This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Nicole Langevin of Precision Choreography, My Gym Judge, and Like a Champ. Nicole has had the opportunity to work with some of the world's greatest gymnasts in her career. USAG recruited her to work with Kyla Ross on artistic training, she worked with Alicia Sacramone on her comeback floor routine, was chosen by 2016 Olympian Houry Gebeshian to be her choreographer for Rio, and most recently, Chellsie Memmel. Chellsie has worked for Precision Choreography for several years, so her turning to Nicole when the time came for her to need her own routine made perfect sense.
Nicole has dedicated her career to giving gymnasts at all levels chances to not only be their best, but be seen. In a sport that only has the mainstream spotlight every four years during the Summer Olympics, people like Nicole are what keeps the engine running 365 days a year... every year. The gymnastics world, unfortunately, has to get creative to give its athletes the opportunities they deserve. This sport is demanding, and it requires dedication and countless hours of training. For most, their only widespread recognition comes if they happen to become one of the few elites that make it to the Olympic podium. Companies like Precision Choreography and My Gym Judge help these young athletes become the best they can be, and they do so with passion and heart.
Read the interview below to learn more about Nicole herself, her business ventures, some of her successes, and how it has been working with Chellsie during her comeback. If you'd like to listen to the interview in full, you may do so at the end of this article.
Tessa Denen: Give me a little background on you.
Nicole Langevin: Yeah, I was a gymnast my whole life. I was a level 10 lifer. I went to level 10 in eighth grade and did my last level 10 meet when I was 19. That's kind of the extent of my competitive experience. I guess the coolest thing that happened as an athlete was that I did invent a move that's in the code of points. But like many moves that are in the code points, for some reason, my name disappeared. I don’t know why! I don't always like to talk about it because it got butchered so badly from its original form. When I tell you what it is, it's like, why would you invent that? But it's actually the switch wolf, which I first competed at level 10 nationals in '93. It was submitted and given a C value. So if you think of it now, you're like, "Why the hell would that ever be a C?!" When I did it the first time, it was actually a switch leap. So you had to hit 120 even on your opposite leg and then switch into the wolf. So if you can think about that, even on the floor is really tricky to get that back leg up prior to, so that's what it was supposed to be. And the fact that they rated it as a C was how I was able to get it named after me. And the cool thing, actually even cooler than that, was in the Olympics after that, a lot of the Russians did it on beam. That was very surreal as a JO kid, you know, not really getting a lot of spotlight. To see that on TV at the Olympics was really cool. Then it just kind of went downhill and turned into this hitch kick wolf thing that is just not fun to look at.
So yeah, this was all in Massachusetts. I coached for a little bit, and then I moved out to Los Angeles for film school. I really started exploring choreography a lot out there. I had done it on the side when I was training. I was getting into theater and movement, and this and that, and then when I went out to LA for film school, I started getting into exploring choreography more. I did choreography for fashion shows. I did some TV stuff. I did a lot of live events and was still coaching. I ran a competitive program out in Burbank, California, for 13 years and had some nice success. Definitely grew a lot as a coach. Region 1 is no joke! The gymnastics out there is fantastic. There's a lot of great coaches. There's a lot of elite programs, which just raises the level of everyone around. Because of that, I've had people say when they look at meet scores online, they're like, “Oh, the scores in So Cal are so high!” Yeah, because the gymnastics is so good! So I think that was a real gift, too, to have to coach out there and really go, “Okay, these are the standards.”
And then, in 2013, my husband and I moved back. We got married in 2013, then we moved back east, and I decided to just put all of my energy into Precision, which I had been kind of building on the side out in California. So Precision started out as just me doing choreography for different gyms. People liked what they saw in my kids and wanted me to come in. So you know, a very common story. The entrepreneur's mind in me thought, "Well, it's going to sound more important if there's a name to this." So I filed for a DBA under Precision Choreography, even though it was still me just trying to talk the talk a little bit. And then walk the walk to back it up.
