Meet the Owner…Mason Bettis

Creator, Owner & Director — Evolve 26: the brand, the studio, and the athletic wear

Mason Bettis was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This is her 26th year dancing and her 15th year teaching and choreographing.

Training

Mason began teaching and choreographing at thirteen, at Precision Athletes and De Frances Academy of Dance. She attended St. Joseph's Academy as a freshman while dancing on the Catholic High Bruinettes Dance Team, then moved to online homeschool so she could train for several hours a day with a pre-professional dance company. She graduated high school a year early and, at seventeen, moved to North Hollywood, California to further her training. She has trained in jazz, hip hop, ballet, pointe, musical theatre, contemporary, jazz funk, and tap.

Professional Work

Mason has traveled throughout the United States and abroad — including Canada and Finland — assisting professional dance choreographers. She served as a head instructor and staff member for the Universal Dance Association (UDA), and spent four years as a choreographer and technique coach for nationally ranked middle and high school dance teams. Her choreography has earned Regional and National Choreography Awards, Judge's Choice Awards, and first-place titles. Mason has been featured as a dancer in a Netflix film and two movies (2016).

In 2023 she performed in Big Buddy's Dancing with the Stars charity event in Baton Rouge, and she continues to perform in and support local charity events across the area.

Where Her Dancers Go

Mason's students have gone on to dance for collegiate teams including the LSU Golden Girls, Ole Miss Rebelettes, UNLV Rebel Girls and Co., and Western Kentucky University Dance Team, among others. One of her dancers was accepted into Shannon Mather's Mather Dance Company "Bridge into the Industry" program, which mentors her while she dances professionally in California.

What She's Building

Mason's goal is to train dancers in the Baton Rouge area for years to come — taking each one to the highest level of training they can reach before high school, or to the next level of whatever career in dance they choose to pursue. She has dreamed of teaching, choreographing, and owning her own studio, company, and brand since she was very young. She designed the Evolve 26 logo at eleven years old.

Her standard is simple: being a good human comes first, and being a good dancer comes next. In and out of the studio, she mentors the dancers who look up to her and pushes them to be independent, confident, disciplined, self-motivated leaders.

Her brand, her business, her teaching, her choreography, and her dancers will never stop evolving.

Photography: Glenn Eymard