry her just when I feel right. Like,
01:00:31.440
Sean Bjerke: you know, sometimes you just don't know, but I think with the experience you start to develop what you need from a teacher. So it's like, the things that I look for might not be like, what you look for but
01:00:44.700
Sean Bjerke: I know what's good for me and that helps me learn the best I can.
01:00:50.310
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fair like, I think there's like, a definitely really big importance there, and like, identifying what you need to personally learn because, like, I think one of the,
01:00:57.510
Tyler T Hamer: personally, one of the things I've adopted as for my engineering background is I like, to go back to first, it's called first principles, but basically the
01:01:06.300
Tyler T Hamer: building blocks when I'm learning something new, and the reason I stuck with your class Sean was I remember it was exploration week at the dance complex and
01:01:15.720
Tyler T Hamer: that's why I went to the hip hop class and
01:01:17.640
Tyler T Hamer: Carl's party dance class, but in your class, since it was the
01:01:20.970
Tyler T Hamer: exploration week you're like, we're going to clap and we're going to make sure everyone understands what like, the beat is before even started moving our feet and I was like, okay now I can actually.
01:01:31.230
Tyler T Hamer: And like, you also taught us like, how to count, I remember like, you're like, all right here is in this set amount of time we can break into 4ths, 8ths.
01:01:38.250
Tyler T Hamer: And and you're like, and after this if you want, you can listen to music and try to count out different beats and that kind of gave me a foundation, where I can be like, okay,
01:01:46.410
Tyler T Hamer: I can actually start building from this versus like, you know. I do like, trial by fire, but only once, I like, have some background. I just can't go from like, zero into trial by fire.
01:01:58.410
Sean Bjerke: If it was right off the bat you'd be like, eeeeeee.
01:02:01.260
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
01:02:03.270
Sean Bjerke: Can I saw my charger really quick? I don't want my laptop to crap out.
01:02:06.600
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah go ahead, go ahead.
01:02:09.120
Jordan Ugalde: So while while he's away,
01:02:15.690
Jordan Ugalde: it's all good, so along these lines, my mom's a teacher and I think she's a pretty great teacher. One of the big things that I learned from her is
01:02:28.740
Jordan Ugalde: how difficult it is, like, she's she was a teacher for most grades throughout grade school and one things I learned from her is just how difficult it is to customize learning
01:02:40.800
Jordan Ugalde: to all the different types of kids. Kike, there are so many different kids who learn in such different ways that trying to be a good teacher to everyone, without doing some customization to the kids is just, you're not, you don't have a bad time. Like, the the more individual,
01:03:03.510
Jordan Ugalde: like either you take the approach of your teacher with this is my style and it's up to you the student
01:03:11.010
Jordan Ugalde: to make sure you find someone who has a good style or, you may, it's up to the student to find a teacher who has the right style for them. Or in in public school you don't really have that choice so
01:03:22.740
Jordan Ugalde: it's on the teacher, to make sure that they customize teaching to the different needs of the students and that's hard. Like, teaching takes a lot of still and it is, it can be a challenge.
01:03:35.070
Tyler T Hamer: And I mean
01:03:37.050
Tyler T Hamer: one thing I think, having been your teacher or your your student for so long Sean has been like, actually watching you change and
01:03:46.050
Tyler T Hamer: especially in the beginner class of the approach you've taken like, over time, like, I definitely remember when like, when I first went it was
01:03:55.560
Tyler T Hamer: way, it was more focused on the steps, and now like, a lot of the beginner classes, you'll you'll have a star in a circle and focus on the energy and getting everyone into that good headspace even before we try to, so people are willing to tackle what you're about to give them.
01:04:10.800
Sean Bjerke: Yeah that's the, and I mentioned earlier, how like, you know, my mindset is always continuously kind of changing
01:04:17.970
Sean Bjerke: and, you know, that came from like, discussions with some of my mentors and, you know, big brothers big sisters about
01:04:25.560
Sean Bjerke: you know, what's important about the dance is the is the vibe, you know, is the energy like, it, you can have all these steps, but if you're just in a room of people that are like, boop boop boop like, that, like, the energy is just kind of like,
01:04:40.290
Sean Bjerke: like non existent it's like, why are we even doing this? Like, why are we, why are we, like, forcing ourselves to like, learn all these things that, excuse me, if we don't really feel good doing it.
01:04:52.770
Sean Bjerke: So yeah like, putting people in a circle and just like, sometimes like, you have to do that with adults is like, all right we're gonna clap, BAP, you know, like, and it's like, everyone can clap and, you know, probably some people off the bat are like ehhhhhhhh.
01:05:09.270
Sean Bjerke: But like, if they see other people like, enjoying themselves it's like, osmosis sometimes you need to be around people
01:05:16.830
Sean Bjerke: doing, I think that's what the best thing about like, class versus when people learn, you know, from online sources like, online sources are good, because
01:05:26.160
Sean Bjerke: you have the flexibility to learn, when you like, but being around people and, just like, seeing how other people respond sometimes rubs off on you in a good way where, you know, you have one person that's like, ughhh.
01:05:41.460
Sean Bjerke: Just clapping and the person next to them is like
01:05:44.460
Sean Bjerke: BAP BAP BAP.
01:05:46.200
Sean Bjerke: They're making faces and then this person's like, ohhhhh.
01:05:49.890
Sean Bjerke: Okay, I can have a little more fun with it cool. So it takes the idea way of this being kind of like, a kid exercise and it's like, all right I'm gonna, this is productive for me is actually a good thing.
01:06:01.380
Sean Bjerke: So yeah building the energy, building the vibe is is like, number one and then, once people have that enthusiasm like,
01:06:08.550
Sean Bjerke: yo let's go let's like, what's next, like, all right here's some steps let's, you know, let's use them. Let's, and, and I actually got an email from a dude last week, who he was taking the class, for the first time,
01:06:19.170
Sean Bjerke: he's like, yeah the first, but our the class I was like, a blast and he's like, then, I felt like, I got lost when we're doing like, the steps and I'm like,
01:06:27.660
Sean Bjerke: yeah man, this is your, A your first dance class, B it's like, a genre that like, no one isn't really teaching in this in this region so it's probably very new,
01:06:38.100
Sean Bjerke: and C it's like, as fast, you know? Like, it's if it's new it's going to be feel like, really fast so
01:06:44.940
Sean Bjerke: you had the experience that should be expected, you know? When when it was like, very loose very kind of informal,
01:06:51.690
Sean Bjerke: like, it was fun. Good. So then, when you start to like, really learn that's when you have to kind of focus a little harder.
01:06:58.590
Sean Bjerke: And if you keep doing it you're going to get somewhere, I told him about you guys like, there's people in the class that when they started, you know, they like, left was right up was down.
01:07:07.590
Sean Bjerke: You know, like, everything was clicking but they just, they found something that they liked in it that, over time, they made it work and they started to evolve.
01:07:17.970
Sean Bjerke: You know, over over repetitions so, you know, that's your choice, if you want to be on the journey cool. If not like, I'm glad you tried it, but I think he actually, the same guy, signed up for this week's class, so, you know, hopefully, you know, maybe he starts getting on something.
