Today we’d like to introduce you to Kylah Kuura.
Hi Kylah, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in St. Louis, where I originally trained in jazz, modern, and contemporary dance for the first ten years of my life. In 2012, I moved to Texas, which completely shifted my relationship to dance. There were a lot of cultural differences, and at the time, the most immediately accessible path into dance culture here was drill team — something we didn’t really have in the Midwest. Back then, I wasn’t particularly interested in it, though now, after living in Texas for so long, I can honestly say I probably would’ve loved it.
Eventually, I connected with an upperclassman who introduced me to what I now know as the Dallas hip-hop dance community. That connection led me to competing at World of Dance with a local team during my senior year of high school, and it completely changed the trajectory of my life.
After graduating, I attended the University of Texas at Dallas, where I eventually became the director of one of the university’s competitive dance teams. The team was part of a larger intercollegiate dance organization that spans multiple universities across Texas and Oklahoma, with large-scale competitions held each semester. That experience was intense, exhausting, and incredibly formative. It taught me leadership, creative direction, team management, and how to build under pressure — all things that would later become foundational to my career.
At the same time, I had already started teaching and choreographing at studios around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Eventually, I found myself directing two teams at one studio, one of which happened to be Team Athena. After COVID, the studio dissolved its in-house teams and released them to the directors. My co-director, Darius Brown, and I decided to continue building Athena independently.
At the time, Athena was only in its second season. We’ve now completed our ninth season, and what started as a small local team has evolved into a much larger creative organization and community. Since then, Team Athena has earned five World of Dance Dallas titles, trained and worked with well over a hundred dancers, and expanded far beyond traditional competition performances.
Today, we produce concept videos, photoshoots, live performances, workshops, and intensives. We bring in guest choreographers from around the world, collaborate with local music artists, and travel throughout Texas teaching classes and training teams. Recently, it’s started to feel like our work is reaching beyond even the South. I’ve been recognized several times out of state, teams have licensed our music and concepts for their own competitions, and we’ve even had groups overseas reach out asking permission to recreate our sets for performances.
It’s surreal sometimes to look back and realize that something which started as a small community-based team in Dallas has slowly grown into something with an international reach.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. Building Team Athena has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, but it has also been incredibly challenging in ways people probably don’t always see from the outside.
For one, we run an all-women’s team with an extremely wide age range. Our youngest dancer is 11 years old, and our oldest is 31. We have middle school students, high school students, college students, working professionals, single mothers, married women — dancers from completely different financial backgrounds, life experiences, and stages of womanhood. At different points, our roster has been as small as 15 dancers and as large as 52.
When you’re leading that many women from that many different walks of life, you quickly realize the work becomes about much more than dance. People bring their full lives into the room with them, and over the years we’ve learned that creating a healthy, supportive environment is just as important as creating great performances.
One of the biggest lessons for me personally was learning how important community and joy are to the longevity of a team. Early on, I think I was very focused on the work itself — rehearsals, choreography, competition prep — but over time I realized that “all work and no play” eventually burns people out. So we started intentionally building more of the team culture within rehearsals. We host Christmas parties, Friendsgivings, Galentine’s events, movie nights, workshops, and group activities. This past season, I also introduced a mental health and reflection initiative where dancers are placed into small groups and given weekly journal prompts to discuss together at rehearsal. Watching those relationships grow has honestly been one of the most fulfilling parts of all of this.
At this point, Team Athena has become much bigger than a dance team. Some girls meet their best friends here. Some become roommates. Some find mentorship. Some find real sisterhood. We’ve built a genuine community, and maintaining that culture takes constant effort and care. A major part of that is definitely from the effort of our captains, Mattie Ostlund and Sandie Phan, who spearhead a lot of the event planning.
Another major challenge has been logistics. We don’t own a studio, so we operate out of multiple spaces across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, primarily Kumbala Dance Studios, Centre for Dance, and Studio 12 Dance Center. Coordinating rehearsal schedules around multiple studios, especially with a team our size, can become very complicated very quickly. We’re so grateful to the studios that we can call home, as well as the staff and owners that make us feel extremely welcome.
And financially, every single aspect of what we do requires investment. There are studio rentals, instructor fees, travel accommodations, costumes, props, production expenses, photography, videography, workshops, guest choreographers — the list never really ends. Even though our dancers pay tuition and we fundraise, the organization continues to grow every year, which means the scale of what we’re responsible for grows too.
One thing that’s always been very important to me is making sure the experience feels worth it for our dancers. We now have people relocating from other Texas cities like Houston, Austin, and San Antonio specifically to train with us, and that comes with a huge sense of responsibility. I want every dancer to feel like the investment they’re making — financially, emotionally, and physically — is meaningful.
I also think one of the more difficult parts of building a team culture is the constant cycle of turnover. Every season, veterans graduate or move on, new dancers come in, and you’re essentially rebuilding chemistry and trust over and over again. It takes time to establish a strong identity and culture that can survive those transitions.
