Adam Meyers, a new ballroom dance  instructor at Central, is also a writer for a popular tabletop game Pathfinder, a game that was based on Dungeons and Dragons.

Meyers is the founder of the company Drop Dead Games which writes third party game development work for Pathfinder.

Meyers has taught dance before; however, this is his first time teaching college dance classes. He taught private lessons when he lived in New York, and he taught at  The Academy of Ballet in Utah.

Rebecca Johnson, Meyers’ former dance partner of eight years, co-directed several performances with Meyers.

“He taught groups dances and choreography they weren’t familiar with,” Johnson said. “He’s a hard partner to replace.”

Meyers didn’t start ballroom dancing until college, but his mother ran an Irish dance school, and she was the person who first introduced him to ballroom dance.

At Brigham Young University, Meyers was part of the backup team and took as many different dance classes as he could.

Tabletop games have also always been a part of Meyer’s life. His dad used 2nd  ‘Ed. Dungeons and Dragons to teach Meyers lessons and to tell him stories. Meyers also gets inspiration from Tracy Hickman, a  best-selling fantasy author.

Meyers finds inspirations from Hickman’s philosphy on the power of play, which Meyers believes to be a useful tool for education because it encourages empathy and growing.

He believes that by writing role playing games, he is giving users a new perspective by letting them become different characters, giving people tools to grow.

“When I was younger, I wanted to be an archeologist, but in hindsight, I don’t think I’d be happy doing anything different,” Meyers said. “There’s always that ‘need’ and I think I always knew I needed to be in the professional creative field.”

Meyers moved to Ellensburg because he found there are not many opportunities for ballroom dance in the big city.

Meyers wanted to use his skills in a place where he felt he could raise his children, have a day job as a dance instructor and be close to Seattle, where many gaming businesses are located.

“Both careers require building up, so it’s time consuming, but it’s worth it,” Meyers said. “I don’t see them conflicting.”

Right now, Meyers is setting up a class at Central for ballroom dancing during winter quarter and is talking to local elementary schools about reviving programs to teach ballroom dance to fifth graders.

He also recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for “Spheres of Power,” a new system within the Pathfinder setting that gives players a new way to create magic-based characters.

Meyers defines the challenges for writing and dancing. For writing, one of the requirements is to be self-driven because it is a self-taught career, while dancing is the desire to continue the art, which forces the need to practice and learn. Both, however, require a drive to keep going after failure, which can be difficult.

“I think that these [professions] play off each other because Adam is a very creative person and he uses dancing and writing for Pathfinder as different avenues to express his creativity,”  Daniel Masterson, a friend of Meyers, said.

Meyers doesn’t believe that writing and dancing are mutually exclusive, either.

Meyers does not directly write about dance or dance about writing but believes each is an exercise of the creative muscle.

“Ideally, every artistic pursuit is part of a creative whole,” Meyers said. “There needs to be an emphasis that you can actually focus too much on one of your abilities and become single-minded. You need to experience more in life so you don’t become limited.”

Meyers also had advice for those who want to become professionals in a creative field.

“It is completely possible to make a good living doing what you love. It all comes down to how much work you’re going to put out into it,” Meyers said. “The great dividing line are those who are willing to fail and do it anyway. You can’t claim you want to create if you’re not creating. Talent can help you make a big splash but hard work will teach you how to swim.”