Meet Ella Rosewood | Founder & CEO of Crelata® | On-Demand Dance Classes for K-12

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ella Rosewood and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ella, every day, we about how much execution matters, but we think ideas matter as well. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I came up the idea for my business on my bike commute home from work. For the past ten years I taught dance at a middle school in Brooklyn, NY. You read that right. I am a dance teacher IN a school! I was doing my thing pedaling, dodging cars, and decompressing. I started to think about how difficult it is to find engaging and school appropriate video dance resources. I thought about how many YouTube dance tutorials my students and I tried during Covid that were complete disasters. I thought about how I knew great dance pedagogy that no one was using in video dance instruction. Then I thought of how my husband works in film and TV. It would be a perfect match if we combined our talents. When I got home I told him my idea to make video dance lessons for kids in K-12 schools. I remember crying the whole time I was telling him because I was so passionate about getting school kids to dance. My husband agreed that it was a good idea and we set to work. The most exciting thing was realizing that Crelata could bring dance to schools that would never otherwise have dance instruction thus expanding the opportunity and access to dance in K-12 schools.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Crelata is an on-demand dance education platform for K-12. Our mission to make culturally relevant dance education more accessible through technology. Think, Salsa, Hip-Hop – dance styles that students are excited to learn in school in front of their peers. Currently, only 3% of students in the USA have the opportunity and access to participate in dance classes at school. We want to change that.

One of the best parts of Crelata is that teachers don’t need any prior knowledge to bring dance into their school. It can be scary to try to teach dance when you’re not an expert! All teachers need to do is click play on our videos and their students will be up dancing while meeting the National Core Arts Standards for Dance. We also offer hundreds of pages of downloadable supplemental materials like lesson plans, word walls, flash cards, extension activities, etc.

We believe that dance is for everyone. We incorporated tons of educational strategies to make sure that Crelata content supports a wide range of students. Crelata dance lessons are also accessible with ASL interpretation as well as accurate English and Spanish closed captions. We wish that other companies would make this the standard.

The biggest lesson we have learned so far is that all good things take time. Relationships are so important and school systems move slow.

I want the world to know that dance education in schools is absolutely essential! If you have kids or know anyone who works at a school I want you to share crelata.com with them. Tell them that their school needs dance and that they can easily offer it with Crelata.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Welcome to Brooklyn, NY! We will be avoiding all the touristy things and doing the following:
-Taking a daily walk to Brooklyn Bridge Park to see the river, skyline, Statue of Liberty, and people watch.
-Eating. A lot. Bagels, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Chinese, Italian, etc.
-Seeing shows: dance, visual art, theater, music – at least one of each.
-Visiting Prospect Park, the Botanical Garden, and museums.
-Spending a day at Rockaway Beach floating in the waves.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Shout out to my family and friends for their endless support and belief in me. Shout out to Jody Arnhold for her mentorship and steadfast vision that every child should have to take dance in school whether they want to or not. Shout out to the first person I told my business idea to (besides my husband) who has always been there to talk, Jeff Vinokur of Generation Genius. Shout out to my attorney Elissa D. Hecker, Esq. for being there for me in so many different ways since the beginning! Shout out to Girl Scouts of the USA for molding me into an entrepreneur since age 5 and for teaching me to leave things better than I found them. Shout out to everyone that is part of Crelata – artists, staff, musicians, interpreters, teachers, students, and everyone who is working in some way to make dance more widely available in schools. Thank you!

Website: https://crelata.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crelata/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crelata

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crelata

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ZPBInnGzTNFD–3zgkO9g

Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-rosewood-b6165925

https://www.tiktok.com/@crelata

Image Credits
Alison Graham