![]() ![]() Former trainees remember employment wasn’t guaranteed on completion of the program, which S Factor described as “designed to give you the theoretical knowledge and practical skills that you will need to get hired.”Ĭalifornia law prohibits employers from forcing their employees or job applicants to purchase “any thing of value” from them. Though the fees, hours and structure of the training program have fluctuated since the company’s founding, over time S Factor charged teacher trainees more than $1,000 to complete significant amounts of training hours many participants contend they have in the past also had to complete mandatory but unpaid “shadowing” hours, which entailed wiping down poles, spotting students and adjusting students’ form. “I just wanted to learn more and deepen my practice, and it was cheaper than a retreat,” says Del Rio, who is currently developing her own dance class. “I did the first teacher training, the first tier, with no intention of teaching,” says Araceli Del Rio, who nevertheless did become a teacher two years later, in 2019. “I am so dedicated to evolving the business and the practice to get it right.”įor some students, working at S Factor was an affordable way of deepening their involvement with its mission: Rather than pay $179 a month for a membership, as it cost at one point, teachers attended classes for free. Ohayon wrote back to Mitri in July 2020 that she was “happy to talk,” but made her intent clear: “It’s a positive film about celebrating women.” In a statement to THR, Ohayon said that she didn’t witness any misconduct while filming and didn’t view her vérité-style production as an “investigative piece.”Īlthough Kelley pushes back on some of the claims against her and the company, she owns up to others. Multiple former teachers, including Mitri, claim they brought concerns about S Factor to the film’s director, Oscar-nominated Michèle Ohayon, before the film was completed. ![]() S Factor received a publicity boost in February, when Netflix released the documentary Strip Down, Rise Up, which portrayed Kelley as a visionary who addresses the psychic wounds of her students - wrestling with infidelity, widowhood, body image - through a feminist reclamation of pole dancing. And I bought it.”Ī scene from the doc Strip Down, Rise Up. “It was very confusing to me because I was still trying to figure things out, and here was this person who I trusted repositioning this traumatic experience as a huge breakthrough. ![]() “She refocused the conversation to how beautifully transformative my ‘shattering’ was,” says Mitri. (“I’d placed much of my identity in being an S Factor woman.”) She spoke to Kelley about what transpired in Kona. Still, after her hospitalization, she returned to teaching at the company. Mitri, who by the time of her participation in the Hawaii retreat had herself been a dance teacher at S Factor for four years, believes Kelley mishandled her vulnerability. “I help the women that want to access their full potential of movement. Kelley disputes this: “That is not accurate,” she says. Kelley insists that shattering is physiological work, not emotional specifically, “when chronic muscular contractions in your body have let go,” although she acknowledges that it “may be accompanied by an emotional release such as tears, laughter, surprise.”įormer S Factor teachers say that if too few shatterings occur at retreats, Kelley may induce them in attendees, referencing private information about their vulnerabilities: a history of divorce, a miscarriage, a private medical condition. Mitri calls what happened in Kona a “shattering,” a Kelley-coined term for an S Factor technique that some liken to flooding, a behavioral therapy method in which patients are exposed to painful memories with the intent of better processing their pasts. Inside Amazon Studios: Big Swings Hampered by Confusion and Frustration ![]()
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