20230504
Age: 23
Hometown: Scarborough, On
Primary Medium: Contemporary Dance
Secondary Medium: Creative Non-Fiction Writing
When did you start dancing/choreographing and why did you keep up with it?
I started dancing when I was three because my parents put me in everything else, and all I wanted to do was dance.
Neither of my parents were dancers, but they said that I used to dance around the house all the time whenever they put music on, so they decided to put me in dance class.
And why did I keep up with it?
Originally, I wanted to be a ballerina.
I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but National Ballet, when I was in grade seven, I think, said that I was too tall, that I was going to be too tall.
Like, they thought I was going to grow a whole lot and be too tall, because I was like basically this height in grade seven.
I grew fast and then stopped.
So they really thought I was going to be way too tall.
[I would say you’re average height for a ballerina]
Yeah, no, it’s just like when I was in grade seven, [my height was] a little bit jarring.
So when they said that I couldn’t be a ballerina, I told myself that I’m going to show them.
I then did all of my stuff with my dance studio, and I did my RAD Advanced 2, and then I decided that it was going to be way too hard, and I felt like contemporary had more room to explore different artistic styles.
There are way more styles within contemporary dance than there are within ballet.
Ballet is requires you to “fit into the box”, whereas contemporary, the box kind of expands to you a little bit.
When did you start your secondary medium?
Did you always write?
I feel like, yes.
I feel like, like writing was definitely always my favourite class growing up in school
There’s like one full length novel that I wrote, and like, “full length novel in quotations”
Because I think I was about seven, and I wrote this, I wrote a parody of “THE PAPER BAG PRINCESS”
But I called it “THE PLASTIC BAG PRINCESS”.
And I just wrote an entire parody of the book, because it was like one of my favourite books.
That was like the first, like full work that I was super proud of.
I remember being so excited about this piece of writing.
And then in high school, I took a creative writing class.
And then while applying for universities, I thought to myself, if I’m not going to be a dancer, then I want to go study English, maybe.
So I applied to English programs, and obviously, when dance decided that it was going to work out for me, I got my English minor.
I like reading a lot too.
Does writing affect your ability to dance?
I think yes.
I think it affects it positively, not negatively…
Obviously…
I like writing works and then having them as inspiration for dance pieces.
So a lot of my works have spoken words in them, or like whenever I make a work, I always like jumping off from written pieces.
I also like writing down little blurbs of ideas and being like, “I want this to come through in my dancing”.
Aside from your primary/secondary medium… how else do you consume art?
How else do I consume art?
[Like, do you go to museums? Do you watch movies? Do you watch TV?]
I like going to museums.
[What kind of art in museums attracts you?]
I like photography a lot.
I like photography and I like sculpture.
And I think I like sculpture because it’s so similar to dancing.
I like sculpture that encapsulates movement.
Kind of like more contemporary pieces that are…
moving…
(for lack of a better word)
I also like photography a lot, specifically, I like photographers who capture portraits of everyday people, capturing life.
I prefer that style of photography.
[So you prefer portraits over landscapes]
I prefer portraits, but portraits that aren’t perfect.
I love seeing how other people see the world.
What do you do when you feel creatively stuck?
Creatively stuck?
[yeah]
Honestly nothing…
When I feel creatively stuck…
I just…
I just stop being creative for a bit.
[So you just take a break?]
I just take a break, yeah.
[What do you do on your break?]
I just try to live life.
I don’t know.
I just go through life until I feel like…
I don’t know.
I try not to put too much pressure on myself.
This is such an interesting topic.
I think I always go back to this thing, which happens whenever you see someone from (now that we’re graduating) your class, and it gets weirdly competitive about what you’re doing now.
I feel like I try now not to be so hard on myself.
I try not to have that internal competition with myself.
And try to take a step back.
Take it day by day.
Stuff will come to you.
Everything that’s supposed to come will come to you.
And I’m just working on letting go of control a little bit because it’s not great for me internally.
I think that if you let go of control.
The urge to be creative comes back as well.