Fett, Velde take dance championship mindsets into consulting firm

By Robert Williams

Editor

Ta Fett created the Frazee Fly Girls dance program from scratch and turned them into state meet regulars and eventually champions. Fett’s daughters Kiala Rae Velde and Kendall Ware created Northern Lights Dance Academy and have brought multiple national championships back to Frazee. Velde and her mother’s latest adventure is in dance consulting as Next Level Dance Intensive.

Fett was the head coach of Frazee’s high school team for 24 years, since its inception, retiring in 2020.

Under Fett’s direction, the Fly Girls transformed from what began as a school activity into state tournament mainstays. The team recorded three state championships, two in jazz, one in kick, including a sweep of both in 2018. Fett’s jazz teams were state finalists 11 times; kick made the final cut to six teams at state six times.

Next Level Dance Intensive is a consulting firm that began as an idea after Fett met a dance consultant, Eric Kruse, while the Frazee high kick teams were struggling to make it to state.

“She ended up helping us and I hired her every year, if not twice a year, to give a different perspective and a different eye on my team,” Fett said. “She was so incredibly helpful. I really attribute to her for helping us go from getting to state to medaling at state. She had so many great ideas.”

Kruse’s efforts also inspired Next Level Dance Intensive.

“The first time she came and was working with my dancers I said, ‘When I retire from coaching, I want to do what she does.’ Interestingly enough, when I retired from coaching she moved to Colorado so there was definitely a spot for that to happen.”

Fett and Velde “threw the idea out there” and began consulting.

“She (Kruse) helped us get to the next level; I want to help other teams and coaches,” said Fett.

Fett had a natural curiosity and used that to share and learn from many coaches at state tournaments during her run with the Fly Girls.

“I love to learn about what they’re doing,” she said. “Our times change and our coaching has to change with those times.”

She would question other coaches on practice plans, auditions, and other information.

“I think our Next Level Dance is a combination of our experience, getting input from successful coaches around the three-state area and hard lessons we’ve learned,” Fett said. “We say it right off the bat, ‘We’re not experts but we’re very passionate about kids having the opportunity to dance at school.’”

Continual learning is also mandatory for Velde on the choreography side.

“There’s no end to my training,” said Velde. “I go to the cities and take courses. I’ve taken 16 hours of a turn class—just turns. It’s four hours, no break. We sit and talk turns for four straight hours, literally from how to spot with your head to your hips and how they’re placed.”

Next Level Dance also brought mother and daughter back together on a coaching team.

“I missed that part,” said Fett. “We work very well together.”

Their complementary roles also help with Velde concentrating on technique where Fett works on the dancer’s self-confidence.

“I’d say when we go into a camp that’s our number one goal,” she said.

Next Level also provides classes just for coaches at all levels, including Minnesota Association of Dance teams, Just for Kix, and most recently the North Dakota Association of Dance teams.

“We talk about how to build a successful program,” Fett said. “If you want to treat dance like a sport we have to treat it like a sport.”

While the duo do not claim to be experts, they have resumes of nothing but success and much of that came from building up their dancers.

“We won state and we still had to talk to our girls about having confidence out on that floor,” said Velde. “The years we won weren’t our most talented dancers. They were our dancers who were most connected and had that drive. That beats any trick you can do. That ability to know you can do it and work for it. The most memorable dancers we had were the ones that came in with that drive.”

“And that positive attitude,” said Fett.

One of the aspects of their coaching curriculum is stressing what is most important: communication between dancers, coaching staff and parents.

“It is, across the board, in every place we’ve gone to, a top three concern,” said Fett. “They’re still experts on their communities and their schools, but we can help them be successful. We’re good at that. Even building confidence with coaches, they send me videos, they call.”

Next Level Dance is growing throughout the three-state region having held Intensives in Wisconsin and North Dakota.

“The basics are the same when it comes to coaching and building programs,” Fett said.

Fett and Velde have a third consultant on their team Sophie Nelson, a former Fly Girls state champion, Minnesota State University-Mankato dancer and currently a dancer from the Minnesota Timberwolves.

“We send her out on her own because she’s worked with us enough,” Fett said.

With Nelson’s assistance, the threesome saw their pool of teams grow from smaller Class A teams to Class AAA teams and all points in between.

“Just thinking about Class A teams in Minnesota and now we’re helping teams in Wisconsin and North Dakota – you get with other passionate people and we all get so excited,” said Fett.

For Fett, it was a way to continue coaching and also provided another angle or perspective. She was ready to retire from high school dance in 2020, but was not ready to be done with the sport.

“I wanted a different role and this was a perfect fit for me,” said Fett.

Velde was in the same situation in 2020.

“I was ready to be done,” Velde said. “That was good and what we do now is just as fun without all that extra stuff.”

“I learned a lot of hard lessons and things that I would have done differently and I bring those lessons to other coaches to help them,” said Fett.

One of the biggest emphases in Next Level’s Intensives is building dancers up.

“That’s what you really need to think about, how to build them up,” said Fett.

Velde is big on the effects of phones on kids’ self-identity and worth, comparing themselves to others, and unhelpful communications.

“I think these kids have been torn down non-stop,” she said. “Our job is to build them up.”

For Fett, her message about kids and phones is far more direct.

“I have some super standard things,” Fett said. “Get the phones out of kids’ hands. They don’t need them. Go to a competition, you collect the phones. It’s a distraction. Wait until you see how tighter your team will get and wait until you see how many less problems you have. Stay together as a team and treat it like a sport.”

They take the advice of professionalism to heart and transfer it to how they interact with parents. It’s important to have practice plans and be precise on start and end times of training. Not accepting digital communications and making parents communicate face-to-face is also a standard in mutual respect and a big part of being part of the team.

“Those hurtful things people send across those keyboards are like a knife in the heart and it’s going to wear you down,” said Fett. “Just don’t read it. If he or she wants to talk to you they have to set up a time to meet.”

Fett has taken her love for dance and turned it into axioms for those with kids in dance programs.

“Your role as a parent is this: I love to watch you play; I love to watch you dance; I’m very proud of you; I love watching you with your teammates,” said Fett.

Another big axiom from the duo’s past that is used today is to continually look forward. Fett cited a year when the Fly Girls jazz team missed out on state

“There was so much learning I did from that tough year,” she said. “It was on me. It’s not on the kids, the parents, it was Ta and coaches what are we going to do to turn this around? We went from not making state in jazz and not getting in the finals in kick to first and second in a year. If you think you can’t turn around an entire program in a year you probably can’t. But if you think you can, we’re your people.

“The best thing you can teach athletes: to overcome disappointment, those times that are a struggle.”

For more information search Next Level Dance Intensive on Facebook, call (218) 849-1633 or email nextleveldance21@gmail.com.