Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#333: Christopher Erk (Dancer) (pt. 1 of 2)
Today we released part one of our interview with Los Angeles-based dancer, Christopher Erk. For 20 years he’s traveled the world as a professional tap dance performer, teacher, and choreographer. Most recently he has toured with Tap Dogs, Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, and was a featured Artist in Las Vegas's number one show, Absinthe at Caesar's Palace.
In addition to his dancing, he’s the Founding Artistic Director of the Tap Factor, a production company that emphasizes the global implications of Tap Dance through all-inclusive workshops and performance opportunities that tour internationally throughout the year.
Make sure to check out Chris’s websites in the show notes to see him in action!
https://www.christophererk.com/home and https://www.youtube.com/@christophererk4848
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. Los Angeles-based dancer Christopher Erk is on the podcast today. For 20 years, he's traveled the world as a professional tap dance performer, teacher and choreographer. Most recently, he has toured with Tap Dogs, scott Bradley's postmodern jukebox, and was a featured artist in Las Vegas' number one show, absinthe at Caesar's Palace. In addition to his dancing, he's the founding artistic director of the Tap Factor, a production company that emphasizes the global implications of tap dance through all-inclusive workshops and performance opportunities that tour internationally throughout the year. Christopher's websites will be in the show notes so you can learn more about him and see videos of his performances. Before we begin, I want to thank my friend, amber Emery Mayer for introducing us to Christopher. Thanks for being on the podcast, chris. Thanks for having me. You have an extensive bio that I summarized at the beginning, so why don't we start by having you recall your journey from college student to where you are today?
Christopher Erk:Uh, yeah, so basically, um, as a performer I, like you said, traveled the world and, uh, had a lot of experience doing that for many years. Um, and then, once I started going to school, I started to expand my perspective, and it wasn't intentional, it sort of just was natural as I sort of got information and I went to school late. I started going to college when I was 27 years old, when I went on tour with Tap Dogs I was 15. I left high school. So I'm like kind of a I did it backwards in some way. I left high school, I joined the circus, toured the world for years and years and years and then gained some traction as a performer and a choreographer, teacher and things just sort of took on a life of their own at that point. Then, eventually, I developed a passion for education, went to college as I start to gain the information that you learn in your undergrad. That information and just common knowledge just started to infuse itself into my work and make me a little bit more resourceful with how I spent my time and I adapted myself and my interests to, I don't know, just make the most out of what I had to offer. Because through these years as a performer and teacher choreographer, I also developed a lot of ability to facilitate in a variety of different forums and capacities, depending on whatever was right in front of me ended up giving me were social implications to my work, adding definition to how I actually wanted to spend my time. Like I said, without strategically planning how to be a social entrepreneur or start some sort of social project, it just sort of came naturally as to what I had to offer and always, being a sort of giving person because that's the sort of environment I was brought up in, it was a very giving and nurturing environment. Um, I just listened to the pulse of the environment that I was in and was ready for action, because that's just how I like to spend my time. Um, nothing fancy about it.
Christopher Erk:So, essentially, as I was going to college, I was also teaching at college. So I was. I mean, it's kind of interesting how I, how I got my my. The first day I was adjunct faculty at Wright State University in Dayton, ohio, was the day before I received my diploma in the mail as an adult. But you know, it just goes to show what sort of street cred can do if, if the right people can be exposed to it and they understand what it is that you're bringing to the table, they can make it work.