01:07:35.310
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I definitely can relate to him on that too, I remember after the first class when you like, taught us
01:07:41.130
Tyler T Hamer: like how to count or the one I went to that, where you taught us how to count, that's why I focused on
01:07:45.660
Tyler T Hamer: kike a couple of classes, after the after I listened to enough music counting and I felt comfortable with that I was like, I'm gonna focus on like, getting good at one of the steps.
01:07:54.030
Tyler T Hamer: I remember, I was like, I think Sean taught us pas de bourrée, I can't spell that, so I can't look it up. I'm just gonna try to recreate it on my own, and I wasn't good at it at first, but now it's like, that's like, bread and butter, so it takes that time to get up to it.
01:08:09.630
Sean Bjerke: When I first learned,
01:08:12.630
Sean Bjerke: not even learned, when when someone first showed me what loose legs was I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
01:08:21.570
Sean Bjerke: And now it's my best step.
01:08:24.510
Sean Bjerke: Right? Ot's the one that I feel the most comfortable in it's the one I have a lot of just like, variety in, but when I first saw it, the brain body was completely like, byewww.
01:08:34.710
Sean Bjerke: The two ships passed.
01:08:37.650
Sean Bjerke: But when I had the time to just kind of sit down and work on it myself like, I found I think probably like, one of Jardy's tutorials Jardy Santiago was he's a dancer on the west coast who,
01:08:49.680
Sean Bjerke: I found a lot of his online resources when I was first looking up stuff. And a lot of people around the world have had the same kind of,
01:08:57.630
Sean Bjerke: you know, experience with that. So he was actually really instrumental person in my my upbringing, but when I, when he broke it down,
01:09:04.920
Sean Bjerke: and I was able to spend time with it, I found my like, my groove and and I felt oh, this is how like, I just keep doing it. I don't know what I was doing before, but whatever is happening now, it's working so sometimes you need that time.
01:09:22.140
Tyler T Hamer: And then I guess another point I wanted to touch on was going just back to the to the clapping and people thinking it's child or like, thinking it's childish.
01:09:30.060
Sean Bjerke: No one's ever like, come out and said that but I can tell.
01:09:32.040
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah, no I know.
01:09:32.940
Sean Bjerke: From like, facial like, uhhhhh.
01:09:35.760
Tyler T Hamer: Well, it just funnny though, because, like, now, when I go to like, your advanced classes, the hardest thing you ever have us do is dance and clap at the same time. Like, it is brutal like, it's like, ughh.
01:09:45.570
Tyler T Hamer: He's like, it's not like, yeah we're not gonna do any hard moves we're just going to clap during and I'm like, I'm gonna have a bad time, I need to do this, but it's going to be such a pain.
01:09:54.900
Sean Bjerke: Yeah, poly rhythms like, body's doing one thing, hands are doing something else, and that can be that can break somebody's day man like, that,
01:10:04.350
Sean Bjerke: that game.
01:10:05.880
Jordan Ugalde: And to clarify for those who aren't familiar poly rhythms are you doing two different beats at the same time, so like, 1 2 3 1 2 3, 1 2 1 2 and then together it's like, *snaps polythrhythms*
01:10:20.880
Sean Bjerke: yeah.
01:10:21.510
Sean Bjerke: it's and it's like, how how drummers learn how to drum.
01:10:25.320
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah it's, it's a hard skill to learn, I actually one of my cousins has been doing, music, for his entire life and,
01:10:37.080
Jordan Ugalde: basically, had exercises combining basically any number, you could think of like, 2 3, 3 5,7 9, crazy.
01:10:47.460
Sean Bjerke: You know, like, that's what's up. That's I mean that's actually the kind of stuff, though, like, that, like, I would love to like, meet him at some point, and just like, give me your drills man.
01:10:59.250
Sean Bjerke: Like if dancers approach dance like musicians approach music, I think dancers would actually be like, way better than they than they are now.
01:11:10.350
Sean Bjerke: A lot of them, and I think that's the reason, a lot of the older generations of street dancers.
01:11:17.520
Sean Bjerke: They were a lot of them were martial artists, a lot of them were musicians, so they like, understood movement beyond what they were doing.
01:11:26.280
Sean Bjerke: And they understood the music beyond what they just heard when they were listening to their favorite songs like, they could like, break all that stuff down and bring it back.
01:11:36.150
Sean Bjerke: Like you just said, you know, all the different permutations and computations until it's like, they were just masters of their body and their mind.
01:11:45.660
Sean Bjerke: Music and the and the moment they mastered it so like, you see people in their 50s now some of these guys from New York and
01:11:54.540
Sean Bjerke: some other countries too, they do things that nobody else does and it's like, man what there's so many like, young dancers, that are like, very talented they have a lot of skill, but
01:12:06.150
Sean Bjerke: that, that musical thing that, you know, Brian Green does or, you know, like, DJ G like, one of my teachers.
01:12:14.100
Sean Bjerke: Like, it looks so simple but it's not it's like, I can't wrap my head around it, but I could learn that fancy move that that guys doing, I could learn it if I practiced enough, but the conceptual music stuff.
01:12:27.630
Sean Bjerke: Crazy.
01:12:29.490
Jordan Ugalde: Actually directly on those lines, when I was in high school doing musical theater for the first time, I didn't know anything about dancing or singing, I used to be tone deaf better now.
01:12:42.630
Jordan Ugalde: But I did play instruments, I played guitar and bass and I, I knew my rhythms and there was, in The Music Man,
01:12:51.600
Jordan Ugalde: there is one song that goes that is 10, 10 8, 10 4, or 10 4, it's it's 10 beats rather than 4 beats and most dancers, we had a choreographer who was also in high school,
01:13:07.590
Jordan Ugalde: and she was really, she was a great choreographer but she was only used to dancing and making dances in 4 4 so she didn't even.
01:13:19.230
Sean Bjerke: Most people are.
01:13:20.580
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah,
01:13:23.370
Jordan Ugalde: yeah.
01:13:24.390
Jordan Ugalde: No it's it's the standard beat, and for those
01:13:27.240
Jordan Ugalde: who aren't familiar it's like, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 or anything like, that, whereas "shapoopie, shapoopie, shapoopie, the girl that's hard to get" it that's 10, that's 10 right there. So she was trying to write a dance for that part and kept on getting tripped up like, why is this not, why am I, on the wrong step.
01:13:47.020
Jordan Ugalde: Because she feels lost.
01:13:49.050
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah yeah and it's to me who wasn't a dancer but was a musician I was, I was confused why she was confused and she was confused why I was confused and eventually we talked through the confusion, but it was, it's really interesting to see just the different ways that
01:14:12.210
Jordan Ugalde: different people from different backgrounds learn effectively the same thing, approach the same thing.
01:14:19.290
Sean Bjerke: That's huge and
01:14:22.440
Sean Bjerke: oh sorry go on, I'll let you finish.
01:14:23.100
Tyler T Hamer: Oh, I was just gonna say it's,
01:14:24.750
Tyler T Hamer: funny, because, like, having a, right, I played clarinet growing up, and now I've decided to stop being a masochist saxophone looks way better, but like,
01:14:34.080
Tyler T Hamer: even though I played jazz clarinet and I have a music background like you Jordan,
01:14:39.000
Tyler T Hamer: I loath playing out of 4/4. Like, I like, I like, I understood it, but it was just never a skill I flexed because I was like, let's just go play the 4 music or the 4 3 nothing like, anything like, super crazy.