I'm gonna back up a little bit because, in 2009, I met Alicia Sacramone and had always thought that we would be friends. I know that sounds really weird, but I would see her on TV, I'm like, “I feel like we should get along, we should be friends.” And she's from Massachusetts, she's a Masshole like me. So when I finally met her, we did hit it off really well. And, you know, I kind of expressed to her that she had really great movement quality. Maybe she wasn't considered the most artistic and creative, but she owned everything that she did. I just thought there was something there that was untapped. And I was right. We did our first choreography tour right after the Olympics in ‘08. So that would have been in ‘09. And she's phenomenal. That kind of helped me get a little credibility as well, for people to see that she was on board with what I was doing, then maybe there's something there. So that helped grow Precision quite a bit. And Precision then turned into not just choreography, but then artistry clinics. And then I started being able to speak at different conventions and congresses, and kind of showing myself as more of a technician as well as an artistry person. So that was really great. That developed our clinics, and now our training camps, which is probably the biggest part of what we do. I've got some really great people working for me as contractors. So that's, again, kind of elevated the name of what we do. In everything we do still, even if it's a clinic just on bars, we somehow find a way to implement artistry and artistry training. So it's kind of how it all started, you know, the heart and soul of what we do. That's kind of the journey with Precision. And where we are now is continuing to grow choreography, training camps, and clinics, as well as just me individually as an educator, speaking at as many engagements as possible, doing staff consultations and coach training, all that fun stuff.
TD: You talked about the artistry training, and this is so intriguing to me. Growing up, I wouldn't say I was necessarily a gymnast. Okay, I was, but I was never good. I was fine. I was more of a dancer. I just have a passion for gymnastics. There are so many times that I see girls go out on the floor, and sure they're hitting the movements. Even at our highest level, some of our national team girls, they hit the movements, it looks fine, but there's nothing behind it. You know? It's there, but there's no energy. And so I love that you do some of the artistic training stuff. I think that makes such a huge difference. So talk to me. You worked with Kyla Ross, correct? How do you bring that out of them? I’d be interested in being a fly on the wall at some of those sessions.
NL: What I've found with athletes, at the elite level especially, is that they're so good, right? They're so perfect. And they're so well trained. And their attention to detail is phenomenal. But, you don’t explore how to do a Tkachev as an athlete. You don't try different ways to do an Amanar. You are taught how to do it. You pay attention to every step of it, you perfect it, and you do it. So it's so the opposite of what we're asking for in performance. And so what you're getting a lot of times when you see these high-level athletes doing a floor routine, doing choreography, is that they are trying to do it perfectly. They're trying to fit in the box. They're trying to do it like it's “supposed” to be done. That's where you lose the artistry. That's where you lose the feeling when you're performing and being artistic. It almost has to be a little imperfect for it to be your own. You know, like if we sit here and, "Okay, three plus three is six." I don't get to put my own spin on that. So that is fact. But if you and I right now, we're like, "Okay, let's on the count of three, like with our hands and our face, make a flower," we’re both going to do something different. And that's when it becomes art. And it's okay to be wrong, even though there is no wrong in art. So that's what's really hard with athletes at that level. That is a foreign concept. And physiologically speaking, what I've actually seen is that if you watch great dancers, great performers, there's so much movement outside of their limbs that gymnasts don't do. Gymnasts, or a lot of gymnasts, I shouldn’t say all, are arm and leg movement and sometimes some head movement, and it's all very, the head is at the top, the feet are at the bottom. That's it. But if you watch a really great dancer, they could be in a straight jacket and perform beautifully. And there's actually a little girl on Dance Moms that last year or something she did this, oh my goodness, she did a straight jacket performance. And it was gorgeous. It was it's a little creepy because it’s a kid, but it was beautiful! It's just to show like there's a whole body that can move. And every inch of the body can hit different angles and different subtleties. So many high-level athletes are almost too strong in their core to have that. I remember working an elite gymnast. I wanted her to reach, and so she reached with her arm. And I'm like no reach a little further, and she physically could not because her rib cage didn't have that fluidity because she's so damn strong. So we had to find other ways to make that happen. So that's physiologically speaking, sometimes you're just so strong that they don't have that.