Christopher Erk:So, teaching at Wright State University, attending Sinclair University, teaching at dance studios in the area, living in Dayton, which is kind of this blue collar we can call it a blue collar sort of industrial town that has background in being inventive and creating new products for the world and also working with like I had a relationship with a senior citizen dance company. So you're noticing, I have all these different sort of my feet in all these different pods. And then, since I wasn't living in New York City at the time, I had a New York City hustle about me, but crickets chirping in some way, so I had the capacity for more, even though it already seemed like I was doing a lot. So, in that spare time and since I was teaching these people who may not have necessarily been exposed to the sort of experiences that I had been given and or created or had the opportunity for in my world uh, my travels, um, it sort of was this like recipe for for growth where I was like, like people were really into it, I was teaching improvisation based exercises and I know this is a long winded way to get to the answer of your question, but this sets the base and the tone for everything that subsequently came and it became the sort of the bedrock of all of the stuff that I think we're here to talk about. So universities, colleges and recreational dance troops nothing but spare time and I have the resources because I'm working and I personally love to dance in my spare time. I want to create in my spare time. I don't want to just be hanging out when I'm done at work, walking around the neighborhood and just sort of looking at the birds fly by. So the cool thing about being plugged into the academic environments in Dayton is that there's this downtown revitalization that's going on, where you have this sort of industry town that everybody moved out of and this sort of city that's sort of crumbling from the inside out. You know you have the artists who are taking advantage of these cheap resources to bring art spaces into old factory buildings.
Christopher Erk:And I'm a theater kid. I grew up in musical theater. I grew up stomping around the streets of Hartford, connecticut, at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. It was the school of the Hartford Ballets where I met Amber. So I also, although being very suburban. I also daily spent a lot of my time in Hartford, in the inner city, interacting in a very sort of diverse culture environment and a very nurturing environment where the people that I was going to school with we were all expressing ourselves honestly and developing these amazing bonds through the theater and the arts that I always gravitated towards the theater kids of the town. So here I am in Daytonitated towards the theater kids of the town. So here I am, in Dayton. I find the theater kids Because I'm relatively young still too, although I'm teaching and facilitating and stuff like that, because I was pretty precocious getting to where I got to, so I'm still wanting to hang out with the theater kids.
Christopher Erk:And then they're telling me, oh, do you know what Front Street is? And I'm like what's Front Street street? And front street is this building that used to be a factory building, that you have all these like artists who are sort of like crawling around the insides of this building creating amazing stuff. And within not very long I had a studio space in this building where I just threw a wood floor together. I could be there all hours of the night making whatever noise I wanted to do, excuse me, and what happened was it's kind of like, if you build it, they will come, sort of thing. I'm in the room Now, all of a sudden, I'm like posting things about what I'm doing, and then people are like, oh, what's that?
Christopher Erk:And then slowly, but not so slowly because it sort of like caught, there was a genuine demand for it. This is where I was like, oh, this is a testimony to the work and as to what the people want. In fact, not me saying the world needs this, let me write a grant and try to get a studio. It was like people just came right, me that also shooting forward. That is the sort of idea about what sustainable programming can be. It's basically what are the people who are participating paying for themselves? And it wasn't like a business, it was just anyway, they, they paid with their social capital, right? Um?
Christopher Erk:So all of a sudden I had a tap troupe coming to this studio and they think it's neat being in the downtown Dayton revitalized sort of community, the arts community. They come from the suburbs and come to my little sort of like attic dance studio and I'm teaching them improvisation-based exercises. I'm teaching them how to draw houses and flowers with four crayons, but through dance medium and how everybody can do very simple things in a structured environment that is still self-expressive and they're at the wheel, but it's contained and we're actually building language and format and contextual frameworks within which they can express themselves to others who also know this language. Right, I was doing I was bringing people together based on their age group, not necessarily their own perceived levels, you know, and it was really an interesting transition because I had some advanced dancers who may have been a little older, hanging out with beginners who were their same age and they're going wait, I'm advanced, I'm like, yeah, yeah, but you guys communicate with each other on a level right when you're developing your own understanding, you're drawing your house, you're building your house to your best capacity right within your own historical context, and they're doing the same thing and, although you might be more sophisticated, you still understand the sort of worldly sort of impacts that are influencing what you're producing, right. So that was a really interesting sort of catch is that I just started bringing people together, improvising and then once and then slowly building, like there's also the idea of creating manageable content for people so they understand the art of simplicity, so they don't feel like they need to be doing anything that is perceived to be impressive, to actually captivate and move an audience and inspire an audience to maybe want to participate and join themselves. So I also was giving them a sense of here's the choreography, here's what we're going to do, and if it's so simple that it's boring, it's only then you can put your shell on top of it and you can wear your costume Right. And that's where we started to create. Very simply and honestly.
