Why did you audition for Springboard Danse Montreal?
At first I didn’t know about Springboard and I found out from my friend Kyle. He encouraged me to audition and I was like ‘I have been teaching for the past two years a lot and haven’t been dancing and don’t know if it’s a good idea’ the more I thought about it I said, you know what, I think I need to dance and I think I need to do something for myself rather than giving so much and I wanted to kind of be refueled I guess and that was the main reason I wanted to be inspired and to move and learn other peoples stuff rather than always give stuff out.
What are your expectations of this program?
Coming into it I wanted to expand my mind and get back in my body more instead of feeling like I was disconnected from a place I was experiencing when I was in school and to get invigorated to do my own work and to be more creative myself but now my expectations are shifting. I don’t know what I feel and it’s kind of confusing.
Do you feel like a dancer? What does that mean to you?
that’s something that changes day to day there are definite times that I feel like a dancer and times when I questions that very thing. I have a division in myself sometimes when I don’t identify with what my perception of a real dancer is.
what is a real dancer?
I don’t know that is a crazy question! A real dancer is someone who is really making it in the professional world as far as a company someone on stage that is in the limelight and who is in the middle of big stuff...who is involved with recognizable names, but then I think about what I do. I am a dancer. I’m doing it and living it and getting paid to do things that have to do with dance forms so how do you make the cut of what is and what isn't. i definitely feel conflicted as to whether I am or am not sometimes.
Do you ever struggle with confidence issues? How do you deal with confidence issues when they sneak up on you?
of course! lately I try and remember the negative effects of going into that mode so that I can reflect on how that attitude does not serve me so that I can find a way to separate myself from that place and not go there because I think it is detrimental and it slows you in you tracks so I always try to think okay how has this held me back in the past, how has this affected me and how has this taken away from my experience and that is a quick way for me to latch on to present time and think, you know what, I’m going to go past this. So it’s a lot of talking to myself and reinforcing new patterns versus old patterns.
How do you balance being a dancer and “real” life?
I think that is something that I am constantly working at I don’t know that I’ve achieved that balance and I don’t know that I ever will...I want to! I think that sometimes I put so much energy into my attachment to dance and it’s purpose in my life that I forget how to be a normal person and do normal real things and when I’m doing those normal real things I feel like I’m not as worthy if I’m not doing something dance related all the time. but then i get frustrated with that feeling because I think this is not healthy so yes, balance yet to be achieved.
What do you wish you had known about dancing that you instead had to figure out?
I wish I had known that, and still wish that I could grasp that dance is more than a doing, it’s a being and it’s an art and it’s allowing yourself to be an artist not necessarily a body that can fulfill and do this that and the other. It’s more about how can you bring yourself to an experience of expressing who and what you are. and i wish i knew sooner that it could be about that, that it could go that direction because i think i would have had a different attitude toward becoming and being more involved in wanting to be a dancer earlier where as growing up i was alway questioning it because i was so closely involved in this world that my mom had created in being a dance teacher. It was the only world i knew and i wanted to do it but at the same time i wasn't sure i wanted to do what she does, where do i fit in to the world of dance if I'm not doing what she does. because i didn’t have this exposure to the professional world other than broadway. so more about the artistry of dance.
The dance scene today is radically different from almost any other time; what about today's environment feeds your work? What are your favorite things about dancing now?
I feel like there is a much more human connection and quality about what is being created and what is being encouraged to be created i think exposing the human reality of a person and a person’s experience is becoming more common versus technique and some sort of conceptual idea being brought to the stage and so i like the rawness of humanity in art i love how that there is that line, like in Danielle's work the idea of person/dancer, person/dancer because that is something i resonate with that’s how i feel in life i’m a person and now i’m a dancer. bringing that to life.
What do you find the most challenging?
trying to fulfill what we determine success as a dancer in our minds and what society feeds us as success and being okay with the successes that we have in dance and being proud of what it is we are doing because there is always this feeling that you are never doing what is considered the top of what is successful so you constantly take yourself down and tell yourself what you are doing is not enough and i think that is the worst part about it because it as long as you are doing what you are trying to do in some way shape or form it should be considered success but that is not how we interpret it at all.
How often does your body hurt?
if I'm dancing regularly it hurts everyday in some form when I'm teaching it’s more like once a week i feel something specific but there is a sensation of discomfort here and there. it’s part of it.
What do you do to maintain your body?
i try i take class as much as i can but i teach more than i do any of that so i try to take pilates when i can and i think now it’s more of a mindset like a mental meditation process to keep my body better so that is the main focus and walking as much as i can
How would you describe your relationship with your body? How does that relationship impact your art?
i have always thought of my body as a tool an instrument in what i do. it’s very important to what i do so it is very influential on how well i do things depending on if am effected by something emotionally my body is very much a reaction to that. it can hold me back or it can push me forward. sometimes i can use my emotions to go further and sometimes they keep me stuck somewhere. i think they’re directly connected and i think it’s a huge association to work with both ways
What do you do on a daily basis to support your dancing (physically/emotionally/artistically/financially)?
I teach a whole lot and i try to choreograph as much as i can
Who would you most want to work for and why?
That is probably what keeps me not working because I don’t have a direct desire, it shifts with the times originally i was really intrigued by Forsythe but i didn’t have the passion to move to europe right away. Right now I am very interested in Batsheva but i also feel that is far fetched and too far beyond my grasp but that is another thing that we do we tell ourselves that we can’t do certain stuff. I’m interested in batsheva because i think that Ohad has really interesting ways of revealing things within people and he pulls out a humanistic raw quality that i find interesting when i watch his dancers and i want to know how he works, what his process is and how he formulates that idea of bringing to the surface things that other people are afraid to expose.
How do you feel when you are performing?
I haven’t done it in a while I think for a long time performing really stressed me out and made me feel uncomfortable because I was a perfectionist for so long that i couldn’t be in the physical experience i was always taking notation of what was happening while it was happening and then somewhere in grad school that shifted and became more of a visceral emotional experience and that was good because i was having experiences on the stage and then coming off and thinking ‘that was realy cool’ it was not so much about my head anymore. but i haven’t done it in so long that it will be interesting to see how this showing pans out for springboard because i am somewhat apprehensive that the old head game will come back What about the day after?
If you weren’t dancing, what would you be doing?
I would be a some form of counselor or social worker some type of healing therapist helping people is the other thing that i love to do originally i was torn because i wanted to be a child phycologist because i wanted to help kids in emotional ways and i feel like i am always trying to incorporate that into my life somehow.
What are you currently working on?
3 years ago my brother and I started the program called We Are Artists. It started as a special program affiliated with my mom’s school where we tried to expose young dancers to the real process that you learn in a college educational experience or just giving them the opportunity to do artistic work rep and go through the real performance process on stage tech and doing pieces longer than four minutes and really just working at creating something. and we are still working on that but it is kind of taking a shift this year and taking an even bigger shift in the future we have another program affiliated with my mom’s school called Miracles in Motion they work with special needs kids and so we are trying to under the direction of We are Artists make it an international program that we could take to different places around the world and help children with unique needs all over the world so we could help bring creative arts and creative exploration to other people who don’t necessarily get it. So it would be Miracles in Motion International but it would be founded directed and worked through We Are Artists. It’s a big goal but hopefully it will come true!
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