Creativity Connects with Mikki Wilson is a Creative Collective podcast that preserves and shares the stories of remarkable women connected to the North Shore community. Hosted by Mikki Wilson, founder of Dot Connector Consulting. Produced by Randyll Collum for Peabody TV. Sponsored by Jenni Stuart Fine Jewelry.
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Jump to:
- 00:00 Welcome, Emily Chandra
- 01:51 One person, one place, one thing
- 07:43 Prop moment: the Queens Collective photo
- 11:46 Who Emily was before dance became work
- 14:29 Three people under a gas station
- 17:57 From safe space to brave space
- 20:46 Beyond the business
- 25:30 Still becoming
- 28:12 Where to find Seacoast Stilettos
- 30:17 Thank-yous and credits
Keep Disrupting: Emily Chandra of Seacoast Stilettos in Peabody
Mikki and her guest both wore heels for this one. Emily Chandra is the founder and owner of Seacoast Stilettos, a dance and movement studio in Peabody, and a dancer, choreographer, yoga teacher and lifelong creative. Mikki has spotted the studio’s slogan on a hat and loves it: “Keep disrupting.” As she tells Emily, “I have a feeling there’s a lot more to your story than just a pair of stilettos.”
Mikki Wilson and Emily Chandra after taping Season 2, Episode 6 at Peabody TV. Photo by Randyll Collum for Creative Collective
A person, a place, a thing
Mikki opens the way she always does: one person, one place and one thing that shaped the woman you’ve become. Emily’s person is really two people, her mother and her grandmother. “And they raised me on meditation and music and art and poetry.” Her grandmother is a professor and a poet; her mom is a working musician who still gigs. In Emily’s family, a creative path wasn’t the risky choice. “I feel like if I was like, ‘I’m gonna be a doctor or a lawyer,’ they’d be like, ‘Well, okay, but is that really you?'”
Her place is many places: the yoga retreats she led around the world, solo travel, and learning to “find home in many different places.” Her thing is “my resilience and scrappiness.” Teaching yoga for very little pay, she was selling body scrubs on the side and dreaming up workshops, and “all of that really laid the groundwork for building a business down the road.” She learned it from her mom, who hung up her own gig posters around town: “That kind of idea that, like, we’ll figure it out.”
Where she shines
Emily got serious about dance in middle and high school, but she was always “the artsy hippie girl” in a family of musicians. Dance became the place she could ground herself. “It’s hard to dance and be somewhere else, right?” she says. “So it can kind of be a form of meditation in that way.” It was also community, friends, and a creative outlet.
“But when I’m in dance, I’m just like— I feel like I shine, and that I belong.”
Mikki agrees: in dance, “you really do have to be inside your body.”
Mikki and Emily on the Season 2 set at Peabody TV. Photo by Randyll Collum for Creative Collective
Three people under a gas station
Mikki’s research turned up a plot twist. The first Seacoast Stilettos heels class was “three people in a yoga studio underneath a gas station.” Emily looks back on that season of her life as “actually pretty rocky,” a time when she was “personally needing to reclaim my power as a woman.” The Me Too movement was happening at the same time, and she saw the same need everywhere: women wanting to reclaim their power.
The owner of the yoga studio where she worked wanted more feminine-focused movement. Emily asked, “What about a heels class?” At the time, she says, there were heels classes in New York and LA but “nothing in Boston.” She was living in Hampton, “hence the name Seacoast Stilettos, like New Hampshire Seacoast.”
She built it on a yoga idea. “What if we could teach a dance class that had the same kind of concept as yoga? You don’t have to be a yogi.” Everyone is welcome on the mat, “of all backgrounds, body types, levels,” so why not on the dance floor? “It just really felt like a party, and that was my mission.” The studio sat under a Dyno Mart, and “three people turned to like 30 pretty quick, and it took off from there.”
From safe space to brave space
Representation matters to Emily. “It’s just so empowering when you step into a studio… and you just see somebody that represents you, and you’re like, ‘I can feel sexy and feel good and feel like I belong here.'” Mikki knows that feeling from stand-up paddleboarding, where she saw “people that represent pieces of me, but I don’t see me,” and did it anyway. She also wants to connect Emily with Season 1 guest Shanel Anderson, who started her yoga studios to break the same stereotypes.
Then Mikki names what she sees: “Everybody says ‘safe space’ all the time, and I love a safe space. I feel like you are creating a brave space.” Emily says the studio changed its language for exactly that reason. “If we’re talking about being a brave space, that means we’re not afraid to speak up about what matters.”
With herself
Take Seacoast Stilettos away, and who is Emily? Quieter than you might think. “I’ve always had a very grounded energy to me,” she says. She’s a Taurus. In class she is “very loud, fun personality, upbeat, getting you hype,” but off the clock, “I really like being— I don’t even say by myself, but with myself.” Garden, beach, meditation, a little trash TV. People ask what she listens to in the car after class. “Silence.” On road trips, it’s a ’70s playlist: “classic rock, or dad rock, I call it.” And her animals, two cats and a dog, including Nina, the cat who upstaged an early Queens Collective photo shoot and stars in Emily’s prop.
Mikki loves that line: “being with yourself” sounds much better, and in a noisy world there is nothing wrong with finding your peace.
Still becoming
“Every year feels like an entirely new chapter,” Emily says. She opened the doors in Peabody four years ago, and the studio has since expanded into a much bigger space. “I think this is just the beginning.” Mikki notes that most of this season’s guests have danced at Seacoast Stilettos; “it’s quite the community,” Emily says.