Christopher Erk:I've performed in choreographed for corporate work for years and years and years, up to this point where I worked for a company where we would custom craft entertainment for corporate meetings and three, four a month. There's a different mission, there's a different objective and the client has a different ask, a different ask and my, the company that I worked for, either I was performing or, like I said, helping choreograph. Um, we would have to custom craft based on the situation. So I already do this right, but without like a social angle. So what I started to do was create these little formats and get these people my people, our company, our squad out on the street performing at arts functions in Dayton in front of people, and these people may not have been dancing for a month. But I wanted and I had a genuine need to get them activated, because they were just there and I had come from such a such a diverse background and breadth of experience that I knew how to an audience participation for big you know, like I already knew how to be on stage and and conduct an audience and have a group of people follow me and sort of lead the charge, and over time they um learn the format and then it became easy peasy. That's just what we do, right, shooting forward to the rest of you know the time between going to college and where I am now.
Christopher Erk:Essentially, once I learned how to do this or once I learned about what was happening with my company and Dayton, I ended up leaving Dayton, sadly, but then I carried on back to New York City where I ended up going to the new school to finish my college studies, and then I started doing the same thing I was doing with Dayton, even with more knowledge and experience. I was taking grad credits too. As an undergrad I had like 12 graduate credits because I knew what I was looking to do. Once I had Dayton, I knew we were on to something, and me going back to New York and going to the new school was all about. I need to add definition to this so we can pitch to people who speak the language of I don't know what you're doing, but I need to understand, in a way like how do you what do? How do we define what we're doing? What is this? It's? It's it's engagement, social engagement, it's facilitations, it's mediation. Right, I'm learning these words and then I'm just, and then I'm.
Christopher Erk:My community is not necessarily Dayton, it's the Center for Social Innovation at New York. In New York City, you start Lehigh building with all these like amazing social entrepreneurs, like it's, and I'm just like milling and mixing with these people. And there's this exponential growth in my understanding of the work that I was doing there and I started to apply these methods to every single opportunity that was put towards me. And if I still had spare time which I had spare time not just because I was in Dayton, it wasn't the only reason like I still found ways to have spare time living as a New Yorker, I still had projects as a New Yorker, you know like. So it wasn't like I had to be in Dayton. I'm just a hustler. I know how to make that work, so I would essentially tap factor any opportunity that I had.
Christopher Erk:So if I was called in to do something, I would start adding social implications to it. I would add a twist, and this I and and I became, since I knew how to define it. I knew how to tell people this is what I want to do now. What do you think about this? It's actually an enhanced version. You get all the stuff that you thought you were going to get with me, but we can add a spin on it.
Christopher Erk:So, rather than performing at Carnegie hall for a foundation, I would. I'd pitch a program that's a four-week program that gets the people who were the fundraisers for participating with me and my professional friends on stage for their own fundraiser, and they didn't know that this could happen. But I pitch it and they go okay, and then they trust, and then we do, and then we execute, and then we reflect and go wow, that worked. So it didn't take long for me to just go boom, boom, boom.
Christopher Erk:Anything I did wherever I went, I was adding this social factor to things and people were eating it up and loving it factor to things, and people were eating it up and loving it. And, um, I also found I could do it in an hour or I could do it over weeks, weeks at a time. You know, I was living in Sarasota, florida, for six weeks and I pitched a program with the Oslo rep theater down there while I was performing at the theater I was like, well, I do eight shows a week, but I have all this time I built a huge community project and it was fantastic. And all of those people got on stage at the Oslo Rep for our closing performance and performed with the cast of this show, broadway performers Surely that engagement and that outreach helped bring more audience members.
