We were lucky to catch up with Alec Dahmer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alec, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I’ve been dancing all my life! I grew up in a competitive dance studio where I learned a lot of dance styles and how to move my body in general, and then I went out into the world right out of high school and sought the best mentors I could find. It wasn’t easy finding mentors I really clicked with, but I was very fortunate to find people like George Jones and Shawn Bracke who guided me as a dancer and more importantly as an artist and a person. Acting (my primary craft) was a bit tougher of a road. In my experience, every actor has a coach or an acting studio they swear by, but things like drop in acting classes are not a thing. Acting classes aren’t cheap either! So the pursuit of finding the right place to study the craft of acting takes more time and more commitment in my experience. I gave quite a few studios quite a lot of money as well as between 4 and 6 weeks of classes of my life and none of them felt right for me. Then came COVID. Acting studios made the switch to online, which in turn made them cheaper, as well as more accessible in terms of where I could train. Sitting in my parents basement, I could take acting classes with the best acting teacher in New York City! So I did! I took the online intensive at the Terry Knickerbocker studio in Brooklyn, NY, and it was easily the best training I had ever done. It was a taster of the full conservatory program and even though it was a shorter intensive, the results were amazing. Right after that intensive, I booked a role on HBO Max’s Titans in a guest role. It felt amazing. I had to go back. I mean with three months of acting training booking me a role on a show like Titans, I could only imagine what two whole years of training would give me the tools to do. I enrolled in the two year Conservatory program at TKS starting the following year. It was extremely scary. I was moving from a small town in Canada down to Brooklyn, NY while COVID was still sketchy. I had never lived more than a 2 hour drive away from my parents and now I lived a ten hour drive away. I didn’t even know five people who lived in New York City, but it felt like the only choice. It was beyond worth it. Having completed the program a couple months ago, I can easily say that doing that program was the best decision of my life. I have never felt so confident in my abilities and artistry and have never felt so confident about myself in general thanks to that program. To dive deep into my craft surrounded by other hungry artists who want to tell stories and make the best art we can being taught by teachers who want to encourage us in a safe environment and guide us and let us flourish is a dream come true. I think surrounding yourself with the right people and being in the right environment is the most important thing when it comes to learning your craft. It can feel difficult to see the benefit of training, especially in our current TikTok world, but what helped me make the decision I made to train at Terry Knickerbocker Studio was really thinking about Long Term vs Short Term investments. I asked myself “How will this help me in the short term? How will this help me in the long term?” and just honestly compared my answers. I do that with most things nowadays. Nine out of ten times, I end up opting for the longer term investments, because they keep me on the path to doing what I want down the road. It’s the same idea as working out everyday. In the short term, you will likely see no muscle growth and you will likely be in pain, but, in a week from now, two weeks from now, a month from now, two months from now, you will see muscle growth and feel stronger. The exact same thing goes for learning any craft you want to pursue. Consistent, difficult things will make you better in every way.

Alec, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an actor, a dancer, a clown, an artist, sometimes a writer, newly a producer, but most importantly, I’m an artist and a human! I come from a very embodied art form background in the forms of dance and acting, but I truly like to do whatever feels right to me. The majority of my work is acting and dancing, but that’s not to say there aren’t other things mixed in. I believe strongly in being an artist who specializes in certain crafts rather than saying I am a specific type of artist. For me, I prefer to say I’m an artist who specializes in acting and dancing, rather than saying I’m an actor or a dancer. At least internally! I think if I limit myself to either craft exclusively, I’m not expressing as freely as I possibly can. And I think my art reflects that feeling of freedom. My main goal at the moment is to tell meaningful stories that affect people. I’m not trying to be famous, I’m not trying to make money, I’m trying to make art that resonates with people and have fun along the way. I use that phrase pretty loosely as well! To expand, I mean that “art that resonates with people” can look so many different ways. Whether I’m playing a silly character in a very absurd, fun family comedy (Noodles in Bajillionaires on NBC Universal Kids) or I’m playing a borderline abusive father in an immersive dance theater show (my character in Limbo: The Echo with Shinsa), I think both those seemingly opposite stories and storytelling methods affect people. It could make them laugh, it could make them cry, it could give them any feeling in-between, and that’s the goal of any art I make. All that to say, anything I’m apart of, you can expect me to be fully involved trying to make it the best piece of art I can!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think the easiest and most important thing is to consume and talk about art! Art is made to be consumed, and it’s made to feed the soul of society. Talking about art in community creates a society that embraces art, and the more we talk about art, the more other people will go see it. I’ve been a part of advertising teams for different shows, and the strategy that gets the most amount of people to actually come see the art I’ve made is word of mouth. Friends telling friends about this great show they saw lead to those people coming to our show! Fancy articles, and flyers were effective, but never as effective as word of mouth. So, talking about art gets the word out, gets more people consuming art, and it gets society consuming art in a communal way.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think the most rewarding part is getting a personal recounting of how my art affected someone. I had a dear friend come to an immersive dance theater show I was in, and after the fact, she came up to me and said “Oh my god Alec, I cried at…” and spoke about a specific part of the show that moved her. It made me cry. The idea that my artistic expression could make someone feel so deeply that they cried is a gift that you can’t get everyday. It makes me feel fulfilled. It’s not just a reminder of how “good” my art is, it’s a reminder to me of the duty of the artist, which is to provide a mirror to society and help people see and feel things more fully. A first hand experience of how my art made them feel (especially when it’s such a rich experience for them) is me achieving that goal of completing the artist’s mission and helping someone feel whatever they needed to feel that day.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alecdahmer/

Image Credits
Geo Mantilla, Terry Knickerbocker Studio