Today we’d like to introduce you to Sally Im.

Hi Sally, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

I don’t know where to begin in my story. There’s just too much. My story starts with my parents. They escaped two war torn countries with a bunch of kids in tow, eventually landing in the South Bronx in 1970’s. My mother had a rough life, to say the least.
I think my story begins with them because their inability to “parent” me (not from lack of want) was somewhat of a gift that keeps giving. The many mistakes, discoveries, emotional ups and downs have been all my own for as long as I can remember. My sense of self reliance and my conscious inner voice has remained relatively the same since I was five. I would add that despite the intense constant stress they endured my parents have always treated me very kindly, with respect and somehow with admiration.
Being a parent of two kids now, I find it astonishing that I can only remember one instance where my mother got really angry with me.
Overall raising myself was not very different from any other person’s story of growing up. It was chock full of self doubt and fear. The main difference was I had no one to blame and I didn’t know much about blame so I processed mistakes and judgement a little differently. There was a lot of self coaching mostly with a “just try it again” attitude.
A lot of hard times in my life came with little outside pressure. And conversely many of my accomplishments were seen and felt solely by me.
Given today’s use of social media and the duality of the sense of oneself, public and private, I view my childhood as a bit like the “control group” in a science experiment. There wasn’t much of a public persona, just one version of me with very little sense of worrying about what others thought including my parents.
In turn I was a bit of a wild child, figuring out social and cultural norms on my own. I remember around the age of six, walking through the neighborhood and consciously deciding that climbing onto a parked car and hopping from car to car would be a good idea. Surprisingly no one stopped me.

There’s so much more to say on this, especially regarding the adolescent years! If anyone, especially parents have any questions please feel free to message me.

I think in a very general sense this answers both “how I got started” and “how I got to where I am today.”
I got started and luckily continue to get started by exploring my interests without much worry about how I will be perceived. And getting to where I am today was and still is the difficult part because I chose to be a mom. Starting a family meant leaving the control group and getting away from existing in a vacuum. Expanding our bubbles can be challenging. Perhaps this is why people in middle age seek out things from their youth like a flashy car or plastic surgery.
When we get to where we are, living in a much larger bubble, we grow weary. Maybe all we want are moments where we get to live with abandon. Pursuing my dance life has allowed me these precious moments of abandon and often solace.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

Oh so many struggles…One of the biggest obstacles for me was during young adulthood.
Entering the 1990’s, the resentment I carried about not looking “normal” (a whole other can of worms) and being from a poor economic background weighed on me heavily.
Looking back, a lot of this was pretty standard stuff for my age group.
Then in the early 90’s, when I found my love for house music I recognized that my people also felt like misfits! Together we fostered a thriving underground culture focused around a common interest in music. Music has supported me through out my life. And is more relevant now in my 50’s because my experiential knowledge has given me a much deeper connection to it.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

My work for the last 15 years has been focused in caring for my children and dancing with Laurie De Vito and Dancers. I have been so honored to dance with Laurie’s company. And will be forever grateful to her. When I joined back in 2005 I had no idea Laurie and her dancers would transform my life. Somehow through time and lots of guidance I tapped into dance as a way of going beyond myself. With a sharp focus on choreography, technique and music, I could push through the agony of feeling not good enough. It is a difficult hurdle to compartmentalize the parts of oneself in dance. The person, the body, the performer, the musician and the ego all whirling around in hopes of achieving the goal of transmitting a message, both ephemeral and reverberating.

I am beginning a new phase of my art life. A combination of music and dance, motivated mainly as a response to the ongoing hostile takeover of our government by a fascist regime. Please stay tuned.
Website will be under the address
swirlcollective.org

During these tumultuous times, it will be important to take action, combat hate, and connect with others who have a common interest in helping the many and not the few.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?

Wow. Well luck is a huge part of my life. For all intents and purposes I should not have survived childhood. Looking back there were many instances where I could have succumbed to the danger of my ignorance, uncontrollable circumstances, desperate people, risky behavior on my part.
Every person in my family dealt first hand with violence in the streets of New York. My mom was shot in 1981 and survived.
Can’t ask for more luck than that! And even into adulthood when I struggled for years to have a child, I got lucky.
I have two amazing girls! Pure luck.
I am so lucky to have an incredible network of dancers and artists who have supported me as the consummate late bloomer.
I am perpetually grateful and can’t help but think that all this luck was somehow orchestrated by my ancestors wherever they may roam.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: sallykismet

Image Credits

Laurie De Vito
Rosalie O’Connor
Sally Im