How We Created Lyle Beniga's "Field of Vision" On STEEZY

Charise Roberts

January 23, 2024

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“I wanna make this new thing.”

“Wait, how do we do that?”

“I don’t know… Let’s figure it out.”

‍This was the gist of our first conversation with Lyle. (It’s also the blueprint for most of the conversations we have here at STEEZY.)

And that’s how we knew we were about to make something pretty cool. Because we were all willing – no, excited – for the process of trial and error we knew it'd require.

What is Lyle Beniga's Field of Vision?

Field of Vision is a custom learning experience of 3 choreography classes: 4Ever, East Coast, and Brown Sugar.

Each of the pieces come with supplementary classes designed to help you build up to learning the piece.

The premise for Field of Vision is this: Lyle’s pieces aren’t just moves he came up with; they’re reflections of his training, his influences, his career – basically, his life.

You can very well just take his choreography class and do the piece.

But in order to truly understand, execute, and grow from it, you have to study the ingredients that went into creating the piece.

The Field of Vision that he saw it through, if you will.

Once you get that, you’ll be able to perform the piece in a more authentic way.

You’ll also develop richer insight as a dancer as you gleam from Lyle’s experiences, his approach to dance, his philosophies, to better understand your own.

It's about making you a better dancer as a whole.

“Everyone has a voice. An instinctual voice that they can call their own. When you can find that and harness it, know who you are and where you come from as a dancer, you’ll be able to walk into any rehearsal or classroom knowing who you are.”– Lyle Beniga

Why did we make Field of Vision?

Let’s be honest, Lyle could’ve easily just taught a piece on STEEZY Studio, and everything would’ve been cool.

But 3 main factors made it impossible for us to be satisfied with that…

1. We need to go deeper and wider than a class

10+ years of teaching workshops all around the world enlightens you to certain ways that the standard “class” structure sometimes isn’t the most optimal for learning.

Lyle’s always felt that an hour, hour and a half long class is just enough time to teach choreography, but not necessarily all the techniques that build up to it.

The techniques, and also the level of understanding necessary to be able to actually perform the piece.

In an average class, both teacher and student can barely scrape the surface.

I always wanna teach more, give more. I believed there was a way to provide a more comprehensive learning experience for my students.

– Lyle Beniga

2. STEEZY Studio provides a way to re-think how we learn and teach

The whole reason we built STEEZY Studio was to be able to learn and to teach in new, creative, innovative ways.

There are no rules. There is no precedent. No time limit – or really, any limits at all.

We take suggestions from our users, we designed custom programs to learn new styles, we tell Evan and Ceejay “Hey, what if we tried…” and they punch in some 01010001s and make it happen. (That’s not really how. I dunno, I’m the writer.)

But point is – Lyle always felt like there was a better way to approach teaching, and STEEZY provided that way.

3. Lyle’s passion as an artist and as an educator

This is probably the most important thing, the engine that fueled all of this to actually happen: Lyle really, really cares.

Like, his wokeness to a better way of learning didn’t just come with time and experience.

There are plenty of people who do the same thing for decades and never think about improving existing standards.

And his meeting us didn’t just come by chance, he knew we’d be the ones to figure this out with him.

You don’t do these things unless you really love the art of dance and are dedicated to helping your students and the culture grow.

Because true innovators aren’t just brilliant thinkers – they’re people who care enough to sit there and actually think about it. Then, act on it.

And dang, we thought a lot.

For the past few months, Lyle was in and out of STEEZY HQ just planning Field of Vision.

We hashed out what exactly what the objective was, and combined his experience dancing and teaching with our expertise in online learning and content production.

Lyle spent days workshopping (with the help of Dom Byrd – hey Dom!) at the studio.

He made up names for moves to help identify them, and practiced how to break it down in a class.

He sat down with Connor, going through pages and pages of notes mapping out the right curriculum design.

Then he sat down with me, going through 200 different versions of one sentence to communicate the exact thing he wanted to say in the most receivable way.

(No exaggeration.)