“For me, coding is pure creation”

Create a dance tutorial app to learn choreography from a distance. This is a good idea in times of pandemic, repeated lockdowns and curfews. This is the idea that two friends, Amalia Salle and Xuan-Vi Tran, had at the end of May 2020. Two months later, in August 2020, their Vibz application was launched. The pitch? “Learn the best choreographies and film yourself with your favorite dancers by your side”. An app that has met with success over the months. Yet on paper, this whole project seemed mission impossible.

The two friends knew nothing about the code and had no idea how to go about creating their Vibz app. But by associating with the right people and by training themselves little by little, in particular via the simplified programming language Apple Swift, they brought their project to life. And created a new business that they intend to develop, even after the end of the pandemic.

How did you meet?

Xuan-Vi Tran: Amalia created her dance entity 7 years ago. She is a choreographer and oversees the artistic direction. In this context, in 2016 she created the Paris Can Dance, an urban dance show where amateurs can perform. She also gives lessons, conducts choreography workshops and collaborates with a professional dance company. Me, I did Epitech, a computer science school where I learned the development and management of databases. After this training, I joined an advertising and marketing agency. The work was intense and my health was starting to suffer. So, I decided to go back to sport. I was interested in dancing and took lessons with Amalia. And then, once, as I master Photoshop, I offered to redo his posters. That’s how we became friends. And then, in 2019, I resigned to take care of the management of the dance entity and develop the activity. In March 2020, we were going to sign the lease for our own dance studio when the Covid-19 turned everything upside down.

It was during confinement that the idea for the Vibz app germinated?

Amalia Hall: Yes, after two months of doing nothing in containment, I relaunched Vi on an idea that I had had a few months before but that we had put aside because it was not the priority. There, we had plenty of time to think about this idea of ​​an application. It was the right time. We thought about it and we said to ourselves that we had to move quickly because other competing apps were starting to emerge. But we didn’t know anything about app development. So we called on two friends, Maxime and Laurent, to help us.
Xuan-Vi Tran: We didn’t know anything about the code, so we needed help. They had experience. Except that they were clear from the start: they were willing to give us a hand but they were going to need support and we too had to learn to code. So we got down to it. It was then late May, early June 2020. Maxime taught us a lot about coding, with the help of Apple’s Swift programming language. We made a world of it but it’s not that complicated …

Concretely, how did you create the application?

Xuan-Vi Tran: We brainstormed a lot to define what we wanted to be able to do in the application, how it was going to work and what functions we would need. The four of us met every day to move quickly. And then Maxime put the computer in our hands and took us through the coding environment step by step. Whenever needed, we could ask them questions. Suddenly, we quickly started to understand all that.

And finally, do you like the code?

Amalia Hall: As surprising as it sounds, yes! For me, it’s a bit like a new foreign language. I speak four languages ​​and the code is the fifth. For me, it’s an additional language to communicate. Having an artistic streak, I see the code as a way to create through numbers and letters. It’s like a choreography, you have to put the elements in the right order for it to be fluid and to work. In my head, as with coders, we ultimately have a very artistic vision. Coding is like creating a dance performance. It’s pure creation and you have to do some testing to see if it works. We try and we see the result.

When did you launch Vibz?

Xuan-Vi Tran: The first version was launched in August 2020, two months after deciding to create it. Since then, we have been fortunate to be featured on the Apple App Store. We had just over 17,000 downloads in less than a year. The application is free, but we first sold individual tutorials before opting for a more efficient subscription system last January. It is available in French and English and soon in Spanish and Italian. Half of the downloads were made in France. We also have a lot of dance fans in India and the United States. It’s cool to think that you can reach people all over the world through an app.

What exactly does Vibz offer?

Amalia Hall: It is a platform that mixes dance training and popularization of urban culture. We have created many tutorials to learn choreography while familiarizing yourself with technical terms. We cater for beginners as well as intermediate and advanced levels. At first, we started shooting at home, with a green background, then we started to regularly rent a studio to film our tutorials. I’m the one doing the editing. For the choreographies, we also call on other people, which makes it possible to offer content with a wide variety of influences.

What is the next step ?

Amalia Hall: With Vi, Maxime and Laurent, we are working on a V2 to attract even more young people. For this, we will have more of a social network aspect but while keeping our DNA. We want our users to learn something while doing a physical and artistic activity. We also want Vibz to be a more inclusive app, to address LGBT audiences, take into account the specificity of disabilities in choreography, etc. And then we want to create a Battle system where the students can challenge the choreographers from a distance.

What does the future of Vibz look like?

Xuan-Vi Tran: In the future, we would like to have a place that would be both a dance studio to give face-to-face lessons but also a filming location for Vibz. To develop ourselves, we followed the Les Sprinteuses program for 6 months organized by Willa, a diversity accelerator in tech. Les Sprinteuses is dedicated to sportech start-ups. It really suits us. We have also benefited from support from Apple. With these different programs, we learned how to pitch to potential investors, refine our economic model, achieve profitability faster, etc. And, if we are not yet professional coders with Amalia, we are making good progress in this area as well. It is fascinating to be able to invest in all aspects of the activity and to watch it grow little by little.

Florence santrot

Every day, aufeminin’s editorial staff addresses millions of women and supports them in all stages of their lives. The aufeminin editorial staff is made up of committed editors and …