01:14:52.650
Sean Bjerke: Yep Tyler it's like, when I'm like, alright guys we're in the kick
01:14:57.150
Sean Bjerke: and now
01:14:58.860
Sean Bjerke: We are in the hi hat.
01:15:03.210
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah it's being off half a beat is probably the bane of my existence.
01:15:08.040
Sean Bjerke: It feels so gross, it feels so gross when you're like, I can't get it like, like, you're just looking for it but.
01:15:17.610
Sean Bjerke: Yeah I mean it's, it's like, any like, you said, like, I like, the four four and I can do the other stuff but it's just, ugh.
01:15:25.980
Sean Bjerke: That that's, you know, it shows you how deep this stuff can go and the fact that the first people to teach hip hop, the first people to teach house like, effectly in studios,
01:15:37.860
Sean Bjerke: were, excuse me, were, were African American who, whose experience and culture is deeply rooted in complex rhythms, you know, African dance like, dance from South America dances from the Caribbean.
01:15:54.240
Sean Bjerke: All those dance like, you can't, this is one thing that Brian Green who's, you know, a very high level dancer in in house and, you know, a bunch of things, tap.
01:16:03.900
Sean Bjerke: He said, like, you could not, and this is probably what was told to him by his teachers, you could not dedicate your life to learning African dance and learn all of it.
01:16:14.160
Sean Bjerke: There's so much that you couldn't learn all of it, which is crazy to like, think about, because I think a lot of times, especially for younger folks in America that, that start to dance.
01:16:28.920
Sean Bjerke: You know, especially in like, street dances they're like, oh yeah there's there's hip hop there's popping and locking and house and breaking and crump and.
01:16:38.520
Sean Bjerke: You know I miss, I'm missing some, but like, there's basically this, to their eyes, there's this kind of finite number of dances that are worth pursuing.
01:16:46.860
Sean Bjerke: That are in this umbrella, but like, outside of that it's like, this is like, .0001% of all the dances. It's just those dances are super visible
01:17:00.030
Sean Bjerke: in like, the mainstream. So like, whenever anyone says the word hip hop there is no one on the planet, that goes what's,
01:17:07.680
Sean Bjerke: like that's a new word to me. Like, like, everyone's heard it, you know? It's like, Lebron James everyone knows of Lebron James, you know, but there's a bunch of other basketball players, you know, besides him, before him, during like.
01:17:24.030
Sean Bjerke: The stuff that's most visible, sometimes we just convince ourselves like, that's what's most important but all, there's these other things that had that inform them like tap, you said tap Jordan, tap informs so many
01:17:37.110
Sean Bjerke: things that have come after it, but sometimes tap doesn't really get its due because, you know, we don't we don't see necessarily
01:17:46.950
Sean Bjerke: tap in its most beautiful form all the time, or like, we don't understand it, you know? I've seen people that do tap that it's like, I think they're good
01:17:57.900
Sean Bjerke: but there's not like, like, there's not a connection. And then I'll see people that like, there is a connection where I'm like, oh shoot they're like, really pulling me in and then it's like.
01:18:08.220
Sean Bjerke: Oh man I just, I kind of I see what's going on, I respect it, but if there's not that connection initially it feels kind of like, ehhhhh.
01:18:16.980
Sean Bjerke: All right.
01:18:18.480
Jordan Ugalde: Well it's something that I think is difficult, with honestly any kind of performing art and the evolution of arts over time is
01:18:27.660
Jordan Ugalde: being culturally relevant like, having,
01:18:30.600
Jordan Ugalde: having, having appeal outside of just the core group. Like, so I would, I have my biggest passion that was most consistent throughout my life was music.
01:18:46.080
Jordan Ugalde: And the people who were writing music in the early 1900s in the classical, in the western classical scene, went in very, very weird directions that I think are very interesting but
01:19:04.740
Jordan Ugalde: were very, very offputting to everyone else and at, as the classical composers went in that direction, pop music, rock music, jazz those came to the forefront, and those started becoming the,
01:19:20.610
Jordan Ugalde: the major types of music that people listen to. So like, with dance like, tap dance it a couple decades ago was huge, but now there have been so many things that have evolved from it that are a lot more
01:19:34.860
Jordan Ugalde: culturally relevant now, that like,
01:19:40.380
Jordan Ugalde: it's just interesting to see how much overall cultural optics play into what dances are mainstream and not.
01:19:51.330
Sean Bjerke: Yeah and like, what's taught like, what people want to teach, you know, that's why like, hip hop like, you, you have
01:19:57.660
Sean Bjerke: classes called like, titled hip hop all over the place, because that's the the term that people like, hip hop is that cool, avant garde like, hip thing to do, you know?
01:20:08.430
Sean Bjerke: But then, you know, Tyler was talking about like, probably some of the classes, that you took, you know, weren't actually that.
01:20:16.380
Sean Bjerke: And that goes also back to the question that Jordan asked about like, you know, how do you know what teachers to learn from, and I think sometimes you have to go,
01:20:24.810
Sean Bjerke: that can be part of the journey is learning who not to learn from like, you have to kind of go through that and so like, sometimes it feels rough because it's,
01:20:32.850
Sean Bjerke: if you learn from somebody that initially is like, yeah this is good, and then later, you find out like, man like, the stuff they were telling me wasn't actually like, that valid.
01:20:42.390
Sean Bjerke: But you learn, if you want to learn from that it's like, okay now I gotta have like, I got to like, know the background of some of this stuff I have to actually do a little bit of homework
01:20:52.980
Sean Bjerke: on my own to maybe come into it. Kike, all right, I heard the basics of, you know, the basics of house like, I've heard about the jack, I've heard about footwork, I've heard about
01:21:07.980
Sean Bjerke: you know, floorwork I've heard about these things. So if I'm teaching, something that is completely not even closely remotely related to that stuff you can be like,
01:21:21.960
Sean Bjerke: is this, is this, did I sign up for the right class? Did I come into, you know, something completely different, or is this, is this house?
01:21:29.790
Sean Bjerke: And I tell my student like, I'll tell students like, it's okay to ask teachers questions in like, a respectful way if you
01:21:39.000
Sean Bjerke: literally are not sure that they're right. You know, like, you're like, I know people will ask me questions that are like
01:21:46.290
Sean Bjerke: oh, you know, like, you said this, but like, I thought this and it actually sometimes makes me think about it, like, huh that's actually a good perspective.
01:21:53.550
Sean Bjerke: But then I can say okay, this is my experience with this and if I can't answer the question I'll be like, ask this person, this person can answer it.
01:22:01.470
Sean Bjerke: But sometimes I think you'll, you'll have I actually heard about I don't know the name but like, there was somebody that was teaching a like, a locking class.
01:22:11.370
Sean Bjerke: Like a Funk dance in in New York and someone who was like, a like, an O G locker who is like, doing it for a long time went to the class and basically,
01:22:26.010
Sean Bjerke: I'll just say this, the person that was teaching that class doesn't teach locking anymore.
01:22:31.080
Tyler T Hamer: Damn, wow.
