We were lucky to catch up with Margaret Morrissey recently and have shared our conversation below.
Margaret, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
Something I’ve learned over the past 10 years in my career as a professional dancer and choreographer, is that the waves of creativity ebb and flow in ways you don’t always expect. As young performers, we leave college so fresh and eager to take over the world of the arts; to stake our claim, share our voice with the masses, become important. We were bubbling with ideas and energy and willing to work for free, as long as that meant a stage and an audience to share it with. The entirety of my early-mid 20s was filled with countless projects and shows, trying desperately to be accepted into the competitive arts community of my city. Creating was my reason for being, and I couldn’t imagine a time when those resources in my brain would simply dry up.
I never knew something could change my life so suddenly and profoundly that I would stop creating. After all, suffering was often the impetus for my creative work, so difficult life experiences normally added fuel to my creative fire. But then life threw at me a pain so heavy, it caused my very first creative paralysis. I could no longer turn the hurt into art, because it ran too deep. And without that catharsis, my main method of coping, there was no healing. For years I started setting choreography on dancers and after a few weeks of trying would abruptly stop and give up. I looked in the mirror barely recognizing myself, because dance had always been my home. As I felt my life completely start to roll off the tracks, I did what myself and many artists fear more than anything, I took a break.
A break for an artist, while sometimes much needed, is terrifying. It can feel like failure. It can feel like the end of a career. And the longer my “break” lasted, the harder it was to come back. I put so much internal work into healing the trauma that paused my creativity, it left me with little desire to reopen the wound. I reclaimed my life and my happiness, and did not know if there was room to dance anymore. Coming back to direct and choreograph after an unplanned 5 year hiatus, at first, gave me such a feeling of imposter syndrome. I “used” to be good at this. Am I still good at this? Will anyone want to come and see this?
All that is to say that my most meaningful work is the one I am currently setting on my non-profit, Fuerta Dance Company, premiering this April in 2022. That is partially because of the long personal journey it took me to make it, but also because the movement itself is some of my best. After wading through the fear and self-doubt of returning to creating dances, I’ve come out the other side with (finally) new ideas, new inspiration, and my precious stores of creativity replenished. I feel more like myself than I have in years, as this pivotal piece of my identity has finally been put back into place. Choreography and dance is a part of me I’m so happy I didn’t let go. But the best advice I could give to young artists would be to be kinder to yourself. Be gentle. Take time for yourself and your personal life when you need it. The work will always be there, and it will welcome you back when you’re ready. I am so thankful for my dance community and to my stunning cast of dancers this season who’ve supported me and believed in the work. With their help, I’ve found my way back home to dance, and I am ready to tell a story it’s taken me a really long time to tell.
Margaret, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I grew up dancing at the Georgia Dance Conservatory, very much immersed in the classical ballet realm. And while ballet will always be my first love, our relationship was not always the healthiest, and I quickly transitioned to the grittier groundedness of modern dance when I attended college at Northwestern University. Even then, as I honed my craft as a ballerina turned modern dancer, I started finding the most joy in creating work rather than being onstage depicting someone else’s. I wanted to be behind the scenes directing, rather than the vessel everyone sees. So I began submitting choreography to every festival and show that presented itself, and was shocked to keep getting selected. There was something so satisfying about taking an idea or a feeling and translating it into movement, sharing it with your dancers, then sharing it with your audience, until everyone feels a little bit of what you feel. Upon graduating and moving back home to Atlanta, Dance Canvas was my entry into the professional realm as an emerging artist, and helped me gather the courage to start my own dance company, Fuerta. Shortly after, I became the owner of the Druid Hills Dance Center, and had a home for the Fuerta Dance Company to rehearse. I finally had my very own place to create, and we’ve been able to put on a number of successful shows in Atlanta over the past few years. Our work largely explores the darkness of femininity and the female experience, while also serving as a platform to promote confidence and body positivity in young women.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson I very much needed to unlearn as a young artist was thinking that every piece I made had to be a masterpiece. A perfectionist from birth, I struggled the first few years that I was directing my non-profit, Fuerta Dance Company, directing my dance school, Druid Hills Dance Center, and still teaching and choreographing for many other dance studios around Atlanta. I was spread so thin and still felt the ridiculous need to make every 5-year-old’s recital dance my Sistine Chapel. And not to say that every dance I make now doesn’t or shouldn’t matter to me greatly, or require a lot of work, but looking back, I can’t help but laugh at how crazy I would get having multiple professional shows and recitals going on at once and 40+ dance routines bouncing around my brain. We all do it! We all go through these phases of overload, and having dances not turn out the way you envisioned because of it. I finally learned, in a serious effort to avoid the immanent grey hairs coming in, to let go a little bit and trust the process. I learned to cater to the specific talents of different groups of dancers and students, rather than sticking like glue to my original plans. And when you unlearn that every piece has to be a masterpiece, you relax, you open up parts of your brain that were overshadowed by stress and the pressure to be great, and the work actual gets so much better!
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
There was a time when I probably would have said the most rewarding thing about being an artist was having an outlet for my emotions or getting to share my life experiences with others. But honestly, in the last few years, the most rewarding part has become seeing my students feel inspired and proud of my work. Making a safe and welcoming space for young dancers to create their own work, or feel something after watching mine, is incredibly rewarding as an artist and creative.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.fuertadance.com
- Instagram: @fuertadance
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fuertadance
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0WbRfwVeW-AcwEFf08BOBw
- Other: https://vimeo.com/user56392725
Image Credits
Jessica White, Daemon Baizan, Steve Colby