Young dancers’ photos are targets for online predators. How a Toronto startup is fighting back

“Dance can be sexualized,” said Popowich, winner of the second season of “So You Think You Can Dance Canada.”

“You have little kids doing hip movement in little tops and little shorts, and the fact that anyone can be in there and take pictures, and we’ve never had control of that, is kind of appalling at this point in 2026,” she said.

Toronto-based Hodgins is trying to establish a new online security standard across the dance competition and convention industry by creating one universal online profile per dancer. 

The International Competitive Dancer Registry (ICDR) is a software that verifies the identities of users logging in to watch children’s dance livestreams of performances and access photos and videos taken at dance events, an industry valued at roughly $5 billion (U.S.) a year in the United States. More security for this material is needed, Hodgins said, as photos and videos of children at dance competitions have been used for grooming, inappropriate advances and deepfakes.

Popowich was so moved by Hodgins’s mission that she signed on to be an adviser for the company, she said. 

“We know online is a very unsafe place, and that there’s the dark web with little kid things that makes me feel sick to think about,” she said. “But it is very real.” 

Popowich said when she looks back on her time dancing as a child, she’s alarmed at how little control her parents had over her image.

“As a new mom, I need to think of all of that stuff now. If ICDR didn’t exist and there wasn’t a way to safely guard kids, I probably wouldn’t put my kid in a dance competition.”

Lacking in online safeguards

If a child aspires to dance competitively, or grow up to dance professionally, their parents will sign them up for dance classes at a local studio. Those studios teach children routines and take them on the road, sometimes across the country and even internationally, where they are showcased at conventions and competitions.

At these events, dancers’ performances are recorded and photographed, then posted online with judges’ feedback, and for dancers to share with their families and friends.

This is where ICDR comes in. At participating events, a child’s guardian can register with the company by uploading their government-issued photo ID as a one-time verification of their identity. Next, they get a PIN to use as a login.

Often, links to these photos and videos of children are not password-protected, and if they are, they only require a child’s birthdate to log in. Hodgins said that doesn’t meet the standards set out in Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), a federal privacy law that regulates how businesses collect and use personal data. 

PIPEDA states the security level of personal information must match its sensitivity, and a birthdate can be too easy to locate on public social media profile, said Hodgins.

There is no centralized online organization hosting children’s dance media, so ICDR does not have an easy road ahead as it tries to become an industry standard, he said. Though it is free to use, ICDR also offers paid optional injury insurance to dancers.

“It’s really been tough to try to bring athlete-grade structure to dance, and that’s all that we’re trying to do,” he said. In Canada, sports are often organized through centralized bodies like Hockey Canada or Gymnastics Canada.

But dance operates with a similar time commitment to those sports. Once on the competition circuit, children as young as five and teens spend entire weekends, from early morning to sometimes past midnight, in hotel ballrooms and convention centres.

Hodgins has spent the summer on the road attending dance trade shows and meeting studio owners across Canada and the United States to pitch ICDR. So far, he has partnered with several leading online hosts for dance media, and has registered 40,000 people, he said.

ICDR has recently partnered with DanceBUG and TMMDance, two of Canada’s largest software providers for dance media. 

“Privacy has been front and centre in how we build from the start — it’s a non-negotiable pillar for TMMDance,” said owner Paul Romein.

“We’re working with ICDR because verified identity belongs at the industry level, not inside one platform.”

Hodgins said his sister, Kelly-Ann Paul, inspired him to start ICDR. Paul is the president and CEO of the Canada Games Council. 

“I always had a front-row seat to athlete treatment versus dancer treatment,” Hodgins said. “And because our art is so subjective, people are complacent to think that we don’t need or deserve the same sort of ID system” as other sports, he said. 

An industry-wide problem

Previous reporting by the Toronto Star on the former leading dance convention company in North America, Break the Floor, shared stories of dancers who said they repeatedly described feeling sexualized in their dance learning space. Multiple dancers said they felt leered at by some choreographers who would message them compliments on their appearance, sometimes immediately following classes. Many students said they endured inappropriate sexual advances or comments from their instructors.

This leering extends to the online world as well, Hodgins said. As dancers share videos of themselves performing on social media, they can gain large online followings. Sometimes people unknown to these dancers seek out photos and videos, downloading and manipulating their images to create child pornography. In some cases, strangers show up to dance conventions to try to meet children whose photos they’ve seen online. 

ICDR is working to partner with companies that host children’s dance media across the industry, aiming to have one login that can be used across all events a dancer participates in through their youth. 

“Dance has been waiting to modernize and earn the same respect as youth sports for a long time,” Hodgins said.