TD: So you've obviously gotten to work with amazing gymnasts. You had a routine in the 2016
games, right? Tell us. How did that feel as a choreographer?
NL: It was really cool. Not going to lie. Really cool. What made it more special was my subject, which was Houry Gebeshian. And another thing that made it so cool is that my husband actually did the music. So that was really cool. And hopefully, I don't want to jinx anything, but hopefully it happens again with one Chellsie Memmel. We'll see. So yes, Houry was an athlete at the gym I was training at. She’s not quite 10 years younger than me, but you know, she's definitely the generation before. Way better than I ever was. I mean, she was 10, and I was like, “Where the hell did this girl come from? What is in her water?” Holy cow! She was amazing. And she still is. She's definitely a relationship person. Even though she was in the spotlight leading up to the Olympics, and it was a really big deal, she never forgot her roots. She came back and competed at her home gym for her home team, put on that leotard. And, you know, she's just really fantastic that way. And so, when she knew that she needed choreography, she came to me, and she wanted it to be me. She wanted to keep the connections going. I thought that was awesome. So she trusted me with that. She came to me and said she can't dance. Did you watch her routine? Did you get a chance to see it? You can just lie and say yes. It’s on our YouTube channel when you get a chance, but for somebody who said that they can't dance or are bad at dance, I don’t remember exactly what her words were. I think she did fantastic. It kind of tells the story of her journey. But yeah, when I got to actually see it on the floor, and even now just seeing the pictures, it is very surreal. And it's just even cooler that it's her.
TD: Your choreography tour. You and Alicia Sacramone. What was that? And what did you do?
NL: We basically just hit up a string of gyms and choreographed a bunch of athletes throughout that. So I had some jobs. But looking back, I don't know how we pulled it off. This is a total example of talking the talk and then figuring out how to walk the walk. I was like, "Holy shit, I have Alicia Sacramone, and I promised her we were going to do some work together." And so I just found anybody that ever showed interest and then just strung these trips together, and you know, it didn't hurt that I said Alicia is coming with me. They're like, “Okay!” But that was really it. We went in, and we worked, you know, with kids that were beginner optionals all the way through really high-level kids and just knocked out a bunch of routines over the course of about three weeks.
TD: Alright. About the other ventures. We have talked about Precision Choreography, but you also have My Gym Judge with Chellsie, and then one with Alicia as well?
NL: Yeah. So My Gym Judge was a very natural progression from Precision. I have a level 10 judges rating. Before I had my judging rating, I would still give feedback for routines that we would do. This is a very familiar thing. A kid gets a routine, the choreographer leaves for four or five months, and later, it doesn't quite have the same nuances and maybe doesn't become the routine that maybe it's supposed to be. And that would be like if you had a bar clinician come in and do a bunch of giant drills, but then for the next three months, the coach doesn't correct the arm bend or work on the tap. Somebody has to be up-keeping, right, to keep things progressing. So with choreography, that doesn't happen a lot. That's why I think the routines don't stay or progress. I was trying to find ways to help with that. So I just was offering people to send in videos and get feedback. Just from coaching for so long and being in gymnastics for so long, I was able to kind of give them an idea of deductions. I wasn't claiming to be a judge. I wasn't giving them scores but was just letting them know. And even though it was supposed to be the choreography, I couldn't help myself, like, "You are getting a 10th or two on height on that layout." And so then when I got my judge's rating, then I was able to actually call it judging feedback. So My Gym Judge then became a place where not only people that had Precision routines, but people from the outside heard about it and were like, “Oh, my gosh, we can find out why we got her score.” This has been going on for like six or seven years.
