We were lucky to catch up with Elena Paiola And Alberto Boffa recently and have shared our conversation below.

Elena Paiola, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Alberto and I are life partners and work full-time, together, on all of our projects. Defining what we do is something we’ve always found hard because we are so curious and love exploring new paths and new activities – we always have some idea or project brewing! I think we can say that our main job, at the moment, is working as visual designers: we are partners in a creative agency and have the privilege of working with big international brands. But we also have a passion for photography on the side and have always worked on independent photography projects (which is how I think your team discovered us).

Both of us have always very strongly felt the family pressure of having a stable, conventional job. When we first met neither of us worked as a creative; I think we found our artistic balance together, exploring the possibilities and finding out that you can, in fact, earn a respectful living as an artist / creative.

The opportunity to build a creative agency was the very first step toward this slow – but huge – life-changing epiphany. It was the first time our creative juices really flowed towards something very specific and market-oriented (i.e. it wasn’t “just” creativity or art as a form of expression, but it was a response to a market demand).

If we look back at our career in advertising, I think we can safely state that life in a creative agency is very stressful. Once we started working in ADV we quickly found ourselves working well into the night almost every day of the week. Because we worked together it wasn’t immediately clear to us that our work-life balance was off, but after a couple of years we found ourselves talking about nothing but work; it wasn’t a problem for us as a couple, but we could tell we needed some free creative space that did not involve work or work-related topics.

One summer, a client of ours sponsored a big summer swing music and dance event. We went to check that everything was going as planned and that’s how another chapter of our life opened up. We were immediately struck by the atmosphere, the vintage sounds, the people… and those dances! Once back in our home city we signed up for a swing dance course and it’s been love ever since. 

At the beginning it was simply a fun way to relax and stimulate another part of our brain, and also get to know each other better, in yet another context. Little did we know that in a few years we’d be teaching different swing dances as a side job, travelling to different schools and festivals to spread the swing legacy. Dancing has been a real ride for us, a sort of “second step” in the realisation that you can, in fact, earn a living from an artistic path. It has also given us the possibility to explore an artistic creativity that is very different from the type we conventionally use in the agency; dancing is all about technique and practice, but then forgetting all of it on the dance floor listening to the music, and to your partner and your body.

Both Alberto and I come from two very structured, old-fashioned families, where artistic careers have never been valued as an option, let alone encouraged. Both he and I always felt a pull towards creativity, but in our years of adolescence we never knew what to do with it, and if nurturing it was a good idea or not – or just a waste of time.

 We’re so grateful for where the river of life has brought us so far, in this slow but steady journey of growth, discovery and self-awareness.

Elena Paiola, 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?

At the moment, we’re very proud of having consolidated what we define as our “main” job, i.e., the one which revolves around our creative agency. In our free time, we try to dedicate ourselves to balboa dancing (a specific type of swing dance that requires a particular, very subtle, connection between leader and follower). We teach and train in the evenings or during the weekends, and our goal is to be able to spread this dance and its culture to as many people and places as possible. We believe that dancing is such a delicate art form: it can help mend the deepest scars by whispering to the body and letting itself in with unimaginable grace. I think our goal, at the moment, is sharing this privilege, this joy, with as many people as possible. We’ve recently created an IG account especially dedicated to balboa, also bridging over some beautiful collaborations we’d fostered over the years on our photography account (everything creative or artistic can overlap and explore new boundaries, and that’s the beauty of it all!).

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It might sound a little cheesy, but I think it’s the potential of spreading beauty and/or happiness.

When we first started dancing, we could tell from the start that it was something we really enjoyed. So we said to ourselves “ok, we don’t know where this new journey will take us, or if we’ll ever be any good at it, but we can consider ourselves satisfied if
A) we get good enough to actually enjoy ourselves on the dance floor
B) while at it, if we can make those looking at us smile or be a little happier, even for that just one song, I think we’ve accomplished what there is to accomplish.

Now that we also teach, the greatest feeling is that of seeing our students happy, finally able to master a step or a variation. That’s the greatest reward.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

We touched on this on a different question, but I believe that dance has an incredible healing potential. And what’s great about it is that it’s not explicit. What I mean is that people don’t usually sign up to dance classes because they have a problem (for example depression or anxiety). But pretty soon they find that it cures them in so many ways… and the fact that everything happens subconsciously is probably what makes dancing so effective. We’ve had students thanking us for the most disparate things, it’s really heartwarming.

Our goal, if we have enough time next year (fingers crossed!), is to bring balboa to schools and to a local organization that organizes activities for the blind.

Contact Info:

• Website: bit.ly/albertoandelena
• Instagram: @albertoandelena

Image Credits
Grouchality L’abusiva Sharon di Cinci Gianni Vascellari Royal Events Felix Martin