Be positive. Be fun. Be yourself.
Those are the three rules Melanie Levenberg tries to instil in the kids she works with through her company PL3Y International, which aims to foster community, positive mindsets and vibrant health through its mostly dance-based physical literacy programs.
“I aspire for [my students] to have a movement experience, and in that, have so much fun that they remember their true essence and they feel what it feels like to be alive, to be present and be with other people,” said Levenberg, who was recently named canfitpro’s Fitness Professional of the Year for 2022.
“It’s really about using movement as a source of helping human beings to connect to who they really are.”
In the nine years since Levenberg founded PL3Y, she has been able to share her programs with more than 10,000 instructors across 13 countries, reaching upwards of 3.5 million kids in the process.
But despite the massive success her program has enjoyed, travelling the world teaching dance-based programs in schools wasn’t always something Levenberg envisioned herself doing. In fact, it wasn’t even on the radar.
For most of her life, Levenberg saw herself as an athlete, and her fitness came from playing multiple sports at a high level. But after a skull fracture suffered while playing lacrosse took away her ability to play contact sports, Levenberg had to find a new way stay active and get the same physical exertion she was used to getting as an athlete.
That led her down the path to becoming a fitness instructor on top of her career as an elementary school Phys. Ed teacher.
With teaching as her main job and fitness instructing as a weekend “side hustle,” it wasn’t until it came time to teach her students how to dance that Levenberg’s two passions collided.
“[Teaching] dance terrified me,” she said. “I always loved dancing to music, but the thought of going to a class where there's a choreographer, and remembering steps and everyone going left, going right… as an athlete, I had my own art, but I didn't think that I could dance, and I didn't feel comfortable in dance classes.
“So I figured out a different way of teaching dance, which makes it really simple. I looked at my job as a teacher and I was like, ‘my job is not to get them to remember steps or to be perfect in their technique. They're just supposed to love movement.’ And so I think using music and movement together is really powerful. So I just took away all the rules of dance.”
The students no longer had to remember steps or choreography; they just had to focus on the joy of moving to the music. And from that, according to Levenberg, the kids started to become more curious and excited about moving and being active.
And it was the same for Levenberg herself. She was having so much fun teaching dance to her students in her own way that she started sharing her program with other teachers. And before long, her fitness instructor side hustle became her full-time job in the form of PL3Y International, leading to Levenberg being named canfitpro’s Fitness Professional of the Year for 2022.
While there was a time in her life where teaching dance to kids wouldn’t have even been considered a possibility for Levenberg, when she looks back now, she can’t imagine her life going any other way than the path she’s currently on.
“I think everything happens for a reason. And I don't know that I would have ever had as much fun as I'm having now, being active as an adult,” she said. “I was so focused on being an athlete, but as you get older, there's less and less opportunities for you to operate at an elite level, and I don't know that I would have found as much joy in living actively. Now that I do fitness, there's just so many different ways that I've discovered I can move my body and get that physical exertion and I'm way more open to trying different things because I've been exposed to a completely different world than just athletics.”
More information on PL3Y International’s youth and adult programs can be found at www.pl3yinc.com.