01:22:32.760
Sean Bjerke: Yeah but, like, you have to like, if you're teaching something like that in New York, you know, or well, I mean locking came from the west coast, but like,
01:22:41.520
Sean Bjerke: New York is looked at as like, you know, street dance Mecca in the US. If you're teaching something like that in New York,
01:22:49.890
Sean Bjerke: you have to be on your A+++ game at all times, because you never know when someone who's like, this level just comes into your space because it's it's very it's like, it's like, COVID in April 2020 it's like, you never know when it's coming,
01:23:11.010
Sean Bjerke: into your space yeah.
01:23:14.130
Sean Bjerke: Now it's maybe not as crazy, but then like, we're all like, yo you gotta be on guard.
01:23:20.070
Sean Bjerke: And it's, not to say that if you live elsewhere, like, you, don't have to be on guard, but like, for me personally, like, I wouldn't teach, I wouldn't teach house if I didn't think I had something to contribute.
01:23:33.870
Sean Bjerke: And like, a lot of my teachers who, you know, I pay a lot of respect to, they have given me like, their their blessing like, like, yeah you like.
01:23:43.260
Sean Bjerke: You know, we have, maybe more experience than you, but like, what like, I like, we see what you're doing and like, what you say.
01:23:50.850
Sean Bjerke: Like it's good like, do it like, keep doing it, keep keep the same approach, so the fact that I can have people that, you know, are African American people that, you know,
01:24:03.150
Sean Bjerke: might say, like, they like, they have a little ownership over the dance, you know, that they started to teach,
01:24:08.400
Sean Bjerke: that are saying like, Sean you're doing cool like, for me that's like, huge, because otherwise I would quite, I would question, I still questioned myself sometimes like, oh, could I be doing this better or whatever.
01:24:18.450
Sean Bjerke: But, like, the fact that they've given me like, the little, you know, pat on the back is like, you're on the, you know, you're on the right path, because I have to remember a lot of them were actually like, 20
01:24:28.200
Sean Bjerke: when they probably started to teach like, early 20s and no one in their early 20s knows exactly what they're doing, yet. They might be good at what they're doing but they might not really understand it until like, 10 20 years later.
01:24:41.430
Sean Bjerke: They've had that time to kind of be like, oh shoot the way I was doing that back when I was 20,
01:24:47.370
Sean Bjerke: I can't do that anymore like, I just it doesn't work. This way is better that I've learned over time, you know, and then whith teaching,
01:24:54.510
Sean Bjerke: it's the same. Like, I'm gonna, Tyler like, probably in 10 years I'll say like, five to 10 years I'll probably get where I need to teaching-wise I'll be like, okay now I've got everything how I want to teach it.
01:25:09.690
Sean Bjerke: Some things I think I have close to it now, but I think over time I'm going to find like, okay, if I wanted to teach this group, this is what I need to give, them this group, this is what I, this is what I need to give them.
01:25:21.900
Sean Bjerke: But sometimes you have to just go through the the trial and error of like, teaching something or showing something and it's like, okay well that didn't go well.
01:25:32.340
Sean Bjerke: And then next time you do it you're like, okay now I'm prepared, now I am a better I'm going to be better at communicating this.
01:25:39.150
Sean Bjerke: And I think a lot of those guys like, a lot of those teachers that are like, super, you know, high level and, like, in demand all over the world.
01:25:47.400
Sean Bjerke: When they started teaching, they were also in demand, because no one else was teaching it but they probably didn't know anywhere close to what they're teaching now, then.
01:25:57.270
Sean Bjerke: Like how to communicate it well enough, but it takes time.
01:26:02.070
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fair and I think, one really strong are really valuable point that, in what you're saying there,
01:26:08.790
Tyler T Hamer: really, not just from like, as you as a teacher, like, the trial and error that has to go into it or also just
01:26:14.220
Tyler T Hamer: a student starting off, in America there's like, a lot of pressure that like, you just have to like, return results like, if you're in the workplace, you have a certain deadline.
01:26:22.890
Tyler T Hamer: So there's always like, this pressure if you're gonna like, learn something new, or if you're teaching, you have to do it right, right away.
01:26:27.990
Tyler T Hamer: And there's never people don't give themselves enough grace to be like, it takes time to learn.
01:26:34.140
Tyler T Hamer: That, if you do something wrong, but you don't do it again, that was a valuable experience, and that is like, very undershadowed especially like,
01:26:42.780
Tyler T Hamer: coming from like, a research background. Publishing, you can't even though you should you can't write a dissertation about proving something wrong.
01:26:50.700
Tyler T Hamer: You have to like, do something new, but it's, the mistakes are really valuable and that the ability to iterate and actually be like, you know, to recognize that, like,
01:27:00.270
Tyler T Hamer: I'm doing what I am doing now and I'm going to take these experiences and reflect and be 5 10 years now, where I want to be. I think that's really super valuable.
01:27:10.650
Sean Bjerke: Yeah and you talk about, you know, people being hard on themselves in America you look at a lot of these like, I'll use dances as an example dance students in East Asia.
01:27:22.680
Sean Bjerke: Like there is this insane amount of like, just the need to be like, the top. Or or conforming to like, what the vision of something is so like, you know, how I said Tyler, I say in my class like, try not to look like me.
01:27:41.700
Tyler T Hamer: Yep all the time.
01:27:43.410
Sean Bjerke: All the time, like, every class I probably say that in, you know, like, if you go to like, class in Japan they're not necessarily saying,
01:27:50.910
Sean Bjerke: look like me the teachers not saying look like me, but just the roots of their culture everyone's trying to look like the teacher.
01:27:59.940
Sean Bjerke: Like period, like, that's, that's it, it's the, it's the conforming and that's a cultural thing.
01:28:06.240
Sean Bjerke: It's a cultural thing, so, you know, we, we that, we have that here, like, the kind of like, fear of failure or just like, fear of being judged maybe.
01:28:14.850
Sean Bjerke: But like, is so culturally embedded in some other places that like, that's how they learn. At the same time they're incredibly disciplined I would actually say that US discipline wise,
01:28:26.940
Sean Bjerke: for like, artistic stuff like, you know, dance are actually behind a lot of other places, because we have it, like, we just have it everywhere so it's easy to take for granted.
01:28:37.830
Sean Bjerke: But the other places, because they're already like, they were a little behind, they knew they had to work harder to catch up, you know, it's kind of like, like, I said, what is it this person versus this person.
01:28:49.350
Sean Bjerke: This person might get it right away really fast, but this person that puts the work in over time they might overshadow this person.
01:28:57.990
Sean Bjerke: You know? And, and you see stuff like, that, with people in Europe, people in in, you know, East Asian countries, they just take that that discipline aspect of their training and they they go to the moon with it. It's crazy.
01:29:17.490
Jordan Ugalde: Actually, on those lines touching back on martial arts as well, I forgot his name but there's some Muay Thai guy who I think it's like, saencho or like, it's gonna bother me but
01:29:34.830
Jordan Ugalde: there, he, there, there is a lot of discipline that he brings to the table, and also in the fights that I've seen of his, he
01:29:46.140
Jordan Ugalde: it's gonna bother me, I'm gonna look up his name, because I wanna remember this
01:29:50.520
Sean Bjerke: He's a professional fight?
