Matt Steffanina is a popular choreographer and YouTuber.
He has more than 13M subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.
Matt is also a music producer and DJ.
Introduction-
Matt Steffanina was born on 20 October 1992 in Washington, D.C., United States.
His father’s name is Jeff Steffanina and his mother’s name is Debbie Tuttle-Steffanina.
His younger sister, Nicola Bolt works at Banks Mill Feeds.
At 12, Matt along with his family moved to Nelson County in Virginia and here, he grew up in the woods along with the horses.
From snowboarding to breakdancing-
As there was a snowboard mountain resort nearby his residence, Matt started competitive snowboarding.
Once while training here on a trampoline, he was performing gymnastics and doing flips and was spotted by a few dancers and athletes.
They appreciated Matt’s flipping skills and thanks to his flipping skills, they suggested and inspired him that he could easily learn breakdance and so, Matt requested them to teach him a few breakdance moves.
Dance & music-
At 17, while studying in high school, Matt wasn’t a good dancer.
And as he was living in rural Virginia where there weren’t many dance studios, he was unable to learn dance.
As Matt always loved music, he started playing guitar and keyboard and also started DJing and during that time, he got very involved in music.
During that time, he started watching music videos of Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake and of male pop R&B rap artists and decided to become a musical artist.
But later, Matt felt that there weren’t many lucrative opportunities in music and so, he completely shifted his focus to dance.
His inspirations & starting with b-boying-
As there weren’t dance studios available for Matt to learn dance, he used to get inspired and learn dance by watching old dance movies like Breakin’ (1984).
Also, at that time, as YouTube wasn’t present, there wasn’t a provision for him to watch dance tutorials videos online and so, he started learning dance by watching BreakDance Volume 1 on VHS.
At that time, Matt used to learn dance in his bedroom by himself.
He started with b-boying (breakdancing) and started showing off his dance skills especially his windmill backflip skills in parties and clubs.
The hip-hop dance convention-
Matt’s mother observed his passion for dance and purchased a ticket for him to attend a workshop at Monsters Dance Conventions in Philadelphia.
He was 18 at that time and he signed up for the intermediate level instead of the pro level.
The intermediate level was for the 11-year-old kids but as Matt didn’t know this at that time, he applied for it and had to perform with the 11-year-old kids.
Nevertheless, this experience inspired him to seriously study and learn dance.
So, Matt started training hard and also started travelling to New York to attend dance classes.
He won a local talent competition and thanks to this, he was offered the head choreographer position for the University of Virginia hip hop dance crew.
Moving to L.A. to become a professional dancer-
In 2010, Matt packed up his two-door Honda Civic and drove from Virginia to Los Angeles with a dream of becoming a professional dancer.
His dream was to dance for Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake.
Luckily, immediately after arriving at L.A., Matt got auditioned and selected at his first professional dancing job.
He secured the job of working as a Jay Leno’s breakdancing body double on The Tonight Show.
But here, Matt didn’t get booked for the eight months and he survived with the money that he saved up by previously working as a DJ and personal trainer at ACAC Fitness & Wellness Center.
As during that time nothing was working out and as he wasn’t earning, a few times, he thought of returning home and he also had a feeling that he couldn’t compete with the talented artists of L.A.
While living in L.A., Matt didn’t take up any other full-time jobs as he wanted to completely focus on learning dance and so, he started taking freestyle dance classes.
Becoming popular with YouTube-
Matt started his first YouTube channel by the name Matt Steffanina on 28 November 2007.
He started publishing on this channel and continued uploading videos even after he moved to Los Angeles as he intended to use his channel to promote his choreography, to get teaching gigs and to teach dance thoroughly from the start till the end.
Thanks to Matt’s YouTube channel, he got an opportunity to perform in his first music video by the name Look at Me Now with Chris Brown and later, he also got a chance to work with Jason Derulo, Meghan Trainor, Snoop Dogg and Taylor Swift.
He started receiving subsequent offers to work in music videos and he also choreographed for TV and commercials.
Partnering with popular artists over popular songs helped Matt to grow his YouTube channel.
In many of his videos, he partnered with Sofie Dossi, a popular contortionist.
In the summer of 2015, Matt’s five YouTube videos picked up pace and his channel started growing very rapidly and thanks to this, he started receiving many choreography teaching offers from all around the world.
Career-
From June 2005 to July 2010, Matt worked as a Personal Trainer at ACAC Fitness and Wellness Center in Virginia.
From August 2010 to October 2012, he worked as a hip hop dancer choreographer at Clear Talent Group in Los Angeles, California.
In April 2013, Matt started working as a choreographer at the Millennium Dance Complex in Hollywood, California.
Since January 2014, he has been the CEO of the DNCR Productions and he is the founder of the DNCR Academy.
A successful YouTuber-
Now, Matt is a successful YouTuber and is the most subscribed dancer, thanks to his millions of subscribers across his three YouTube channels.
As of December 2023, he has 3.99M subscribers on his Matt Steffanina YouTube channel and he also has a couple of channels namely, Matt Steffanina on which he has 13.4M subscribers and on his DNCR Academy channel, he has 3.04M subscribers.
As of December 2023, Matt has 4.4M followers on his Facebook page and 3.8M followers on Instagram.
He has a website.
Matt conducted his dance shows and workshops in many countries.
He also teaches through Global Online DNCR Academy.
As Matt always loved music, he has also been producing music.
His future plan is to do choreography for movies.
Earning sources-
Matt earns through a variety of sources like through his online dance academy, advertisements on his YouTube videos, getting sponsorships, etc.
He also did stock trading, flipped houses and invested in cryptocurrency.
Shows-
Matt appeared and won The Amazing Race Season 28 in 2016.
He also appeared on many other shows like So You Think You Can Dance, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Tonight Show and Step Up.
Personal life-
Matt was in a relationship with Dana Alexa, a dancer and a choreographer.
In one of the 2019 YouTube videos, he stated that he has kids.
Matt lives in Los Angeles, California, United States.
He is tall at 6’1.
So, how are you inspired by the success story of Matt Steffanina?
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