Life & Work with The Ford Sisters

Today we’d like to introduce you to The Ford Sisters.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Hello, we are The Ford Sisters: Brii, Kay K and Christa Malia. We are professional dancers/choreographers and we work full-time as freelancers in the commercial dance world. We come from a family of dancers and when we lived in St. Louis, Missouri, our family owned a competition dance studio. We were raised in all styles of dance: ballet, jazz, contemporary, hip hop, etc., and our preferred style to perform is jazz funk and hip hop. This is where we have the most fun and these are the styles of dance we mostly get hired for.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When covid came and shut everything down, professional dancers (like so many others) really suffered to find work. We feel the dance industry is slowly recovering however, much has changed. The majority of auditions are now taking place through at-home, pre-recorded camera submissions. While this method is safe and convenient, it can also make landing the job more difficult. During in-person auditions, you can read the energy in the room, evaluate your competition and make adjustments as needed. Auditioning on camera at home is a solo act and requires a different kind of energy to land a job. This is something we are still figuring out.

Additionally, before covid there were many more auditions and job opportunities open to all professional dancers. Now, choreographers and casting directors are direct-booking the majority of the jobs. So, if your working network was not strong before covid, it is going to be a real challenge to be seen by new people.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
When most people hear about commercial dancers, they think of “back-up” dancers who perform behind music artists. While we have danced behind music artists, these positions are very selective and our preferred type of dance work is in TV commercials, film or in live stage shows. This year we experienced a real uptick in requests for dancing in online commercials. Many of the larger businesses are not just advertising on TV, they are also now advertising online and on social media. Social media continues to be an area where we get hired for quite a bit of dance work. We just started our TikTok this year and quite a few of our jobs are stemming from there. Most recently, Christa Malia got back from an exciting couple of weeks dancing Thailand for “Paris By Night” and we are looking forward to dancing in Las Vegas at ARIA for the 2022 New Years Eve show.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
While covid has been so devastating for so many people, it has also pushed us into new areas we otherwise would probably have not explored. This past year, we have done a lot of online learning, including how to create online businesses and digital courses. For the past several months, our family has been developing two dance-related projects: a basic but essential online starter course for aspiring professional dancers and a second more intensive career launcher course for artists who know for sure they want to become professional commercial dancers. Our goal is to provide a clear roadmap, specifically for dancers who want to go pro, because to be honest, there isn’t really a solid one out there. There are secrets to being constantly booked and in demand that you can really only learn through years of experience. Therefore, we are taking what we have learned through years of successes and failures and we are creating the course for the next generation of dancers that we wish we had when we were just beginning.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thefordsisters.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.ford_sisters/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/thefordsisters
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thefordsisters