Now that we’ve completed our ninth season, I finally feel like we’ve truly found our voice as an organization. From the outside, I think we probably look very polished and established, but behind the scenes it has taken years of hard work, trial and error, financial sacrifice, leadership development, and emotional labor to build Team Athena into what it is today.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
When people ask what I do, the simplest way I describe it is that I specialize in creative direction and training and development for pre-professional dancers.
A major part of what we do through Team Athena is preparing dancers for the next stage of their careers, whatever that may look like for them. Not every dancer who comes through our doors necessarily wants to become a commercial dancer in Los Angeles, but we have had dancers go on to work professionally with artists like Doechii, Doja Cat, and Tyla, as well as perform at major award shows like the Grammys and BET Awards. We’ve also had dancers move into pro-dance sports organizations like the Dallas Mavericks and Cowboys Rhythm & Blue, while one of our younger dancers has gone on to be an LSU Tiger Girl.
For me, success isn’t just about where someone ends up professionally. It’s about whether the training and environment we created helped prepare them mentally, physically, creatively, and emotionally for whatever comes next, especially things that have nothing to do with dance. We’re building strong women, not just strong dancers.
The actual training itself is very expansive. Our dancers receive strength and conditioning training, foundational hip-hop training, heels training, and exposure to styles like popping, vogue, and house. They learn how to perform on camera, how to work on professional sets, how to navigate live performances, and how to carry themselves in professional creative environments. Many of our dancers gain real-world experience through music videos, live performances, assisting opportunities, and convention circuits.
Over the last eight years, I’ve watched dancers completely transform through the systems and environments we’ve built, I’m directly teaching them myself or orchestrating the larger structure around them. That’s why I specifically describe my work as training and development.
On the creative direction side, choreography is honestly just one piece of what excites me. I’ve always loved world-building. I think my theater background and childhood imagination naturally pushed me toward that. Dance simply became the doorway into all of the other things that come with directing a full production.
With Team Athena, we’ve created fully immersive competition worlds — from outer space concepts to jungle-inspired productions to our recent Y2K block party concept. I love building the atmosphere around the choreography just as much as the choreography itself.
I’m heavily involved in sound design and music direction, working closely with our DJ to build mixes that feel cinematic and emotionally intentional. I love lighting design, costume direction, styling, hair and makeup concepts, production meetings, building treatments, and collaborating with prop designers and guest choreographers to make sure every piece contributes to the larger vision. What fulfills me most is seeing something that originally existed only in my imagination fully come to life in front of an audience.
What I’m most proud of is the fact that I’ve been able to build a real career out of something so unconventional. I do have a business administration degree, which has helped tremendously with the operational side of running large organizations and productions, but at the end of the day, this is still a very nontraditional path.
I’ve built a life where I get to create for a living, inspire large groups of women, travel, teach, direct productions, and continuously evolve creatively. And I think my younger self — the little girl choreographing imaginary productions in her basement — would be completely blown away knowing that those ideas eventually became real.
As far as what sets me apart, I would say my attention to detail, my discipline, and my constant desire to outdo myself creatively. I tell my dancers all the time that we are competing against ourselves. The current cast is working to beat the cast from the year before. We’re trying to raise our own standard.
I also think I’m someone who understands that having big ideas is only a small part of the process. The real work is in the execution — the hours, the collaboration, the leadership, the refinement, and the ability to bring together the right people to make a vision fully come alive.
That combination of imagination, structure, and discipline is probably what defines my work most.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
One of the biggest things I would love to expand is our media and content team. In today’s world, visibility and storytelling through social media are incredibly important, and we experience so many beautiful moments that deserve to be documented properly. I would love to collaborate with people who are passionate about videography, editing, photography, social strategy, branding, and behind-the-scenes storytelling.
There are so many things I envision creatively — rehearsal documentaries, training content, day-in-the-life content, creative campaign shoots, mini interviews, concept trailers — but the reality is that my dancers are busy being dancers, and I’m usually balancing creative direction with the actual logistics of running the organization. Having a dedicated media team helping capture and shape those moments would be amazing.
Beyond that, financial support and sponsorship opportunities are something I’m extremely interested in exploring as the organization continues to grow. A lot of people don’t realize how expensive it is to sustain an independent creative organization at this scale. Studio rentals, props, costumes, travel, production costs, guest instructors, media, and competition expenses add up very quickly.
Long-term, I would absolutely love for Team Athena to eventually have a permanent home space — somewhere we can fully create, train, rehearse, film, and build community without constantly moving between locations.
And honestly, I would also love an assistant! Someone organized, proactive, creative, and excited about helping build something meaningful. At this point, so much of my brain is split between directing, teaching, producing, planning, mentoring, designing, communicating, editing, organizing, and problem-solving every single day. I wear a lot of hats. Having someone help support the operational side of things would create so much more room for expansion creatively.
More than anything, I’m always open to collaboration with people who genuinely believe in building impactful creative spaces and developing artists in meaningful ways. Whether that’s through sponsorship, media, teaching, production support, or creative partnerships, I’m excited for Team Athena to continue growing into something even bigger than what it already is.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.teamathenadtx.com
- Instagram: @teamathenadtx
- Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=team+athena