Christopher Erk:There's also that, right. It just so happens that it's just what the world responds to, and that's why, when you start to look into the triple bottom line instead of just capital gains from your opportunities the social and the environmental impacts that you're creating it's like a no-brainer and it just feels good. Right, but for me, I just need. It's just how I wanted to spend my time. Yeah, you know, it's just how I wanted to spend my time. I don't want to be just sitting around on a gig again, like Joffrey Ballet. I'm teaching in Miami for a week, right, and I have a schedule where I teach three classes a day, right, and to these ballet dancers okay. Meanwhile we're at this university and it's on the website. I'm very sorry that I don't remember the name of the group that we were working with, but I proposed because I also was brought down by an engaged thinker, somebody who has a social mind about their work. Her name's Jo Mato, who's also a very good friend of Amber, all from the Hartford Ballet, and this is where I was trained this way. I was indoctrined into this way of thinking, right? So I'm working with Jo and we just come up with this idea to engage with the university. So I literally in a week, taught the ballet dancers who are not tap dancers or may not even have much interest in it. How do we give them something that's just not them trying to do something that may be a little wonky and weird, maybe not have a good experience, but how can we create something useful for them? And it's really not manipulation. It's not like trying to like put peanut butter on a pill or something. It's just really like a fun, engaging way. We made it a game. We taught them how to be teachers of tap dance. In a week we connected with another community and there's a video on my website about all of these things I'm talking about. You can see on my website the tapfactororg the testimony, the content that was created, a little bit of an insert of my reflection of the work.
Christopher Erk:But we split the dancers up up with these groups of like five or six, seven kids in each group. They taught basic improv. It's like teaching them how to play patty cake. I teach you how to play patty cake and you go teach them how to play patty cake. We all learn patty cake in our own worlds and then we come together and we're all doing patty cake together and we go oh, now you know how to play patty cake and you know how to play patty cake, and now we can all play patty cake. Patty cake is a lot of fun. Oh well, I do it this way and you do it this way, and oh, that's really cool.
Christopher Erk:Now I see you in a way that I've never seen you before. I've experienced what it takes to go through this process of what is this? Do I like this? Wait, okay, I see that they're doing it. That's kind of neat. Oh wait, now I'm understanding this. I got this. Wait, they're doing it too. This is okay. We're doing it together. Oh, but we can maybe do this too. And ah, okay, I got this. I want to show other people. It's just it's math.
Nick Petrella:Other people right, it's just it's math. And you've created back from dayton. You basically had a safe space where people could could come in and learn, because you you're vulnerable when you go out and learn and doing stuff, especially if you're not used to tap, dancing or things like that, and you've just carried that throughout.
Christopher Erk:So you found something that works easy to replicate and and that's the whole thing, and you said that you know, and that's kind of where I see my work heading, heading. Now, you know, I did take a little bit of a step back, especially during the pandemic. Um, I went back out on tour, I traveled and, um, I refocused on myself as a performer. It's again, it's circumstantial, right. Yeah, I and you have a lot of questions here that ask me a lot of things about my business, right, and I can definitely touch on all these questions. But really I'm now at a stage where this all essentially is happenstance in my circumstances, of me booking work and making the most out of these opportunities. And then there were ripples that allowed for continued opportunities, especially with the Best Buddies organization, which is Anthony Shriver's organization, and I had a little bit of a sort of um, some repeat circumstances with them where I would, I facilitated more than one thing for them, right, um, and it was tremendous, excuse me. And um, some stuff was catchy. But really I'm still living in New York, I still like, oh, this gig came up, I'm going to make the most out of this. This gig came up, most out of this. I'm going to college, I'm learning all this stuff, I'm also getting a richer understanding of the work that I was doing, which I had a funky situation where I actually doubled back and went. Am I even doing this the right way? I'm not.