A couple years ago, I decided to take My Gym Judge and separate it because there started to become other opportunities besides doing the feedback and doing clinics, and now these longer workshops. It was too much under one umbrella. During all of that, Chellsie had been and still is a contractor for Precision. She was doing a lot of the My Gym Judge feedback. I would reach out to my judges and go, “Okay, we've got three routines to review. Who wants them?” She just was like knocking them out. And doing them extremely, extremely well. She then starting to come up with better systems, like, “Hey, you know, I know you have the form, but I kind of came up with another one that might work better.” She was really just showing herself as a leader in what we were doing. When the decision to kind of separate the business came up, I thought, well, A, I can't run two businesses by myself. I can, but it's going to be miserable for my family. I'm not enough. So I decided to bring her in and give her ownership over that. And I'm so happy I did. She's an incredible partner to have.
TD: And then with Alicia, talk to us about Like a Champ.
NL: Yep. So Like a Champ started, again, as a little subdivision of Precision, where we created event specialized workshops, devised by Alicia run by Alicia, but it was under the Precision umbrella. And it was vault, bars, and floor only. We would have one-day workshops, and they were doing really well. But again, it was something where, for that to be sustainable, Alicia's family probably would not have been very happy because it was dependent on her being there. It was just another thing under this umbrella that was not getting all the attention it deserved. So we separated Like a Champ as well. I gave Alicia ownership, and then we realized that again, it just wasn't sustainable for her to be doing this if she had to be the one there. You can't really put her name on it and have her not be there. So we pivoted and realized there was another need for something that I had been doing with Precision kind of on the side. People were coming to me a lot, saying, “I’ve got a coach out of town. Do you know anybody?” Or “Our bars are really struggling. Do you know anyone that could come for a couple weeks?” A lot of requests for just the short term, almost like temp coaching is what I called it. So I had been doing that and been doing well at it locally. People knew that they could call me and I could probably find them somebody. I talked about that with Alicia, and we figured, with her resources in mind, that should be its own thing. So Like a Champ is now representation for freelance gymnastics professionals.
TD: I love that. Okay, well, we have to dive into Chellsie. She's the big, big name in the gymnastic world right now. So you are choreographing her comeback floor routine, correct? Is that weird now since you’re colleagues as well?
NL: I don't think so. I don't know. I can't speak for her. I don't know if it's because Andy's her coach, and she just knows how to separate relationships when it comes to gymnastics. I choreographed the routine already. She learned the choreography. Then once a week, we get together and just keep tweaking and fine-tuning and adding nuances. So when we do those sessions, in true Chellsie training fashion, they're not super long and drawn out, but they're consistent and they're frequent. So we'll meet for like, 20 minutes or 45 minutes and just knock it out. The discussions during that session are only about what we're doing. When it's over, we might be like, “Oh, so are we meeting tomorrow about that workshop?” And that’s it. It’s very much, you know, choreographer and athlete. She's an adult, and she knows what she can do. She knows what she can handle. She knows what it's going to feel like when she has to tumble. So that's a cool experience to work with somebody that's just so in tune with what they need. But I will say, the girl can move. I don't know if people realize that, but she really can. She really can. She gets subtleties, and she's got good instincts. She just doesn't think that she does. So when you all see it, you’ve got to reinforce that. Let her know.
TD: Were you surprised when she kind of said, I'm gonna do this! I'm coming back!
