Lucetta & Shontal Snider: A CMI Love Story
A Q&A recounting a love story between CMI’s very own, Lucetta and Shontal Snider
Thirteen years ago, Lucetta and Shontal Snider met at Capitol Movement, and nearly a decade ago got married. Today Lucetta is the Artistic Director of Capitol Movement and Shontal is the Director of the professional Hip Hop company.
Lucetta hails from Woodbridge, Virginia — where she owns and operates her own dance studio, Woodbridge Academy of Dance — while Shontal is originally from Baltimore. While Lucetta focuses more on the contemporary ballet-based side of dance, Shontal is a hip-hop instructor.
They were both foundational members of the CMI community, and believe their time at CMI has helped shape their careers as dance professionals. They have a positive outlook for the 2024 season and aim to continue fostering and supporting local talent in the DMV area through creating vibrant and socially conscious dance routines.
Interview with Lucetta Snider
Tell me a bit about yourself and your wife, Shontal.
Shontal began choreographing for CMI in 2009 and started teaching for local studios in the DMV area. She continues to choreograph for those studios as well as CMI. She’s a resident choreographer for CMI and her main style is hip-hop. She did not grow up dancing, and she was a music major in school.
I’ve always danced. I own my own dance studio and company, which I recently celebrated my 20th year anniversary at. I think running my business and organization is how my expertise and ability to help with CMI has been useful. My full time job is teaching and creating with other dancers and choreographers.
How did you two meet?
We had been at the same dance company together since 2007, but didn’t really spend a lot of time together earlier on, since Shontal was in hip-hop and I was in the technical company.
We met in 2010 in a show with CMI, and felt a friendship. In 2012, Shontal proposed to me during a rehearsal. The entire cast gathered for notes onstage, and she proposed to me in front of everyone. We were married on August 1, 2014. So we met through CMI and are still with CMI years later.
What is your vision for CMI’s next season?
Trends change a lot over the years with dances. The vision for CMI has always been to help give people who didn't have access to training with artists from other cities an opportunity to do so. Thus, CMI strives for grants to be able to afford those established teachers or choreographers to come to the DMV area and teach or choreograph dances for us.
Over the years, a lot of our own company members grew up here and then have moved to places like LA, New York or Las Vegas. It's great to see them grow up here and then be able to come back and teach and choreograph years later. So we definitely want to make sure that we keep fostering that type of relationship. If they were once in the CMI family, they're always in the CMI family. But we also know that we have a lot of local talent here. It’s really important that since we work with these people so closely — whether through teaching or just being company members — that we foster that talent that we already have here, instead of looking elsewhere. I feel like when we do that, we create a little bit more loyalty. At the end of the day, the location of where people come from doesn't define talent or creativity. I think it's important to us that we want to really acknowledge that we have such talent and reach right here in [the] D.C. area.
What do you find unique about the CMI community?
A lot of our current company members have full time careers in IT, education, human resources, government and politics to name a few. They work 40 hours a week already, and dance on the weekends as an outlet to either exercise, be creative or find that social experience. We have mothers. We have people that teach at other studios during the week. We have quite a few people that come all the way from as far from Baltimore and as South as Woodbridge. They're commuting and they're taking the time, and D.C. is not easy. Sometimes you have to pay for parking, or sit in traffic. Sometimes you're in rehearsal for six hours a day and you're away from your family or you're away from other things that you want to do, and it's not their main thing. Whereas maybe in LA and New York, if you're a dancer, it's your main gig. But here it's very much like, “Oh, I danced in college and I miss dance.” I'm so glad that CMI is here because they still get to do that.
We have all kinds of ways our company contributes to CMI besides just dancing. Some are helping with grant writing because their education qualifies them to, or PR, or social media. We're a community in that sense, where we're helping our own company be better and grow with the current trends. We also have a broad age group, as young as 18 and as old as 38, so we have a lot of experience and a lot of new fresh ideas. And we're all very open and welcoming.
Are there particular areas of life that inspire your dance work?
Shontal: I've created pieces based off of movies or scenes from a movie or a book, or sometimes you see dancers in your company and they inspire you like, oh, I can really see “so and so” doing this choreography because I have this type of dancer or this style of dancer.
Lucetta: Shon is also inspired by social justice movements that are happening in the world, like Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate. She is inspired equally by other art forms, including music and films.
Why have you stayed with CMI all these years later?
Shontal and I wouldn’t still be at Capitol Movement all these years later if we didn’t feel like it was family. We definitely are loyal and support Stephanie’s vision, and have formed friendships and recruited people to join this family.
