Here’s how ex-ballerina became a cocktail powerhouse
Chanel Godwin-McMaken didn’t always envision becoming one of Phoenix’s top bartenders. Starting at age 4, she dreamed of being a professional dancer. Throughout high school, she danced for four hours a day, from the second she finished school until 9 at night.
“I was the kid that was always getting pulled out of school to go to performances,” Godwin-McMaken says. “Dance was literally my everything,”
She performed different styles, but ballet was always her favorite. Once she earned her first pair of pointe shoes, she never looked back. Ultimately, she danced on pointe for close to 10 years.
These days, Godwin-McMaken has swapped pointe shoes for Nike sneakers and traded dancing onstage for a different type of performance.
As a bartender at award-winning Phoenix cocktail bar Little Rituals, Godwin-McMaken spends her time
crafting palomas, daiquiris and creatively named drinks such as the Social Butterfly and Touch of Evil.
A self-described “sucker for wine,” she also trained to become certified as a sommelier three years ago and has launched two podcasts focused on bartending and the beverage industry.
She hopes, one day, to open her own bar.
“When I get hooked on something, I must succeed,” she says. “But I still feel like the little guy, just trying to learn.”
When she decided to ‘get serious about bartending’
Even during the years she was focused on her dance career, GodwinMcMaken held jobs at restaurants and bars.
In high school, she worked at Mary Coyle Ol’ Fashion Ice Cream, where she discovered both her knack for chatting with people and a love of serving. While she attended Scottsdale Community College to study dance technology, Godwin-McMaken, who was born and raised in Phoenix, worked at a variety of restaurants around the Valley.
After college, she moved to Denver to dance with performance artist Nick Cave and was later set to move to Chicago to pursue dancing full time.
But something just didn’t feel right, she says.
“I loved it but I didn’t have the drive,” she says. “I thought if I don’t have this passion, I’m not going to waste my life doing this. And, at that point, restaurants were giving me that fire-in-mygut passion.”
So, as an avid believer in “trusting your gut,” she decided to focus her efforts on a career where she could envision a future for herself.
“When I decided to get serious about bartending, I turned another page,” she says. “I still miss dance but I honestly feel like I’m a better bartender than I was a dancer.”
‘I just said, “I’m winning this game” ’
Once Godwin-McMaken made the decision to flip dance into a hobby and bartending into a career, it didn’t take her long to rise to the top.
A defining moment came the first time she competed in the Last Slinger Standing, a cocktail competition where bartenders from across the country attempt to make the best cocktail in a series of fast-paced, head-to-head rounds.
The first year she competed, GodwinMcMaken didn’t even expect to make it into the contest, she says. She tried out anyway and made it onto the lineup as an alternate. As it turned out, three contestants dropped out that year, so all three of alternates were able to compete. Godwin-McMaken says she knew she was meant to be there but she didn’t have confidence she would go very far against some of the nation’s best bartenders. This nonchalant attitude, she says, kept her calm and played a key roll in helping her get to the final round where she lost to Joshua James, a bartender and co-owner of Clever Koi and Fellow Osteria in Phoenix and Scottsdale.
The following year, Godwin-McMaken earned a spot on the official competition lineup.
“I manifested it,” she says. “I just said, ‘I’m winning this game, and that’s the end.’”
And after a grueling contest, enduring judging and beating out 15 other bartenders, she did exactly that.
How dance helps her be a better bartender
While Godwin-McMaken says she’s “closed the door” on her dance life, many aspects of her training and performance help with bartending at Little Rituals, she says.
For example, bartending, much like dance, is both an individual and team effort. Each person must do the correct moves, but together they work to keep the performance on track.
“It’s like I’ve learned my solo, you’ve learned your solo, but together it’s a masterpiece,” she says.
The pressure to perform under watchful eyes is also similar, GodwinMcMaken says.
“When people are sitting at the bar, you are literally performing. If you do a wrong move, make the wrong drink or drop a glass, it’s so embarrassing. But the key with both is fake it ‘till you make it,” she says with a laugh.
These days due to the coronavirus pandemic, customers no longer sit at the bar with a front row seat to GodwinMcMaken’s performance. Little Rituals was one of thousands of bars around the state that closed for months following state mandates.
But since the bar’s reopening, Godwin-McMaken has returned to performing what she calls the “silent dance” as a team of bartenders flow around each other, working together to get everything done.
What’s next for Godwin-McMaken?
As a woman working behind the bar, it’s those coworkers she sometimes leans on to help handle sexist customers, she says.
On a recent occasion, when a man randomly insulted her appearance, Godwin-McMaken says she was lost for words. But when male customers ask for a man to make their drink instead of her, something she says happens with shocking frequency, she asks a coworker to make the drink and moves on with her shift.
“I would rather be above it,” she says.
“I just try to laugh away what people say.”
Bartending has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, but there’s no reason for it to be that way, GodwinMcMaken says; the tools and the drinks don’t discriminate.
“We both shake a tin the same way, they don’t make your tin different than mine,” she says.
Looking forward, Godwin-McMaken says she hopes the industry will keep changing even if rude customers might always exist. She also has big dreams for the evolution of her own career. Godwin-McMaken says Little Rituals is “definitely home for a while,” but eventually she would love to open her own bar. She envisions it as “an upscale dive where you can get a bad ass drink.”
On the menu customers will find a variety of cocktails featuring gin, her favorite spirit, and definitely a French 75, her favorite classic cocktail. No matter what the future holds, Godwin-McMaken says she’ll never fully retire her dance moves.
“I dance in my living room just to feed my soul,” she says.