01:29:51.180
Jordan Ugalde: A professional Muay Thai fighter, who I don't know if he, he might have lost like, one or two matches, but he,
01:30:00.780
Jordan Ugalde: he has competed for a very long time, I think he he might be retired now, but he
01:30:09.420
Jordan Ugalde: he is also a really great sport like, he made it's really entertaining.
01:30:15.330
Jordan Ugalde: He does really entertained performances, but it's just, it's interesting different cultures approach to, honestly every, every, everything yeah dance and martial arts yeah.
01:30:30.810
Sean Bjerke: Yeah like, and I'll kind of
01:30:35.610
Sean Bjerke: link
01:30:37.080
Sean Bjerke: martial arts to like, boxing like, you think of Muhammad Ali.
01:30:41.700
Sean Bjerke: He was like, he was like, the ultimate performer because he, you know, you couldn't really touch him in the ring and then off camera he was actually very heavily influenced by like, the like, pro wrestling.
01:30:57.270
Sean Bjerke: In the sense like, pro wrestling they would have like, their interviews they do their like, their, their promos and he created like, this character for himself he's like,
01:31:08.190
Sean Bjerke: I wish I could like, drop some Mohammed Ali quotes off the top my head I just can't think of any right now, but every anything that you would ever read that you heard that he said you're like, you're allowed to like, say that to like, a dude that you're going to fight and in like a box ring?
01:31:23.310
Sean Bjerke: The amount of shit that that man talked it was like, it was amazing, you know, and he could back it up, yeah back it up. So confident.
01:31:33.570
Sean Bjerke: But yeah like, different, different places like, they approached that stuff differently. Some, some people are very stoic, you know, it's like, you, like, the iceman like, you can't,
01:31:44.340
Sean Bjerke: you can't break through that and then, when they get into the ring it's all business, you know, like, you're like, oh man I didn't really like, that person gave nothing like, the poker face was,
01:31:54.660
Sean Bjerke: was legit and then they go off. And then some people they talk a big game, and then they get smoked. It's always like, when that happens it's always like, karma, you know, karma always catches up.
01:32:08.880
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah. I'm also name is, I'm gonna butcher this terribly, Saenchai S A E N C H A I. highly recommend looking up with like, clips of him fighting he is awesome.
01:32:26.010
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah really cool but on a, on a another different note. Very early on our conversation today, we, you talked about part of what kept you in,
01:32:41.610
Jordan Ugalde: in biotech and keeping you from leaving your job was the security and the sense of stability.
01:32:49.680
Jordan Ugalde: And no need for any specific numbers, but like, what you're making now, compared to what you were making just in biotech what is like, the approximate difference in in what you're making, lifestyle, all that jazz.
01:33:06.090
Sean Bjerke: That's a good question, so it's I'll say like, at the moment I'm making probably less than I was two years ago, because just,
01:33:18.480
Sean Bjerke: limited opportunities to teach at the moment. Even though we're kind of like, ramping back up, which is cool, I hope I hope it goes keeps going in that direction. But I'll say like, my first year like, hundred percent
01:33:32.520
Sean Bjerke: teaching
01:33:34.530
Sean Bjerke: was actually
01:33:36.810
Sean Bjerke: not super far off from like, what I was making when I left biotech but I really like, put myself out there to like, try to get as much out of it as I could. And
01:33:53.970
Sean Bjerke: what helped me do that was I was hip to, you know, I had some mentoring from some business coaches to be able to create multiple streams of income, and, you know, I had my teaching.
01:34:09.360
Sean Bjerke: Like my dance classes, my weekly dance classes, I was open to doing like, you know, one offs like, some workshops and part of like, being a like, a teacher, especially in this area is
01:34:21.480
Sean Bjerke: knowing like, your your, I guess like, time to output value. It's like, it's like, okay.
01:34:28.140
Sean Bjerke: If I go teach this type of class like, for this amount of time like, I kind of have to make this amount of money for it to be worth
01:34:36.000
Sean Bjerke: my time because, if I could spend this time elsewhere doing something, maybe easier, and I can make the same or more money, like, I'm probably going to just, I'm going to pick that most of the time. So knowing like, what your value is and also just knowing what the what kind of
01:34:57.150
Sean Bjerke: opportunities certain experiences can lead to, because sometimes you might take a job that's,
01:35:02.820
Sean Bjerke: maybe doesn't pay the best, but you see the opportunity for it to lead to other things. And as like, a, you know, if you have a business mind it's like, sometimes you got to take that. If you do that too much,
01:35:14.790
Sean Bjerke: yeah you leave a lot of money on the table when you could have probably been doing something a little bit more intelligent with your time.
01:35:21.270
Sean Bjerke: But you got, that that's another thing is like, over time you kind of pick and choose like, this, this seems like, a good one. This one, I can put it on the table so.
01:35:31.140
Sean Bjerke: Yeah initially it was kind of like, I didn't feel like, oh shit I made a bad decision to do this. What I did realize, I was, I said, if I want to make this kind of money, I really have to work hard, and I have to be very consistent with
01:35:46.020
Sean Bjerke: Just everything, you know? Like, my my performance, so I had to like, I had to keep myself healthy and and still learning.
01:35:53.490
Sean Bjerke: Because it's really easy for this stuff to stagnate. I've seen so many teachers over the years that like, they're hot for a year and then they just
01:36:00.960
Sean Bjerke: stop teaching or they go do something else which is fine. You know, maybe they decided they want to change careers, but
01:36:07.950
Sean Bjerke: I think, as far as like, if you want longevity in something like, this, you got to have like, a longevity focused mind that's willing to adapt to the climates and with COVID.
01:36:22.350
Sean Bjerke: You know Tyler knows this is like, right away was like, middle of March last year, they're like, hey the whole world shut down.
01:36:32.130
Sean Bjerke: And I was like, I have to continue to teach somehow so I just was like, I don't know how this is going to work but I'm going to jump on YouTube Live and
01:36:42.390
Sean Bjerke: I'm going to teach classes like this and then eventually it turned into this, Zoom.
01:36:47.100
Sean Bjerke: And it was crazy how consistent like, attendance was in these classes, they, I wouldn't say they were like, monstrously massive but I had like, the same people coming in, week after week, sometimes multiple times in a week that really,
01:37:03.210
Sean Bjerke: bot just benefited from the dance, but in life like, the life style midway through last year there was nothing going on.
01:37:11.910
Sean Bjerke: So they needed something spiritually uplifting, emotionally uplifting, and if if house dance was that thing, you know, I made a lot of new students out of it too.
01:37:21.720
Sean Bjerke: People that are like, new to completely new to house and they're like, yo I want to keep doing it so.
01:37:28.200
Sean Bjerke: Being able to adapt to the climates, you know, social media is a big thing, you know? Like, I love Instagram but I don't think Instagram is going to be the biggest thing in like, a few years, so I have to be open to maybe biting my knuckles and going on Tik Tok at some point.
01:37:48.300
Sean Bjerke: But I see like, how useful it like, some dance like, dance teachers are making good use of it now to like, make, you know, interesting videos.
01:37:57.510
Sean Bjerke: Communicate good information, so you got to be open to stuff like, that, even if it feels like, a trendy thing, like, everything changes over time, you know, even like.
01:38:07.560
Sean Bjerke: Instagram initially I was like, this It just seems like, we're sharing pictures and bleh.
