Graceful moves: Dance business is expression of Talyn’s love for God
By Ken Luchterhand
Talyn McKinley had no desire to teach dance.
In fact, she refused to do so, even after many people requested her to teach them the moves. But finally she relented.
Talyn is the daughter of Scott and Sherry McKinley, and sister to Ashley, Chris and Dylan.
And now it is her fulltime job, having opened a professional dance business in Eau Claire. Tayln opened “First Position,” her own dance company at 2813 East Hamilton, last August.
The road to her success has been a long one, full of roadblocks and potholes, and many questions about whether she was going in the right direction. But, through it all, she has endured and allowed God to make the decisions for her.
Her love for dance began at an early age.
“I started dancing when I was 4 – at Diamond School of Dance. I was her first student,” Talyn said. “They taught ‘worship dance,’ which is a form of Christian worship.” She also learned all other forms of dance, such as ballet, tap and hip-hop.
As the business grew, Diamond dropped the worship dance part of it and continued with the other forms of dance. Talyn continued to attend classes and when she became 16, she started teaching dance for the business.
Then when she was 17, people began asking her if she would begin to teach worship dance, but she turned down the request, not wanting to take on such a responsibility.
“For me, personally, worship dancing stems from my personal relationship with God,” she said. “The only way to express myself is to dance. It is my way to get close to God.”
At the end of her last year of high school, Talyn graduated from Diamond Dance School and she was again asked to teach worship dance. This was the seventh time, by seven different individuals, that she had been asked. Then, when she turned 18, her mother agreed that she could start with classes on her own, as her own business, if she had 10 students.
With news of possible dance lessons available from Talyn, she soon had 18 students signed up and she began teaching in the family’s garage. She and her family cleaned out the garage and purchased a section of checkered vinyl flooring to use as a dance floor.
“There was no insulation and no heat,” she said. ““It didn’t feel like a dance school, there were no mirrors or anything, but at least I had somewhere to start.”
Then when school resumed in September, that number rose to 30 students.
They performed their first Christmas show that winter, in 2013. Their shows are conducted at Calvary Baptist Church in Eau Claire.
“That was our first real show. Before it didn’t feel right, but this Christmas show was real professional.”
Their next show was the Spring Show, in 2014, and she wanted people to come away with a sense of hope, to inspire them and to make them think about the dance for the whole year. Besides worship dance, she added ballroom dancing and blacklight dancing.
“Every show stems from giving God glory. It’s not about us. If we trip and fall, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was exciting because I am happy in what God is doing in our lives. It’s kind of like a young couple who just got married. They’re in love and don’t care where they live. We saw the bigger picture.”
Dance classes follow the school year, following the school calendar because a majority of her students are public school students.
In 2015, everything started coming together. In May, they held a large show that included a speaker, drama, storytelling, videos and testimonials.
But, leading up to the performance, the preparations were not without drama in its own right.
One of the key dancers had parents who were missionaries who were serving in Liberia. The girl decided to visit her parents during the summer when the Ebola epidemic was making news all around the world. Because she was in Liberia, many of the parents came forward to voice their concern.
“They didn’t want her on stage. If she was going to be included, they were going to pull their children from the performance,” Talyn said.
She pointed out that the girl wasn’t back yet from Liberia and they weren’t in a part of the country with the disease, Plus, there was an incubation period if she did have Ebola, and wasn’t contagious until symptoms appeared. Talyn understood the parents’ concerns, but she knew her friend was not a threat to anyone.
“There was an attack on Calvary Baptist and First Position. Fear was the weapon,” she said.
She didn’t know what to do. On one hand, she didn’t want to disappoint her student, who also was a friend. She had worked so hard for the event and didn’t want her to feel like she had been betrayed. On the other hand, if she didn’t ask her to bow out, most of the performers would not show up for the show and, probably, the audience as well.
“In the end, she volunteered not to attend the performance,” she said. “She didn’t want to cause any bad feelings. Instead, we had a video of her as a testimonial at the show.”
In preparation for the show, Talyn and some of her crew stayed until 2 a.m., mainly because they had some problems with the lighting.
Then, the main speaker for the event cancelled two weeks before the performance. It was a mad scramble to find another speaker with so little time left.
After an extensive search, they found Brian Cole, a man who had been a Satanist from the age of 10 up until he was 25. He was heavily into drugs, covered in tattoos, and was in jail and prison for several years. Then, in 2009, God redeemed him and he began serving as a youth pastor at Stanley Prison. To this day, he wears a leather jacket and a Mohawk haircut.
He agreed to talk about his experiences at two shows.
“It was so powerful,” Tayln said. “He touched so many lives.”
However, it didn’t go off without a hiccup.
