We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amanda Reichert a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Amanda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I think one of the biggest shifts I’ve made in my pursuit of a dance career that at the time, felt like a huge risk, was when I decided to leave New York. I moved there after I graduated from college and had the fortune of meeting some of my best friends and working with some truly incredible artists out there. New York offers up the prospect of endless opportunity- there will always be a class, a show, an audition, a performance to be a part of or a platform offering to showcase your work. After the first couple years living there, the adrenaline of short process after short process had worn me down into questioning whether I was actually feeling fulfilled by the life I was living, or whether I was just giving off the illusion that I was based off checking the box on certain accomplishments.
When I first considered the idea of leaving New York, the risk was also tied to failure. I had to get over my ego a bit and know that my decision to move wasn’t out of fear, but rather to move in a direction where I felt I could get more out of myself as an artist and stay true to my own integrity. At the beginning of 2019 I trusted my instinct on sort of a whim and moved to Nashville with the idea that I might pick up and leave in 6 months if things weren’t working out. While the freelancing scene here is a quite bit less developed than it was in New York, the arts community out here is warm, welcoming, and ready to be nurtured. Spending time with people out here and making friends (old and new) has inspired many rewarding collaborations in the form of building collective structures for freelance artists to make work and also developing my own choreographic ideas in more nuanced way. The story is still writing itself, but the reward of this risk has certainly empowered me to take charge over the direction my life is going as opposed to waiting for opportunity to happen to me, if that makes sense.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a freelance contemporary dancer, collaborator, choreographer, and teacher based in Nashville, TN. My philosophy as an artist is to create work that draws from the fantasies of the imagination and weave it inside the familiarity of reality. I am interested in making work that is physical, not for the sake of aesthetic, but for the purpose of letting our ideas and emotions transcend the perceived limitations of the body to tell the story, and in developing nuanced identities and relationships for myself and my collaborators inside the work. Empowering the body to communicate the complexities of who we are and connecting with audiences in a way that makes them feel a part of the work is important to me. My goal as a dancemaker is to discover new ways to break the fourth wall between the artists and the audience, and my goal as a fellow artist in this community is to keep showing up for others so that we can realize our potential both collectively and individually.
Most recently, I have been collaborating with Sarah Salim and Kathryn Wilkening to develop a local platform for artists called Animata Arts. We partner with Friends of Metro Dance and Metro Parks Dance Division to offer residency space to freelance dancers free of charge, provide feedback labs to help develop their work, performance space, documentation of work, and an artist stipend. I am also a collaborator with the garage collective, a Nashville based improvisational dance group that focuses on bringing dance to alternative live performance spaces. As a solo artist, I teach, make work, and perform locally and have also been fortunate to share my solo ‘Wrong Number’ internationally in San Salvador and Berlin.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding part of being an artist is getting to connect with people on a deeper level. In a weird way, I feel that sometimes society has tricked me into believing that dance is a selfish endeavor. I catch myself trying to justify (to myself) what good I could possibly be doing by pursuing this path. I am always caught a bit off guard after classes and performances when I hear from a participant or audience member about how what I share or offered impacted them. At the end of a dance class, you can feel the buzz happening in the room, everyone is a little bit softer, less guarded, more empathetic. It’s such a healing outlet, regardless of whether or not you’re a professional, and it’s always rewarding to be on the facilitating or experiencing end of these environments.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Local governments putting more priority towards funding local arts initiatives outside of the large institutions would be huge! There has already been a wave of movements underway in Nashville to trend in this direction, but it’s a hard fought battle. It would be great if support structures in the United States could start to mirror the respect and support artists are offered in Europe – Germany specifically that I know of. Outside of the government, people going to see performances and support artists in their communities, spreading the word, and if financially able, donating to independent artists and organizations that rely on small donor funding to operate and make work at the bare bones level.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @amandareichert
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.reichert.3?mibextid=REkXMA
Image Credits
Tiffany Bessire Photography Sam Wiseman + Elizabeth Wiseman Cait Brady David Flores