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Erika Shannon is a movement coach who works with dancers of all levels, recording artists, models, new moms, and fitness enthusiasts to help them connect with movement so it makes sense, and move with confidence and grace regardless of skill level. Her signature online dance basics bootcamp, Don’t Dodge the Dance Call, has been featured in both Playbill and on Backstage.com, where she is also a contributing expert. When she’s not working with dancers and movers-in-training, you can catch a live workout with her online as part of DailyBurn.com’s program DB365, or on a bike at SoulCycle.

Erika finally came to the term “movement coach” after many years of trying to figure out who she is and what she does. She helps people build confidence in how they move and better understand how their bodies move.

As someone who has danced my whole life, I truly identify with what Erika does for her clients. I have worked very hard to reach the point in my life where I actually feel comfortable in my own body. And we agreed that there is so much freedom and joy in feeling that way as you move through life.

Erika’s favorite type of work is when she has clients who are at the beginning of their movement journey. For people who have not truly moved in their bodies before and who don’t really know what the potential is for them. Movement in many ways can actually be life changing.

We talked about Erika’s business evolution. She was a performer for a long time but has now watched her business transform even though she feels that she is still at the very beginning. After a successful career in musical theater both here and travelling, she somehow she found herself at the WTC on 9/11 and it made her decide to change her life dramatically. After six years of not travelling and not moving as she had a management job, she decided to join a gym and start moving again. She realized she had lost so much by not moving during that time and became the general manager of teacher training for Intensati.

Intensati is a practice that focuses on the mind body connection where you build a series of mantras with movement.

After several years of this, Erika started a company with her business partner that had a brief iteration for kids that wanted to go to college for musical theater but it later transformed into a production company where she created their own content. Don’t Dodge the Dance Call is one of the results of that company. It is designed to help actors who end up not going to call backs because they are afraid to dance at them.

She was able to secure some initial coverage in Playbill and Backstage and establish herself as an ongoing expert on the latter. This is a perfect example of how you can build your media credentials as an expert in trade publications.

We continued our conversation about what else she has done to get coverage for herself and how she continues to keep herself visible.

I hope you will listen to this episode and learn how she has been making the right moves to keep herself out there as well as my comments on everything she is doing.

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