Many people believe dance is not a sport. Kaufman Junior Jasmine Teng “wants to show people that dancers are so much more than people that just twirl around on the stage.” Because to her, dancers are also artists, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers capable of driving meaningful change.
Originally from Natick, Massachusetts, Teng has always been a performer, both on and off the stage. She came to Los Angeles with the dream of being a commercial dancer but also found inspiration through pursuing new academic interests in the Jimmy Iovine and Young Academy. She hopes to one day own a dance company or convention business, while also bringing dance into spaces of technology and STEM, where the art form is often overlooked.
Before she was performing on stages in front of thousands of people, she had to start somewhere.
Nichole Fortunato, Teng’s hometown dance studio director and owner, reflected on Teng’s start in dance. Teng started dancing at Broadway Bound when she was two years old, and they could tell that despite her age, she was incredibly talented and had an amazing facility as a dancer.
“As she got older, we were able to see that she had a great work ethic. So it was really the perfect trifecta for being successful,” Fortunato said.
Teng grew up at the dance studio. When she was 13, she began teaching dance at Broadway Bound, which has a teacher training program. Dancers can start in middle school as assistants to the teachers. They go through a teaching course and then once they’ve graduated from that course, they can then teach classes their junior and senior year here at the studio.
“She kind of took everything that she had learned here and then made it her own and created something new with the Boys and Girls Club, which was fantastic to see,” Fortunato said.
She gave private lessons and cleaned solos, then worked her way up to weekly group classes and choreographing competition pieces.
Now when she is back in New England, she said she teaches convention classes to hundreds of kids in a single weekend, which she called “the biggest dream come true ever.”
Teaching showed her how few kids get the chance to dance at all.
During her senior year of high school, she tackled the challenge of making youth dance accessible. Teng cold-emailed the Boys & Girls Club in her hometown, which had no existing arts programming and offered to start a first-of-its-kind program there.
“Dance is one of the most inaccessible activities you can kind of pursue,” she said. “Like, parents would drop so much money on dance every single year, and it wasn’t lost on me.”
Teng wanted to create a free dance program through her hometown Boys & Girls Club so more kids could access dance. She emailed them with the proposal: “I noticed you don’t have any arts programming whatsoever. I’m a dancer–I’m nationally award-winning—and I’d love to come in and volunteer and teach your club members dance once a week.”
The club said yes, and Teng built the program from the ground up, creating the curriculum and handling the planning and logistics herself, teaching every week for a year until graduation. It was her first time truly teaching beginners, and her students ranged from kindergarten through eighth grade, she said.
By the end of the year, the impact was unmistakable.
On a random day, Teng ran into one of her students and the girl’s mother in the grocery store. The mother thanked her and said her daughter showed her the choreography she learned every week.
“I almost started bawling in the middle of that grocery store aisle,” Teng said. “My dream has always been to perform, to go on tour. But also, beyond that, I want to leave a legacy. I want to leave an impact for what I do, and one of the ways of doing that is through teaching.”
Even though Teng left to start her college life at USC in the fall of 2024, the program didn’t end with her. She passed it on to the incoming seniors at her dance studio, and it has become a tradition of the senior class to pass it on each year.
“I have a very special type of respect for my dance friends back in Boston because they’re truly pursuing this dream even when the opportunity may not be there,” Teng said.
According to Teng, she can tell they’re doing it because they love it, not because they want to be onstage with a famous artist or be Instagram-famous. “They’re truly pursuing dance because they love the art form.”
According to Teng, dancing on the East Coast provided a small industry with limited opportunities for aspiring professional dancers and artists, while L.A. offered the opposite environment.
“I will say there is no difference in passion or drive among the dancers [on the East and West Coast]... but in L.A., you have an abundance of opportunity, and dancers are hungry for it,” Teng said.
Kaufman had been Teng’s dream school for years, but she didn’t always see dance as a career path. Coming from an Asian American family, she said she “never really realized that it was an option” to pursue the performing arts professionally. She assumed her path would be in STEM or business, with a more conventional, stable career.
As senior year and graduation approached, though, she realized she couldn’t give up dance. She loved it too much and had invested too much of herself in it to simply walk away.
If she hadn’t gotten into Kaufman, she said, she “would be at UCLA studying economics or chemistry.”
In Massachusetts, she had been a big fish in a little pond. At Kaufman, she was surrounded by dancers who took a competitive career as seriously as she did for the first time.
“That imposter syndrome is just constantly in your mind,” Teng said.
All she said she could think about as she transitioned to USC and L.A.’s dance culture was, “You’re not good enough to be here. You’re not smart enough. You’re not talented enough.”
Because all of her classes were geared toward dance, it took over nearly every part of her life both inside and outside the classroom. And when she wasn’t dancing at Kaufman, she was dancing somewhere else in L.A.