01:38:13.260
Sean Bjerke: but, eventually, it became very good for for like, posting videos of like, kind of like, useful content. So I actually,
01:38:21.150
Sean Bjerke: probably my most popular stuff on Instagram is stuff where I do, you know, short instructional things where people are like, oh shit like,
01:38:29.220
Sean Bjerke: this is something I want to like, come back to later they'll save it, or they'll share it, they'll like, you know, comment on it, they'll engage with it.
01:38:36.570
Sean Bjerke: And I'm like, oh that's good I gotta keep that in mind, like, this is the stuff like, people don't want to see selfies of me in the shower like, they want they want me to teach them something, you know?
01:38:48.540
Sean Bjerke: Unless I can make some good money on what it, like, Only Fans or something.
01:38:55.680
Sean Bjerke: I had to like, weight that option, but yeah as far as just, you know, constantly evolving climates you got to kind of keep your your ears and eyes open.
01:39:05.580
Sean Bjerke: And just be like, like, like, learning and dance like, you got to learn your your surroundings and like, how you can best promote yourself and put your best self out there.
01:39:16.920
Sean Bjerke: Without sounding too businessy, that's that can be tough that can be tough because, because, you know, if you, if this is your career and you're making money off of it, you know, you can't not
01:39:29.940
Sean Bjerke: have some type of financial tie to it. But like, being overly like, that's something that you learn is, you know, like, you come at it with good intentions, with good energy and people will understand, like, yeah this is, this is a quality thing I buy into it.
01:39:44.970
Sean Bjerke: So yeah it's it's a constantly evolving process.
01:39:48.210
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah and I was saying like, break very recently it's been even hard to sign up for your classes, because
01:39:54.030
Tyler T Hamer: you have that group from Instagram just rolling through every week right like.
01:39:57.870
Sean Bjerke: Yeah and it's funny that you mentioned him, this dude named Leo who he has a
01:40:06.420
Sean Bjerke: couple like, he's kind of building up his own website, platform called Alohub. It's like, aloha hub,
01:40:14.070
Sean Bjerke: Alohub. Where he has different experiences that you can do in Boston like, different activities that people can go into this very, very user friendly website.
01:40:26.280
Sean Bjerke: You can find things really easily. He does, like, a really good job of like, putting up photos and descriptions of things.
01:40:32.490
Sean Bjerke: And people turn up to these things en mass, you know, like, you saw it like, there was like, Jordan, there was a week, a month ago,
01:40:40.350
Sean Bjerke: where I got this message from this dude he's like, hey I saw your class I was wondering if I could bring some friends. And usually, when someone says that they mean like, I want to bring like, a friend, you know, or two friends, I was like, yeah dude like, here's the link. Dude signs up 10 people.
01:40:57.750
Sean Bjerke: 10 people and I'm like, shit like, my class can only have like, 15 people what the fuck?
01:41:06.750
Sean Bjerke: So I actually like, I had to like, message like, Tyler I'm like, dude.
01:41:13.500
Sean Bjerke: Dude there's like, one spot left.
01:41:15.570
Sean Bjerke: Like you got to take it now or someone, I don't know like, and Tyler was like.
01:41:20.520
Sean Bjerke: Oh.
01:41:22.440
Sean Bjerke: But it's like, it's like, a good problem right? Kike, people are starting to kind of come back into their routines and they want like, good fun things to do so, the fact that
01:41:32.280
Sean Bjerke: he saw my stuff and thought it was cool. It's, and a lot of the people that he linked to it, like, some of them are coming back regularly now like, that's that's really cool to see so.
01:41:43.440
Tyler T Hamer: No, and then
01:41:46.560
Tyler T Hamer: the other thing I wanted to to just go back a little bit to talking about I'm staying fresh and like, you know, being ready for like, pivots and stuff like, that I
01:41:57.150
Tyler T Hamer: I've had one thing I know you did was you tried to, especially when you're starting out with your downtime, make sure there's online content, and so I guess like, two questions I had for you.
01:42:08.490
Tyler T Hamer: Or the first one being like, how do you create new content like, you know, and then second one is like, staying fresh is like, being an expert like, how do, how do you go about learning or those are two questions I was curious about.
01:42:25.470
Sean Bjerke: Yeah so I'll, actually as far as like, lear.n I'll do the learning question first. And always being able to like
01:42:34.830
Sean Bjerke: be able to go back to my teachers and just consult when I need, like, the beautiful thing about last year, there wasn't a lot of beautiful stuff about it, was
01:42:44.670
Sean Bjerke: everyone, all of a sudden became connected through Zoom like, instantly. It's like, I could I could literally sign off of this and, like, go into a Zoom room
01:42:54.270
Sean Bjerke: with someone from like, the Ukraine and Brazil and California, like, all in the same space and we could, you know, spend hours communicating different things to each other. So
01:43:06.300
Sean Bjerke: something from last year, like, that happened last year and it made it like, wow, information is really readily available now.
01:43:14.670
Sean Bjerke: Where you can't really, you don't really have the excuse like, if you don't know something it's like, yo there's like, an expert over there, that you can just hit up.
01:43:22.620
Sean Bjerke: And maybe you have to pay them like, a class fee to do it, but it's there. So like, learning, I again like, I'm blessed to have really good teachers that can all, can still teach me new things constantly.
01:43:37.050
Sean Bjerke: But also experiences are good teachers and I think the big thing will, with this coming year is like, getting back to some traveling and like, visiting different communities elsewhere, you always like, take away new
01:43:50.970
Sean Bjerke: you know lessons from visiting places even when it's like, doing stuff that it's like, okay, I do this thing and I'm going to this place to experience how these people do the same thing.
01:44:03.270
Sean Bjerke: We talk about culture, there's always going to be different things about that the way that culture does things you're like, hmm.
01:44:09.810
Sean Bjerke: I didn't realize, you could do it like, that. Or even it's like, you just see different energy, different approaches you're like, wow that's that's very valuable for me to like, take back and like, ruminate on.
01:44:21.480
Sean Bjerke: So just having the people and the experiences to tap into
01:44:25.800
Sean Bjerke: will always keep you learning right? No matter what. And just looking for those things as you get older like, as you get older like, you know, they're there it's just a matter of what you want to put your time towards.
01:44:36.660
Sean Bjerke: And then, what was the first question again Tyler I apologize?
01:44:40.680
Tyler T Hamer: No, no, no worries the first question was like, you know, especially,
01:44:44.520
Tyler T Hamer: I know that first year, you had like, obviously downtime with stuff and then you went and created like, a bunch of online content that ended up being really
01:44:52.650
Tyler T Hamer: advantageous at the beginning of COVID when everything went online, and so the other question was how did you go about like, creating new content? How did you, what made you motivated to do that?
01:45:03.540
Sean Bjerke: I'd say the big motivator was I all of a sudden had a lot of free time to,
01:45:10.470
Sean Bjerke: to do something.