What would five-year-old Emily think? “The way I get to play dress-up now with what I do for work— I feel like little Emily would think that was the coolest thing.” What might surprise her is “that I have a full-grown business,” with a team. Mikki: “managing a team all by itself— that’s a whole other job.”
Mikki Wilson and Emily Chandra on the Creativity Connects set at Peabody TV. Photo by Randyll Collum for Creative Collective
Lessons We’re Carrying Forward
- Scrappiness is a skill, and it builds the groundwork for what comes next.
- Belonging can start with one room where we feel present in our bodies.
- A brave space speaks up about what matters.
- Being with ourselves is different from being by ourselves.
Call to Action
Emily’s story starts with three people in a studio under a gas station and a simple question: what if dance welcomed everybody the way yoga tries to? We can carry that question into our own work. Who isn’t seeing themselves in the room yet, and what would it take to make our space a brave one? Find more of these conversations at Creative Collective, come to a Creative Collective gathering, or learn about membership.
Subscribe to Creativity Connects on Spotify
Join the Conversation
- Where do you feel like you shine and belong?
- What’s the difference between a safe space and a brave space in your work?
- What would your five-year-old self think of what you do now?
Join the conversation at creativecollectivema.com.
Connect with Emily Chandra
- Website: seacoaststilettos.com
- Instagram: @seacoaststilettos
Connect with Seacoast Stilettos
- Website: seacoaststilettos.com
- Studio: 47 Newbury Street, Peabody, MA, in the plaza next to Marco’s and Sonic
- Instagram: @seacoaststilettos · Facebook: Seacoast Stilettos
Connect with Creative Collective
- Website: creativecollectivema.com
- Membership: creativecollectivema.com/join
- Instagram: @creativecollectivema · @creativecollectiveexplores
- Facebook: Creative Collective
- TikTok: @creativecollectivema
- LinkedIn: Creative Collective
Mentioned in this episode
- Seacoast Stilettos, Peabody, and its Queens Collective program
- Shanel Anderson of Soul City Yoga, a Season 1 guest of Creativity Connects
- The Me Too movement
Credits
Creativity Connects with Mikki Wilson is a Creative Collective podcast hosted by Mikki Wilson. Randyll Collum produces this podcast for Peabody TV, your community media center serving the residents and businesses of Peabody and the North Shore area. Sponsored by Jenni Stuart Fine Jewelry.
Episode Description
Mikki is joined by her friend Emily Chandra, founder and owner of Seacoast Stilettos, a dance and movement studio in Peabody, Massachusetts. Emily is a dancer, choreographer, yoga teacher and lifelong creative, and her studio’s hat carries one of Mikki’s favorite slogans: “Keep disrupting.” Both of them wore heels for the occasion.
Emily’s one person, place and thing: her mother and grandmother, who “raised me on meditation and music and art and poetry”; the many places she found home while leading yoga retreats and traveling solo; and her own resilience and scrappiness. Her prop is a framed photo from an early Queens Collective empowerment shoot, upstaged by her cat Nina.
She talks about growing up as the “artsy hippie girl” who felt she belonged in dance, how a beginner heels class of three people in a yoga studio under a gas station in Hampton, New Hampshire, grew into Seacoast Stilettos, and why the studio moved from “safe space” to “brave space.” Then Mikki takes the business away for a minute: gardens, the beach, silence in the car, dad rock, and being “with myself.” Emily reflects on four years in Peabody, a newly expanded space, and what little Emily would think of a woman who gets to play dress-up for work.
Key Topics Discussed
- One person, one place, one thing: a lineage of creative women, home in many places, and scrappiness
- Prop moment: a Queens Collective photo, and Nina the cat who stole the shot
- Dance as the place she feels present and like she belongs
- From three people under a gas station in Hampton, NH, to Seacoast Stilettos
- Teaching dance the way yoga welcomes people: all backgrounds, body types and levels
- Why Seacoast changed its language from “safe space” to “brave space”
- Beyond the business: grounded, Taurus-coded, and happy with her own company
- Four years in Peabody, an expanded studio, and still becoming
- What five-year-old Emily would make of a full-grown business
Memorable Quotes
- “But when I’m in dance, I’m just like— I feel like I shine, and that I belong.” — Emily
- “What if we could teach a dance class that had the same kind of concept as yoga? You don’t have to be a yogi.” — Emily
- “Three people turned to like 30 pretty quick, and it took off from there.” — Emily
- “If we’re talking about being a brave space, that means we’re not afraid to speak up about what matters.” — Emily
- “I really like being— I don’t even say by myself, but with myself.” — Emily
About the Guest
Emily Chandra is the founder and owner of Seacoast Stilettos, a dance and movement studio in Peabody, Massachusetts, built around beginner-friendly heels classes and the belief that everybody deserves to take up space. A dancer, choreographer and yoga teacher, she led yoga retreats before starting her first heels class in Hampton, New Hampshire, which gave the studio its Seacoast name. She opened the doors in Peabody four years ago and has since expanded the space.
About the Host
Mikki Wilson is the host of Creativity Connects with Mikki Wilson and the founder of Dot Connector Consulting. Known as “The Dot Connector,” Mikki brings people, ideas, and communities together through trust‑based connection and human‑centered leadership, cultivating conversations that go beyond the brand to highlight the lived experiences and “messy middles” behind women’s journeys.
About the Podcast
Creativity Connects with Mikki Wilson is a Creative Collective podcast that preserves and shares the stories of remarkable women connected to the North Shore community. Hosted by Mikki Wilson, founder of Dot Connector Consulting. Produced by Randyll Collum for Peabody TV. Sponsored by Jenni Stuart Fine Jewelry.
