More Than Choreography: Toby Myles, Kristina Cross & Brie Peña on Building Careers in Dance

And I really want to touch on this because I think this is a belief that you have.

And I also have this belief.

I always say I was born an artist.

I was always that kid that was making things, drawing things, trying to sell my artwork.

I went to art school.

ended up majoring in graphic design because it seemed like the smart thing to do.

And that has never left me.

And I've had businesses on the side.

I had a jewelry business for a number of years.

And so I have very often heard and been faced with the idea of the starving artist.

And I think you, you touch on that a little bit just now when you were talking about that, but maybe you can go a little bit deeper and just talk about like your, your, your values and your beliefs around the fact that as a creative person, you can be taken seriously and you can have a career doing something that you love, which is still to this day, the opposite of what a lot of people believe.

So either one of you wants to go first.

I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

I have some thoughts on that because I considered myself more of an artist.

Like I definitely had a bent towards that when I was in school.

Like I would win like the school art contests for, you know, whatever it was.

I was always, that was a thing that I felt like I was really good at.

And when I thought about going into advertising, it was because I was And I thought that that was that was going to be my life.

But what I realized along the way is that I'm actually better at running a business than I ever was at being any kind of an artist.

And I think that that is.

that has been really awesome because I love being around artistry and creativity and creative people, but I've had to kind of realize that, that even though I thought I was this creative that was like, creative genius.

I'm actually not, I'm sort of creative and good at those things.

I can, I can see when something's good, better than I can actually bring it to life myself, but I'm really good at running a business.

That has been just really awesome to realize, you know, I can, I can use the other half of my brain in a world that is you know, a creative space where I get kind of the best of both worlds.

And for me, that was, that was enlightening to