01:45:12.510
Sean Bjerke: But it was like, it was like, man like, I'm not going to be teaching as much, but I feel like, I have a lot of good information that
01:45:21.510
Sean Bjerke: I can put out there and I think there's a market for it. So as far as like, how I created like, I did, I created a beginner like, house guide,
01:45:32.640
Sean Bjerke: that I was, I wanted to be very careful and I had like, some conversations with some of my elders about just how to like, phrase it because there's a lot of
01:45:40.680
Sean Bjerke: material from like, the older generation of dancers that's online, that's like, readily available, that if I was to like, put something out that sounded like
01:45:51.600
Sean Bjerke: it was named, similarly to that people could look at that and be like, oh who's this who's this younger guy doing this? So I actually had some conversations and I was, like, all right I'm going to call this, you know, absolute beginner house handbook.
01:46:08.280
Sean Bjerke: Just basic steps, literally stuff that you can just learn in your living room.
01:46:12.720
Sean Bjerke: And there's way more to this stuff than these steps, but this is just a good starting point where they're all in one place, one online platform. So that was the idea and then like, how I made it, you can do a lot with an iPhone and a tripod.
01:46:28.020
Sean Bjerke: So, like, the nice thing was with, again I say nice thing with with COVID like, when we started to kind of hide in our houses, it was the spring, so the weather outside was decent.
01:46:39.660
Sean Bjerke: And I was like, huh like, the lighting outside is pretty good in my backyard, I've got some open space, it's actually not a yard, but like, back patio.
01:46:48.630
Sean Bjerke: And I can set up my camera in the middle of the day when, you know, not much is happening there's not a lot of noise outside and I can film myself just doing doing these breakdown videos. And
01:47:02.460
Sean Bjerke: the hard, I'd say the most challenging part was just packaging it into a, like, a nice looking thing on my website so that it looked like, okay, I can follow this pretty well.
01:47:13.110
Sean Bjerke: This guy sounds like, he knows what he's talking about, I actually had to like, record my I didn't want to talk outside.
01:47:20.940
Sean Bjerke: Because the sound quality wasn't so good, so I actually ended up, I probably could have thought about this more in advance, watching each video like, back on my computer and like, talking like, as the video played, trying to imagine if I was watching this what would I want to hear.
01:47:38.880
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
01:47:41.460
Sean Bjerke: So it was almost like, inception, it was like, I had to go inside someone's mind that was watching me talk about what I was doing it was weird.
01:47:49.320
Sean Bjerke: But like, long story short it ended up coming together okay, I actually have there been a couple times, where I wanted to go back and maybe like, re refine some things.
01:48:02.130
Sean Bjerke: Again, based on some stuff that I learned this past year, with some things like, oh, this is actually a better
01:48:07.560
Sean Bjerke: thing to communicate with this step than what I was doing before. Like, what I was doing before is fine, but like, it can be better. So,
01:48:15.450
Sean Bjerke: yeah like, I guess online content, it's it's not too hard to film yourself just I would say, I, I become more conscious of the quality, like, you, guys talk about your microphones.
01:48:28.740
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah.
01:48:29.940
Sean Bjerke: The sound quality of voices big is a big deal with dance videos now cuz there's so much, there's so much good quality stuff that it's easy to kind of get lost in the shuffle, but as far as like, the content, like, the actual like, information that's being shared.
01:48:44.610
Sean Bjerke: Again blessed to have good teachers that have taught me good things that I can go into the lab and kind of, you know, do my own thing with it's like, oh here's like, a new take on this thing that maybe you already know.
01:48:55.350
Sean Bjerke: Here's a new take on it, you know, take it or leave it it's just, you know, it's there for your for your training purposes, if you really want to do it.
01:49:02.070
Sean Bjerke: And I've gotten a lot of good feedback on stuff like, that, so I, I haven't been doing as much recently, because just getting back to teaching it's, you know, you can only have so much time and energy to put into that.
01:49:14.610
Sean Bjerke: Right, it's something I think I want to get back
01:49:16.170
Sean Bjerke: into maybe consistently being an online presence, where maybe like, once a week like, here's a, here's a little lesson for something. Okay next week here, something a little different so just keep people engaged and ultimately it's useful I hope.
01:49:31.860
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I mean like, I, it definitely. it's funny the, when, the early beginner stuff that you had online also when you first went to YouTube, I was actually, you know, back when I was like, figuring out my pas de and stuff like, I was in Jordan's basement doing it like.
01:49:51.990
Sean Bjerke: Yeah yeah so that's it, yeah this if, you know, if I put all this stuff out there and like, it was crickets like, no one's really biting into it, I then I had to go back to myself and be like,
01:50:03.990
Sean Bjerke: am I doing, am I, putting out the right kind of content, maybe I need to like, make myself better before I think about being an authority on it.
01:50:12.990
Sean Bjerke: That's entirely possible like, I'm sure I'll look back at some of the stuff in five years that I'm doing now, and being like,
01:50:18.210
Sean Bjerke: yeah that could have been better man that can be a lot better. But that's, that's, that's what's good about having like, a growth mindset is that you never really like, stagnate, you know, you're always kind of looking to push up a little bit, that you're going to keep learning.
01:50:32.250
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah I would say it's, if you are looking back in five years and be like, oh, how did I put out that? I think that's a good sign, because it means that you have been growing this entire time, so you like,
01:50:47.280
Jordan Ugalde: you are making better, you're making better choices, you're producing better content, work, anything over time, I think that's really important.
01:50:57.750
Sean Bjerke: It's a good point. I don't think a lot of people think about that either like, I think some people think that they get to a point and it's like, I've made it.
01:51:06.240
Sean Bjerke: Like I made it and whatever I put out is gold. And then, you know, that maybe they go back and they like, come up with some better stuff but I,
01:51:15.510
Sean Bjerke: you know, I'd be remiss to think of like, many people who go back like, five years now, like, oh man that could have been a lot better. A lot of times like, oh that was so dope that was so great. I'm very much like,
01:51:28.530
Sean Bjerke: I sometimes will watch old stuff that I do and I just have like, this, I don't know my eye for it changes. Like, when I did it, I was like, this is great, this is so cool and then I look back and I'm like, hmmm.
01:51:47.040
Sean Bjerke: There are some things, though, that I look back on and I'm like, that's good but it's like, that's how I look at like, how about that? I was expecting it not to be that great but that's okay.
01:52:02.490
Sean Bjerke: Tyler were you about to say something like, you had like, a hand.
01:52:03.900
Tyler T Hamer: I was just gonna say if,
01:52:05.400
Tyler T Hamer: if Jordan and I end up like, if this ends up going I hope the podcast goes super long, but if we make it, you know, like, five years from now we're looking at back on our original episodes, that would be fun to interview everyone to get, if you like, let's see if we can do this better.
01:52:22.920
Sean Bjerke: I'll be like, yeah, I was eating a burrito when I was talking to you guys.
01:52:29.700
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah yeah so just to wrap things up for the night, a final question.
01:52:39.690
Jordan Ugalde: For someone who is just getting into dance just, or, is not into dance or Taekwondo right now, but is even considering it what would you say to get like, to someone who is thinking about getting started in either of these disciplines?
01:52:58.020
Sean Bjerke: Like how to approach it?
01:52:59.370
Jordan Ugalde: Yeah, how do you approach it to get passionate about it?
01:53:03.870
Sean Bjerke: I think one thing that you can do for both, if they if, if the studio lets you is going to watch a class.