Christopher Erk:I'm now not like, oh, I want to go and do this with everybody and we can change the world. Now I'm starting to ask myself who am I to put myself as an outsider in someone else's environment, build up some opportunity for them of actualization and then leave without anything to create a sustainable platform for them to move forward? And that's sort of like the curse of nonprofits. As I understand it, it's let's get these guys going and give them what they need and then, once they become dependent on this need, then we take the funding away. And then it's like this is the stuff that sends chills to my body. This is the tough stuff, yeah. And then what you start to see is you start to see other organizations that are doing social good from a capitalistic standpoint and I came across some seriously ethical questions for myself.
Christopher Erk:So through all of this, it's like you know, pick your fast food chain, let's just say, just because it tastes good and just because you like it and just because you keep wanting to go back for more. That does not necessarily mean it's good for you, right, and that can be, and it can be even applied to the arts. You can be doing damage, even though something might feel good and I'm not saying I was doing damaging stuff like I have a. In all of this background, all of these accounts and iterations of the programming that I've done, um, you will have positive testimony from everybody who's participated and I can go to my grave now I'm 43. I can go to my grave now knowing I absolutely have served the world in some way, that I can rest easy with it's.
Christopher Erk:Without a doubt and I'm not saying that for myself, I could say that in front of anybody who was there as well, because we were all there. We were reflections of each other. That is tremendous work. But I think once I had the opportunity to go back out on tour after doing a slew of great work, I took it Because that was the opportunity. At the time I had just graduated college. I got called up by Tap Dogs, 20 years later from when I joined, to be the lead in the show, to tour China and Germany to get a New York city company ready for an off broad, unlimited, off Broadway run where I was going to be the lead and the dance captain. And I always had these Broadway dreams.
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Christopher Erk:But it fell out of fashion. For me probably did, because I did have such a sort of featured experience and I was dropped into a show. If you're familiar with Tap Dogs, it's six people on stage for the entire show and it's had. It has like an edgy feel. It's contemporary, it's cool, it's neat, it had a novelty to it. And that novelty since I was a precocious kid in the show.
Christopher Erk:I started off as a swing, which is somebody who's ready to jump in for anybody at any time in case anything happens. This was a dangerous show which happened often where people needed to show off. It was high energy. It was a highly physical show and people needed to show off. It was high energy. It was a highly physical show and people needed to show off or people got injured. And this kid over here who's just like sitting on the wings, just ready, coach, throw me in.
Christopher Erk:I ended up performing all six roles in the show in the first six months, wow, of being in the show. So now I'm the dance captain at 17. Now I'm the one who's being called to the European company when the US company closes because, oh, eric's available, let's get him over here. We need him over here. So I became international heavyweight swing, tap, dog dance captain sort of guy. Yes, it's true, it's just what happened, okay and uh, but it was really neat because um it, uh, it, but it was neat, but it formatted me into this guy, right. So the broadway thing fell out of fashion for me and it's fair enough. I'm like a young teenager, like long hair piercings, like traveling the world with this rock and roll tap show.
Christopher Erk:I'm like I don't want to be on Broadway just doing Anchors Away. I'd go to Broadway auditions and I was like these are not my people, this is not my scene, get me out of here. So, coming back with Tap Dogs, 20 years later I I had a refreshed sense of theater had changed. The jukebox musical was getting very popular. When I was younger, the Disney musical and I was a theater kid. These shows were not cool and this is what was happening to Broadway. I'm like you know what? Who needs it anyway? But then Broadway got sort of cool again in my opinion, or I developed a different sense of appreciation for it as I grew older. Sure. So going back to New York, I was like, oh so I'm going to lead up a Broadway show and then there I can maybe use that leverage to transfer into maybe a Broadway situation yeah, where I'm not necessarily starting at the base, base, base. So it sort of took me out of that work and then I started producing shows for cruise ships. Because that show never happened, I didn't end up going back to New York, the theater fell through circumstances. But at that time I met my wife in China and then I started producing shows for a ship where my company would go out four, five, six times a year and we would do two-week tours and we would live as guests on the ship and we would perform twice. So they were guest artist contracts on ship. They weren't necessarily cruise ship contracts where we are traveling on the ship for six months. It was kind of a bougie way to was a bougie way because it was the number one luxury ship in the world, um, but it was. It was a bougie way to perform on a ship, um. So I just started doing that. But again along the way, like I'm teaching on the ship, they're like okay, what can we do? Can we engage you with the guests? Yeah, let's do an all-inclusive class with the guests, and so that the nature of that work was always there.