NL: No, I was surprised how long it took. I told you she's been working with Precision in our events. I remember vividly being in Vermont, and her and I getting up on beams and doing Popas, and hers was far superior to mine. But I was like, hey, you're you, I'm me. But I remember looking at her going, how? How are you seven feet in the air off of the beam, and you haven't done this in how long? How are your feet all the way around? I just remember being like, “You know what? There's something weird there, in a very good way.” That following summer, she really got into working out, just wanting to feel athletic again. And that's a really common thing when you have kids, you're just like, I need myself back. I need to not be the person that's just responsible for feeding and helping you sleep. I need my own thing. And so she started working out and getting strong. Of course, her gym was the place to work out, and so how do you not start doing handstands and stuff. But we would be at camps, and the random Popa on beam turned into legit stuff. We're in New Hampshire, and she did her first public to Tamayo off the tumble track into the pit. All of us that were there our jaws dropped! That was not an open pike double Arabian. That was a Tamayo. It was a complete front layout. And at that moment, I thought, she is on her own level. Then every camp after that, she started doing more and more stuff. And what we learned is that Chellsie can't say no to a challenge. It's so funny. So we started messing with her. She would be on the line doing a side aerial layout step out, "just playing." We’d be like, “Chellsie, that high beam (it was a little wider than a regular high beam, not much, maybe like a half an inch on each side or something), you should probably do it up there. You know, if you feel like you can.” And within five minutes. First, it was I can't do that, and then she's nailing three in a row. It's just funny, and I see Andy doing that too in the videos, just kind of taunting her a little bit. But it's like if you plant that seed, she can't help herself and has to do it. Be careful what you say!
TD: Obviously, you're working with her on floor. What would you say right this second is her strongest event?
NL: Um, well, she had a little ankle thing. That's getting better. I mean, probably beam looks like the easiest if you were to be like, “Oh, you have to compete tomorrow.” Probably beam. I mean that dismount is like.. (TD: she makes everything look easy). Yeah, I've never seen someone flip so fast in a pike. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, we all know her for bars, and months ago or less than a year ago, bars were out of the question, and now she's catching Hindorffs, and they're higher than they ever were! I’m going to say at this time next year, rings are her strongest event.
TD: Well, I love her story. I love you guys working together on all that. It's pretty amazing. A couple fun tidbits I need you to explain. You can't put your arms over your head?
NL: Nope. I mean, I can put them up. But that's it. What's funny is I did Healy's like that. It's always been that way. Even as I was little, I was like a super, super strong little kid. It's just my shoulders. My leg flexibility was awesome. You wouldn't know, but I could never have a straight shoulder angle. It’s terrible. So you've got to kind of use your situation, right? It could be a lot worse, right? But I love it when people are surprised because that means my coaches did a good job. And hopefully, I'm doing a good job. There are a lot of kids out there that have weaknesses, but they have heart. Through My Gym Judge, we do these presentations for parents and for kids just talking about non-value part deductions, and the importance of footwork and posture, flexibility and artistry in your routines, and what that adds up to. When they find out that overall flexibility and posture in their choreography is worth three tenths, you can see the kids that are tight going like uhhh… so I explain all that and then I show them my arms and I say, "I didn't get that deduction." They're like, "What do you mean you didn't get that deduction?" Because I learned that that was a deduction, and then I played the game. And gymnastics is a game. There's no reason to show the judge your weaknesses. You get out there, you show them all the things that make you amazing. Then you work on your weaknesses in the gym until you're ready to show them, but even down to the way I would salute the judge, it was just here and done. Nothing to see here.
I had a coach, Shixin Mao, and she was the first one to kind of teach that to me. Now when I went to her, I was 14, and I was doing choreography, and she was like, “Get your arms down!” I was like, “What did I do wrong?” She's like, “If you're not on bars or tumbling, don’t ever put your arms over your head!" Oh, my choreography was just… nobody had a clue. I mean, when I was younger, they did, but once I learned that! So to be able to impart that on kids, too. You're not stuck. You just learn the rules and then work your way around them a little bit.
I enjoyed every second of this interview and loved hearing her passion for not just gymnastics but helping the young athletes who choose this difficult sport to conquer. Thank you so much, Nicole, Chellsie, and Alicia, for making a difference in this sport we all love and being positive role models for the countless girls that look up to you. Gymnastics needs more women like you leading the way.
To learn more about Nicole and her gymnastics ventures, click the links below:
If you'd like to read more about Chellsie Memmel and her inspiring comeback to elite gymnastics, you may do so HERE.
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE! Learn more about Nicole's breakdancing, fashion show choreography, and even hear who some of her favorites are for Tokyo 202ONE!
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