In between shows, Cole received an urgent phone call, telling him that his elderly mother fell into a well on her rural home. He rushed to the hospital to see how his mother was doing, having been taken there by ambulance.
It turned out that she had broken back.
Yet, through it all, when he knew his mother was being taken care of, he rushed back to the church to give the second show. He spoke about the situation to no one, so nobody knew his mother had been injured until after the show.
“It was amazing,” Tayln said. “He gave himself to all of us so unselfishly.”
Everything was going fine until the business hit a bump in the road.
Then whole scheme of things changed in the summer of 2015, when the house insurance company found out about the dance business being conducted in the garage.
“Because of liability issues, the insurance company said they would no longer insure the house if we had the business in the garage,” Talyn’s mother, Sherry, said. “We had to move the business.”
As of August 1, Talyan had to be out, so she began looking in earnest to find a new home for her dance classes. She looked at many different storefronts, but most didn’t fit the space needs and all of them were too expensive. It was the end of July and she still hadn’t found anything.
“If God is in this, He will provide,” she said. She and her family prayed a lot about the venture and the needs of a new location.
She took off providing dance lessons in June and July to look for a new place for her business.
“I couldn’t afford much and I was sure how many students I would have, which would dictate how big of a place I would get,” she said.
“I looked at places and it just didn’t feel right,” she said. “Some of the rooms were not square and some were not the right size, and some just wouldn’t work for dance.”
Also, most of the places cost more than she could afford.
Then one day, a friend of theirs, who worked at a beauty supply store, called to tell them about a vacant storefront near her workplace.
“It was very hard to trust and believe God was going to provide.”
She contacted the owner and arranged to meet to view the storefront. It turned out that the owner was someone they knew. They liked the store, but they couldn’t afford the price, so they offered what they could afford and awaited his decision.
The owner took it under consideration and decided to give her a chance, signing a short-term lease, even though it was less than he was expecting to get.
“We signed on Sunday and began classes the next day,” she said.
Talyn figured if she could get about 50 students into her business, the budget would work out for paying the rent. As it turned out, she had 75 students signed up.
“Having 75 students was a breath of fresh air,” she said. All are girls except for four boys.
Talyn is very careful when accepting new students. So when she has a person interested in attending her classes, the first thing she does is sit down with the family to make sure what she offers is what they want.
“I want to find out why they want to dance, if they have the values that we reinforce and how they love and treat people,” Talyn said. “Everything will follow if we have the basics down first. It’s not about posturing – not about status.”
A culmination of all her hard work came into fruition this last Christmas, when their Christmas show, “Go Tell It,” took to the stage at Calvary Baptist church.
“The Christmas show was amazing,” she said. “We had about 600 people to come and watch the show. It was one of the best shows.”
All of the costumes were handmade and can be used again for future performances.
Now, day-to-day, she teaches 30 regular classes Monday through Friday for a total of about 40 hours, plus extra classes on a case-by-case basis.
As for future plans, she would like to get a floor for the performances, which costs about $5,000. She plans to conduct fundraisers for the cause.
“We’ve been renting a floor from State Theater for $500 each time. It would save a lot of money if we had our own,” Talyn said. The next show is slated for May.
Having been bullied from other girls while going to school, she could have retreated and become withdrawn. But instead, she believed that she could excel wherever her heart led her.
“When I was a kid, I had no desire to own a dance school. When I was 14, I had a dream of mentoring girls. Our society puts kids down and does not allow them to dream. As adults, we can be whatever we want to be. We should encourage kids to go beyond what they have been taught they can be.”
And that has become her driving force in her life – to work hard and strive to do more.
“Her entrepreneurial spirit comes from her family,” said Sherry, her mother. “As far back as anyone can remember, members of our family have been in business. My Grandmother Marie Lewis and Aunt Velma were involved with making and selling baskets and my father, Harold, began and ran ‘Lewis Sign Company.’”
Also, Sherry and Scott own their own car audio business, “Sounds and Visions,” in Eau Claire. They were able to begin with a $25,000 small business loan from the Ho-Chunk Nation, along with a $75,000 loan from the Small Business Association.
"We are forever grateful for the tribe helping us,” Sherry said.
Tayln dreams of what else she might do in the future. For one, she would like to open a civic center for entertainers to come and perform. There aren’t any such buildings in Eau Claire, she said. Besides having a stage and seating, the entertainment center would also have its own restaurant, a library, a huge prop room, a lounge for entertainers, and a coffee shop.
“People have a hard time finding a place to practice and perform for audiences in Eau Claire,” she said.
The constant thread, in whatever she does, is her love of God and her desire to do God’s work.
“We need to put God into every area of our lives. We need to know that God is in basketball, in school, when you’re washing dishes or walking the dog,” Talyn said. “It’s not about what you’re doing. It’s about what is in your heart.”
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