Today we’d like to introduce you to Kiara Burns.
Hi Kiara, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I danced my entire life growing up into college. I did the competitions, the intensives every summer in different cities across the US, I graduated high school six months early so I would have more time to go in and out of NYC from Connecticut to train, but at the end of the day I sustained too many injuries and I was fed up! While I was attending the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, I became an instructor at Pure Barre to make money, and that’s where things started to change for me. I noticed changes in my body I had never seen before in terms of strength and balance, and and I was constantly studying to try to make myself the most well rounded instructor I could be. Fast forward to senior year when many people were auditioning for dance companies, I had my eyes set on LA. I wasn’t sure what I would be doing there (other than continuing to teach Pure Barre) but I put some trust in the wind and went for it. I have been living in LA for over four years now, I am a professional fitness trainer and I have my own inclusive on demand fitness platform www.kiaraburns.com.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Truthfully, there are many days as a small business owner that I wonder why I haven’t learned a single thing about the way a business runs in all my years of school. You can definitely start to tell yourself you have no business doing what you’re doing, but then there will be the moments of gratitude and excitement that are shared with you from clients and members of my platform that bring me right back to fully believe if that I’m doing what I am meant to. Guiding people as a movement specialist is my calling, I have no doubts about that, so anytime the path waivers now I just remind myself of that!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I graduated in May of 2018 from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee with a BFA in Contemporary Dance Performance with an emphasis in Ballet. I then went on to become a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, a Prenatal and Postnatal Exercise Specialist, and a Power Plate Trainer. I’m most proud of the way that I did not let old-school, general expectations from the dance world continue to impact my view as I started to shift into fitness. I believe everybody is deserving of movement, everybody is deserving of taking up space without fear of judgment or shame, and collectively, we need to all keep driving home that narrative! I’ll never forget an experience from one of my dance competitions when I was a Freshman in high school. I had WON for my solo by the way, but I heard the feedback from the judges through an audio tape. One of the female judges who was a competitor on So You Think You Can Dance could not let go that she felt like my boobs were too big for my costume. That is pretty much all she commented on the entire solo, and to this day I think to myself, I’m so sorry that she felt she had been shamed so many times and was so uncomfortable with things about her own body that she thought it was okay to pass that on to me. I move now because I know I deserve to feel good and take up space… oh and I love my boobs!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kiaraburns.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiara_burns_/?hl=en
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kiaracburns?lang=en
Image Credits
Selo Turner
