American Dancer is thrilled with the continuation of this new series by the multi-talented Yanina Kisler. We would love to hear about your hobbies and projects outside of dance—what brought you to them and how you have pursued them. If you have a story to share, please contact Yanina.kisler@comcast.net or American Dancer at americandancer@usadance.org. You can write your own story or simply send us a summary, along with your contact information, so we can arrange an interview.
Continuing American Dancer’s effort to highlight the accomplishments of our dancers when they are off the dance floor, I talked with Angela Prince. Angela has danced country-western and west coast swing, as well as International and Smooth styles. She was also the editor/publisher of American Dancer Magazine for five years, and the advisor for five years prior. But it is her life-long love of and involvement with horses that brings her to our attention for this article.
Angela was born in South Carolina, as were both her parents. Her father was an Army Air Forces pilot, flying over German-occupied France and Germany during World War II. Angela went to Clemson University for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English, and she taught high school English and journalism for five years in addition to being a graduate instructor at Clemson. She also studied piano and violin for many years.
Angela started her own company doing public relations and advertising when she was in her early 30s. She became the second largest public relations agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, and had seven people working for her. She has done a wide variety of consulting, including public relations for sports and industries. A local Business Journal named her one of the Top 25 Women in Business. She has done a lot of work with dance and sports celebrities, professional golfers, tennis players, and NASCAR drivers. Even today, she is still hired to do consulting.
Angela started dancing after doing a ski race event in Colorado where she saw people dancing country-western. When she came back to Charlotte, she took up dancing and started competing in country-western. She was a world championship third-place finisher in 1998. She traveled the country, dancing and as a talent agent for top country-western dancers.
In 1998, she started taking ballroom lessons in waltz to improve her country-western dancing. She performed at a USABDA (former USA Dance) event of country-western dances, and performed a ballroom waltz, but in boots, as she was not ready for heels yet. She did two-step, cha-cha, east coast swing, polka, waltz, and west coast swing. She competed Pro-Am in west coast swing and started a west coast swing and hustle club in Charlotte.
It was the love of music that brought Angela to dance. Dancing was fun, very social, and attracted different people. Angela enjoyed being around all different people that she would never get to know if not for dancing.
Angela was the Charlotte USA Dance chapter president in 2001. In 2007, she became the USA Dance national director of public relations, a post she held until 2017. She worked on American Dancer Magazine, which at that time was a print magazine, from 2013 to 2018. People from all of the chapters would get involved.
She danced Pro-Am American Smooth and International Ballroom, gold and open level, until 2012, doing shows and competitions, and often travelling to New York for training. She stopped dancing in 2012 due to medical issues and because her mother was living with her and needed more help. Her mother attended all the dancing events she could and came to all competitions, country-western and ballroom. Everybody in the dancing world knew her mother.
It was reading Black Beauty as a young child that convinced her that she wanted a black horse and put her on the path to her current life with horses. As a child, her family could not afford a horse, and it was not until she was 35 years old that she bought her first horse. She saw a picture of a horse, drove to Virginia, bought it, brought her back, and showed her for 13 years. The horse’s name was China Doll, and the horse earned more than 650 ribbons at shows. It was quite a career. Angela was competitive, and the horse was even more competitive.
She started her horse farm, Running Wind Farm, in 1995. She sold everything she owned, including her home, and bought a farm in the country. She lived in an old mobile home on the property until she was able to build a new house there three years later. The house has a ballroom studio as well as her office. This combined all her work and ballroom and horses and farm in one. She would have 60-100 horses competing in a show, several times per year. When they did horse shows, she was the announcer.
All of her dancing was parallel to running her horse farm. The 1990s was a big decade for horse-related competitions. Angela was part of the horse-mounted fox hunting group, competed in horse jumping for 13 years, and sponsored horse competition events. This stopped when COVID started, after 23 years of shows.
Owning a horse is a very expensive hobby, even more than ballroom. One can get many gowns for the cost of a horse. But having horses and working with them was what she most wanted to do all her life. Usually, she had two horses, but now she runs horse boarding and training operation with eight horses.
Horses are a lifestyle, and fortunately, she does well enough in business so she can afford this lifestyle. She has 25 acres of land, three barns, a riding arena, and a two-acre pond. She can sit on her porch in the evening, surrounded by birds and wildlife, and it’s pure joy. She loves and misses dancing, but the farm takes a lot of time and is her great joy. You have to love horses; there is something special about them. She never complains about the work they take, being around horses and taking care of them is the best thing she is doing.
As we were starting the interview for this article, Angela mentioned that she had just walked in from the barn in the rain and was soaked. She said you cannot carry umbrellas to the barn because they scare the horses, so getting wet is just one of the things you learn to live with when you live a horse lifestyle.
Angela said she has a tapestry of backgrounds, but they all make sense to her, and she does not regret any of it. Some things might not be possible to do anymore, but one has to move on. She might get back into dancing. She is also hoping to travel. She is involved in a number of activities and feels there are too many wonderful things happening in life to just let it go by.
Yanina Kisler is a Senior III and Senior IV Championship-level dancer. She has been competing together with her husband, Eric Austin, for the last seven years, both nationally and internationally. They were United States Champions in both Senior III and Senior IV Standard and World Championship Semifinalists twice. Yanina is an Electrical Engineer, now retired. She and Eric have two children and three grandchildren.
American Dancer is thrilled that Yanina Kisler is working on this series. To read more of her American Dancer articles, check out: Championship Dance is Published Author!, How to be a Good Spectator at a Ballroom Competition, and So, You Want to Compete in a European Ballroom Dance Competition?