01:53:14.580
Sean Bjerke: Like just go watch and kind of, you'll, you'll know, in the first probably
01:53:21.420
Sean Bjerke: 10 to 15 minutes if it's something that looks like, yeah like, that looks like, something fun to do that I could try or something where you're like, mhm.
01:53:30.570
Sean Bjerke: It's,
01:53:32.220
Sean Bjerke: like I think with with martial arts, again, I think it comes down it's not so much the martial art, but the teacher honestly, because I think if I had like, a really great
01:53:43.410
Sean Bjerke: teacher that taught like, I learned Taekwondo I'd say like, 180 degrees opposite of Taekwondo is something like, Aikido.
01:53:51.330
Sean Bjerke: You know where it's, it's like, instead of like, striking and kind of keeping distance it's like, come closer to me, so I can use your body to my advantage.
01:54:00.930
Sean Bjerke: If I had a really good teacher and I came into something like, Aikido I would probably pursue it and and get a lot out of it.
01:54:08.670
Sean Bjerke: But uh I think some people approach it like, what kind of martial art do I want to do, which is okay too. Just make sure, like, you get an idea of what the classes are going to be like.
01:54:19.410
Sean Bjerke: Because if it's like, you, you go in and you, you like, oh I, I want to do Taekwondo and the teachers, like, a really big a-hole you're like, eghhhh.
01:54:28.890
Sean Bjerke: I don't want to necessarily, because a lot of times they make you commit money up front, like, our school we it's like, a kind of a gym membership it's like, all right you're signing up for a six month program. Six months? That's going to be like, many hundreds of dollars.
01:54:43.890
Sean Bjerke: People are very, you know, they want to know what they're doing with their money so,
01:54:48.690
Sean Bjerke: do yourself a favor and put some time into just doing like, the research. If you don't, if you're not like, a Google person,
01:54:54.990
Sean Bjerke: go, I think going to watch in person is the best, the best thing. Because you just get to see it right in front of you, and you kind of put yourself in that spot like, yeah I could learn this or not learn this. And then dance, I would say,
01:55:08.190
Sean Bjerke: you could try to do the same thing I think some studios, I actually don't even know. Kike, I've never had somebody really come in to watch my dance complex class maybe like, once or twice.
01:55:18.720
Sean Bjerke: And then, like, they if they leave 10 minutes in it's like, okay I don't really know how to follow up with them. But
01:55:24.750
Sean Bjerke: same thing it's like, you see how they move, you see how the teacher teaches, you see how the students absorb information. But I think also,
01:55:34.410
Sean Bjerke: listening to some music and getting a sense of what like, the music is first, so that you're not like, shell shocked when you come in and it's like, wait I gotta, I gotta move and be on beat? What the fuck? Like.
01:55:47.820
Sean Bjerke: Getting a sense of if the music is something that you like,
01:55:51.870
Sean Bjerke: I think that helps a lot with absorbing the material, because if you, if you're learning movement, and then the music is something that where you're like,
01:56:00.540
Sean Bjerke: I don't like, this, like, I don't know how to listen to this, the movements not going to connect. So the music, I think, is a big important factor in, for dance.
01:56:11.670
Sean Bjerke: If you can't watch a class, there's, there's so much stuff online that maybe you could look up about like, if you wanted to learn house dance, just go to house dance on YouTube and a billion things come up and just like, watch some and, you know, hopefully, you find something that's legit.
01:56:28.290
Sean Bjerke: If it looks like, something that you, oh, I
01:56:30.690
Sean Bjerke: might want to learn that check it out.
01:56:35.310
Tyler T Hamer: No that's fair and then I guess closing, if you want to, I'm just going to shamelessly promote you Sean, but if you want to give a call to your website and your Instagram resources.
01:56:46.320
Sean Bjerke: Yeah okay, should I should I do that now?
01:56:49.920
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah yeah yeah.
01:56:52.080
Sean Bjerke: Yeah so on Instagram I'll just like, kind of put my phone up but I'll also just say what it is so. If,
01:57:00.990
Sean Bjerke: there we are, so shizz underscore matic schizz_matic, but if you type in my name, Sean Bjerke,
01:57:11.250
Sean Bjerke: and/or Boston house dance, if you type, type that into the search field, you'll probably see my my name come up. So I think the easiest thing Boston house dance. If I type it right now let's just see what happens.
01:57:26.430
Sean Bjerke: Oh,
01:57:28.860
Sean Bjerke: number one.
01:57:30.390
Sean Bjerke: Yeah and and also just to kind of explain that, like, this that's more of a like, literally like, a search field strategy. It's like, I don't consider myself
01:57:41.160
Sean Bjerke: Boston house dance, I'm not. But I use that as a way that people can find me and then, if they have questions about what I do, or like, how they can get involved in the scene, like, I can be a resource for it.
01:57:52.890
Sean Bjerke: My website is just my name SeanBjerke.net So if I go to, boo boo boo, let's go to the homepage. Homepage looks something like, this and then, if I go to the top,
01:58:09.930
Sean Bjerke: you can kind of see that, like, SeanBjerke.net s e a n b j e r k e.net.
01:58:18.630
Sean Bjerke: But if you type my name in to Instagram, my Instagram links to my website, I also have a YouTube channel that links to those same things it's all a big intricate web of lies and deceit there's.
01:58:33.090
Tyler T Hamer: That's amazing.
01:58:34.530
Sean Bjerke: That's a big thing is like, to, you know, make sure social media channels are connected to each other, so if you find someone here, you can get here and here. So it's pretty much just my name is Sean Bjerke gets you where you want to go.
01:58:48.060
Jordan Ugalde: Okay, well, thank you very much for joining us tonight Sean it's been a pleasure.
01:58:57.030
Sean Bjerke: Yeah, this was fun.
01:58:57.630
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah, I guess, I will see you Thursday for class.
01:58:59.370
Sean Bjerke: I hope, yeah. Oh yes, right you already signed up right?
01:59:02.970
Tyler T Hamer: Yeah I signed up for Thursday and Saturday.
01:59:04.920
Tyler T Hamer: And I won't go to the zoo this Sunday so I'll be at the
01:59:07.380
Tyler T Hamer: Sunday class.
01:59:09.810
Sean Bjerke: That's right, that's right, holding you accountable.
01:59:14.310
Sean Bjerke: That's cool yeah thanks for having me on guys it's I always enjoy talking with people that have good like, kind of conversation line because
01:59:23.580
Sean Bjerke: every time I finish something it's like, well here's a new question that's going to make you think and it's like, it helps me,
01:59:31.860
Sean Bjerke: you know, tell my story that I don't get, I don't do this all the time, like, oh, this is like, everything that I've done over the last 20 30 years so like, when I get to talk about it with people like you, it just it feels more right, you know? It's like, okay I'm doing this.
01:59:49.650
Jordan Ugalde: It was wonderful hearing your story. Glad we should listen to it and hear more about it.
01:59:55.560
Sean Bjerke: Yeah man.
01:59:58.350
Sean Bjerke: We'll have to interview, we'll take turns in the interview booth so one of you can go next next time.
02:00:06.780
Tyler T Hamer: We'll see, we'll see, yeah.
02:00:10.410
Jordan Ugalde: Okay, well, thank you very much again and see you later.
02:00:14.520
Sean Bjerke: See you guys have a good night.
02:00:16.170
Tyler T Hamer: See ya Sean.