“It was truly just dance, dance, dance, dance, dance,” Teng said. “That was the most unfulfilled I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Though some dancers may use dance as an escape from everyday life, Teng accepted she needed the opposite.
“I realized that dance is not my life, and I don’t want dance to be my life,” Teng said. “I actually need outlets from dance to remain fulfilled in dance.”
During her sophomore year, she branched out. Teng joined clubs, including a sorority and applied for a progressive degree program, which accelerates the completion of a USC master’s degree alongside a bachelor’s degree in four years. She found that the time she spent outside Kaufman made her a stronger dancer inside it.
“I want to be a leader. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to do things more than performing,” Teng said.
That search led her to the Iovine and Young Academy. She originally planned to pursue Marshall’s entrepreneurship progressive degree, but she felt it wouldn’t connect as seamlessly with her dance background.
IYA’s interdisciplinary approach and its focus on creative problem-solving won her over. According to Teng, the program’s question of how to approach problems in unconventional ways is really inspiring for her as a dancer.
Teng sees room for dance in technology, from projection mapping to robot choreography, but her goal is broader than any one tool. In her pursuit of outlets from dance, she found ways to connect her interests unlike ever before.
“My mission at USC and beyond is to bring dance into spaces where it’s underestimated,” Teng said. “If you bring us into these processes and you bring us into these rooms, we can create so much change.”
Teng also found her way back to teaching. Through Kaufman Connections, a program run by Kaufman professor Tiffany Bong, BFA students and dance minors teach weekly hip-hop classes at 32nd Street Elementary School, around the corner from USC’s campus.
“That was a great way for me to continue that mission for access to dance education and spreading of cultural knowledge,” Teng said.
Teng has taught with the program for three semesters. It is currently on hiatus this semester while the school undergoes renovations, but she still calls it “one of the most fulfilling things ever.”
Working with young students also brings her back to why she started dancing. The lack of concern about making it perfect, Teng said, removed the intensity.
“They’re just worried about having a good time,” Teng said.
While teaching keeps Teng grounded, she is still chasing her potential. In commercial dance, the path there looks nothing like a typical career.
Teng’s path into commercial dance was shaped by a lifelong desire to go on tour. That dream became a reality this past summer when she joined the North American leg of Madison Beer’s tour as a backup dancer for the opening act, Vietnamese artist Thủy.
According to Teng, she booked the opportunity through a Kaufman connection who referred her to the tour’s choreographer, and the speed of the process made it feel both sudden and surreal. Within a week, she learned she was being considered, booked the job, began rehearsals and left for the first city on tour.
“I’ve been writing it in my journals. And, like, whenever someone asks me, like, ‘Oh, what’s the dream with dance?’ I’m like, ‘I want to go on tour. I want to go on tour so badly,’” Teng said.
According to Teng, commercial dance often does not follow a traditional application or recruiting process.
Dancers may be represented by an agent who sends them auditions and self-tape opportunities, but jobs can also come through personal connections, referrals and being in the right place at the right time.
“A dancer’s version of LinkedIn is our Instagram,” Teng said.
Social media is not just a networking platform for dancers but rather a public résumé and a way to make their work visible to the people who may hire them.
When Teng was considered for her part on the tour this summer, the choreographer looked through her Instagram instead of asking her to submit formal materials or audition in person.
“Ever since COVID, auditions are much less common,” Teng said. “And choreographers and casting directors go straight to Instagram to see if they want to book you or not.”
According to Teng, not every opportunity ends in a booking, and she has learned not to take rejection personally. In commercial dance, she explained, casting often comes down to a specific type, such as height, ethnicity or style, which dancers can’t control.
“Just because someone books this job that I didn’t get, that doesn’t mean that I’m bad or I’m not going to make it as a dancer,” she said. “That just simply means they were a better fit.”
What she can control, she said, is doing her best in the audition room and “presenting [herself] the best way I can on my social media. Everything else is completely out of my hands.”
For Teng, the tour was a rare opportunity.
“There’s a lot of dancers, professional dancers, that never do have that opportunity,” she said. “So even just the fact that I got to go on tour and dance around the country in front of thousands of people each night and get paid for it was just the craziest thing.”
Her dream artist to dance on stage with is Zara Larsson.
“I absolutely adore her and her dancers,” Teng said. “I really appreciate all that she stands for and her style and her aesthetic.” Tate McRae is also on Teng’s list. “That’s an obvious answer,” she said.
Teng’s first paid dance job was not a small introduction to the industry; it was a national tour completed just before her junior year at USC.
Now, her journey has come full circle. Whether she is performing, teaching or finding new ways to connect dance with other disciplines, Teng is helping continue to expand what performance can look like on and off the stage.
Edited by Camille Culbertson and Sammie Yen