Christopher Erk:And then when I finally got back to la, I got married, moved to la, left new york, developed a new york company that was also going traveling around um. Then I get called to go back to dayton, um, to do a 36 school tour where I would travel to the high schools with a small group of the best tap dancers of the world. There were two of them, but they're two of the best tap dancers of the world. One is like an apostle of tap and one is like, just, he's just like one of the, the icons that are just have been born up into the scene and it's just so fortunate to have them come and live with me in Dayton for six months and tour to create a school show. Right, I got a call from the Muse Machine and they're like hey, we do these things and I already had the relationship in Dayton. They're like would you be interested? So what did I do? I pitched it and they go that's great. And then we did it and it was all about the same ethos that I was talking with you before. So it's always been readily available, but it was still like circumstantial and I think, like where I'm at now is I am in a phase where I'm actually getting back into, not not getting back into. I've started teaching again. So I took a long time off out of the studio Once I moved to LA pandemic, got into film and television, started to be the performer again, put down the management and the development and all of this, the questions who are you?
Christopher Erk:What are you doing? What's the purpose? Like and just did it had some me time. As far as like cause I am a performer at heart. That's where my passion is.
Christopher Erk:You know, I I think some of sometimes I would get carried away by some of the sort of administrative aspects of what I was doing, and it was hard because I was still a one-man show doing a lot of these things.
Christopher Erk:And I had because everything, since it was so circumstantial, everything was a pitch, everything was a new opportunity, everything was great, you know, but it was still like I was the charge. So now my interest is to get back into the academic aspect of things I've had some fun with. I've traveled again, I've performed again and, and now I'm finding that, when I started teaching again recently, I'm wildly passionate about being in the classroom again. It feels like the right place for me to be. It feels like the right time, and every single thing that I was doing 10 years ago with the tap factor is, yeah, still relevant, still hip, still contemporary, still ready to go. It held up all this time. Like you can look at my website, you wouldn't be able to tell maybe, maybe the fashion's changed slightly. You wouldn't be able to tell whether we did it yesterday or 20 years ago it holds up right.
Christopher Erk:Actually, I did notice that so I, uh, I'm ready to get back to this work. Um, I, as far as the ethics have concerned themselves, this always happens, right, I catch on to something and I feel that I have to try, like, okay, now this is what we have. Now I got to do this, now this is, and this is what's going to come from it and this is what I should expect. And this and that's nothing to do with how lean work goes right, it's about pivoting, it's about being present, right, and that's all about being lean and being present in the moment, listening to my constituents about what their demands and wants are in this present time, being able to adapt to that, because that is what they want and that is what my service is. That is the sort of the whole thing about why this stuff works.
Christopher Erk:And I think what was happening as I was starting to, as I was codifying everything, it was getting to be too prescribed, where it then started to feel like more of like a manipulation, like I'm gonna start going to non-profits and I'm going to get their non-profit money and it's gonna pay me, and like yo, like it's just. It started to get squirrely and I'm thankfully, because not everybody operates like this. Thankfully enough, I had some ethical compass that steered me away from leaning into that too much where I felt like I was gonna like. But nowadays what I want to do more of is get back to my instinctive nature and just trust and follow through. Just like I was present in Dayton in those times, I want to be present now.
