(lively music) ♪ You know it's dangerous ♪ - Hi.

I'm Rachel Micheletti.

I am a resident in counseling.

I am a dance studio owner and instructor, a burlesque and belly dance performer, a singer and songwriter, and the lead singer of Rachel and the Jelly Cats, and the artistic director of The Feral Showgirls.

(birds chirping) (patrons chattering) It's like nothing else in the world.

Once you do it and you have a wonderful experience, you wanna do it again and again and again and again.

It makes the front.

I started to notice in my dance classes how transformative they were, but I saw there were dance therapists and art therapists, and I was like, "But wait, why aren't there performance therapists?

Why aren't there burlesque therapists?"

It's something that can be utilized to increase our self-esteem.

Why the heck wouldn't we combine those things?

Because I don't think the mechanism is so important.

I think it matters that we get to that place we want to get to.

(patrons chattering) Developing something and building something, it's a journey.

I mean, it's every day where we get up and we choose to do the things that we do.

It's not a destination that we reach.

(patrons chattering) (pop music playing) I feel like a strong focus for me is recognizing the pain people experience and trying to figure out ways that we can modify it and alter it and strengthen ourselves through it, self-esteem and self-worth and body image.

This is a way for us to reclaim the fact that, yeah, actually, we're allowed to take up space.

♪ You know it's dangerous ♪ - I did go from a person who, I mean, in middle school, nobody believes me.

I had a pixie haircut and wore only men's clothes because I felt like that was what I had to do to not just hide, but be invisible, because it was much safer to be invisible.

- Hi!

- How are you?

(patrons chattering) - It was in my 20s, and I was sitting and thinking to myself, "I cannot possibly feel any worse than I feel right now at this moment about myself and about my life," and something did this, and I said, "Well, if nothing matters, then nothing matters, Rachel."

And that might sound really nihilistic, but to me, it was a freedom.

I realized through time that it was okay for me to develop my style and decide how I wanted to look and wear the things I wanted to wear and do my hair the way I wanted to do it, and that the only real impact that was having was on me, and people can look a different way if they don't wanna see what I'm about.

(lively music) Yeah!

- And now I wanna kick.

- [Instructor] It makes you wanna kick?

- [Patron] Exactly!

- I feel like the brightest and best mother hen that, like, ever existed.

It's empowering to see people fully embrace their own abilities and their beliefs about themselves, especially those who it took a little bit more gentle pushing to get them to where they are.

I always say one of the things I need to put on my resume is collector of amazing people, and saying, "Come with me.

Let's do something amazing."

Yeah, right?

So the way that we do a head flip.

I like to think of life as like a cake.

Any ingredients that go into it.

So, for me, dance and performance was a key ingredient.

Like, you can't make a cake without flour, right?

You need it.

On its own, it's flour, but in combination with butter and eggs and milk and sugar, it creates something fantastic and delicious and beautiful, and then the addition of performance and just the addition of saying yes to things, that to me was a massive shift.

When something scares me or when we think of something being a fear, that isn't negative.

It just means it's new and it's worth the risk to me to find out.

♪ Burn your castle down ♪ (singer indistinctly sings) - There's so much inside of us that I find it hard to believe that there's only one thing that we can be passionate about.

There is something that connects all of those things, and I realized, for me, one of the golden threads is realizing the ways that I can assist with areas of self-esteem and self-worth and the ways we feel about our bodies, and that happens in dance.

That happens in music.

That happens in therapy.

That happens in dressing up in fun clothes.

It happens in doing photo shoots and interviews, (lively music) and they may not all look the same on the surface, but they all achieve the same goal.

That's the golden thread.

(lively music) ♪ It's a new dawn, it's a new day ♪ ♪ It's a new life ♪ ♪ For me ♪ (audience cheers)