Christopher Erk:But now I do have the definition and I and I just want to get more um, more engaged back with the academics and collaborate more so I can actually develop the programming. So, again, so it's there. So, like the front reach front street studio was there and people came, I have the programming it's here and people can at least have access to it, which is program-based um material that is meant to go out to administrators, um at institutions, yes, schools and teachers, where people can learn how to teach the good stuff of what I was doing themselves and administer some of this interactivity, these games, without me having to be present. And then, yeah, it's there for them as they want it. So that's where I'm at now as far as that work goes.
Andy Heise:So you alluded to this just a minute ago about balancing all of those. So, with all of those projects, with all the things that you've done, there is the administrative side of like, okay, we got to make sure that the funding's there and we got to make sure we have the right people in place and that we have schedules and timelines, so managing all those sort of administrative things. Were you doing that? Or how did you balance all of those administrative things for those projects, while also, you know, looking after the artistic integrity of those types of projects?
Christopher Erk:I was. I mean, I was, I was doing all of that and it got to the point where, you know, I, I, I would sort of take an inventory of who was involved and what we all could bring to the fullest capacity so we could all support each other to to make the most out of it. So that's also why I think a lot of these things work too, because it wasn't just about showing up and tap dancing and leaving and going. That was great, it was, it was, it was a we're all in this together sort of thing. Um, so that's also definitely something I took into consideration, but on paper and it helped.
Christopher Erk:But on paper, yeah, like, most of the time, for all of my projects I've, it's been me doing all of that stuff and I have a cup like a close friend, um, shout out, anthony russo, who would and and he would always be there for me in certain circumstances where, like you know, for the dayton show, I had to build the floor, um, and he just he took that over, you know like, and he helped us understand that basically, he's just he co-signs on the stuff that I do and I have trust and I go. I'm like looking over at him. When I'm doing these I'm like you know we cool it was, it was working you buy this.
Christopher Erk:Like, and I would be there for him in the same situation for his, his stuff. So I've had, I've had some angels. You know that I've always leaned into, but yeah, no, it's always been me and fortunately, like, going to school sort of helped me facilitate. You know how this stuff sort of worked, yeah, yeah, so, but it's part of what made it difficult.
Christopher Erk:You know, managing talent, right, who are also your friends, right, bringing them into a variety of different environments and circumstances is part of what was the most difficult thing for me and what made the sort of spark go out idea that, well, once it's developed into sustainable programming, yeah, right, then you have the opportunity to bring that team in and then then you can like actually pay people for doing this sort of stuff, um, but uh, yeah, we never, we never quite got there, um, because, again, like it was very circumstantial and it was very much like, uh, it's like I found an ingredient but it hadn't been milled yet and we haven't felt worked on an actual way of producing it and that's sort of like sustainable, replicable way, which is where I'm at now, where I I now see that I don't necessarily want to be a fleeting performer, tap factoring things.
Nick Petrella:But I actually just want to like lock this in and set it and forget it and let it run yeah, it sounds like you have a blueprint and then when you go back it should be easier and maybe it will sustain totally, totally, totally.
Christopher Erk:I think the main thing now is um, I don't feel like I need to pitch it as hard anymore.
Andy Heise:I think people just attract to it.
Christopher Erk:It's a proven product, so to speak, that has a track record, because I have my own personal reflections about how I can do better and what's working, what's not. But I've just had a point where I know that whenever I start opening my mouth about this stuff, or whenever I get into a classroom and people start like getting a sense of what it is, it's actually like super second nature to me. Yeah, and it's so what I am and what it is, where I can sit here and ramble for 20 minutes about what it is and it's still. It's like I'm charting it. You know you can clock how it all fits together and that it's a thing, and I'm less inclined to be so reflective to a fault and more ready to just be like, yeah, this is what it is and you want it and I get it, and I'm here to facilitate. Let's get to work Exactly, yeah.
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