We were lucky to catch up with Casandra Atangana recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Casandra thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
I am a mover from France and ever since I learned that I was American (born) my whole life was dedicated to move to the US for dance. I had an entire book dedicated about finding jobs in the states especially LA, finding which area to live depending of the crime rate needless to say I was BINGING all youtube videos. One day after school ended I took the leap to buy a ticket to go to the states, my mom had my whole childhood to prepare for the moment and she helped me purchase my flight. Funny enough I ended up in NYC…a state I knew nothing about and had to move here in 2 months so imagine spending YEARS into looking on how to live in LA to end up in the city that you know nothing about and have now to find all the information. CRAZY. The sad part is when you are looking about NYC in France there are no much information about it so I came into an unknown territory and I was terrified! But one thing that kept me going was knowing that even in NYC I can have all the training I thought I could only get in LA and I can get it FASTER! The train is everywhere whereas in LA I will need a car and I don’t even drive so that was a big issue for me that NYC resolved. Now I think that NYC is where everyone should come and train hard and LA is just for auditions/castings and go to the job. So yeah that was my big risk regarding my dance career
Casandra, 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 started training professionally when I was 15/16 years old ever since I know I can make money out of it so then I had to learn the business side of it and how to navigate at that time I was still in France so all I could do is research online and I was BINGING off of Antoine Troupe YouTube videos and follows everything he said to the T in France and it worked! I had to be strict on myself so I build the type of discipline people will probably call toxic: dancing for hours and if you ain’t spitting blood on the floor you can still dance. I was very young and motivated and I had and still have a lot of energy even at my local dance studio I’ll be there past the dance class time just dance. I guess you can say it’s how freestylers are made not so much about commercials dancers of course I toned it down because my body the more I grow the less it can take which is sad but I gladly enjoyed this overnight dance moments a lot and that’s why I created Frenchie science to give a space to the people who are like me. It’s hard to find dedicated dancers like back then the one that would sweat and bleed for the dance floor and I want the next generation to know that with me they can have that. I do have a regular job until I can make that a full time job so my time is now cut but on Fridays or days i know I either don’t work or I don’t work in the morning it’s on and Frenchie Science is about Freestyling mainly.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I was bullied when I was younger throughout my whole school years literally did not once since I ever started going to school not being bullied and so when I became an adult and moved to NYC from France I had myself and I had to build that resilience and strength to advocate for myself cause there are no more teachers to go to and complaint. Now whenever I see someone being unfairly bullied by a mass because the person is different I advocate for them and if it happens to be one of my dear friends I’m the lawyer and the judge for free because nobody that I love and nobody around me if you are a good person will be bullied and me not doing nothing.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
In NYC it’ll would be great to have outdoor spaces accessible which I’m actually working on for dancers to go and train their ass off without it being a studio that they have to put money on. Studios are great and give you privacy but not everyone can afford a studio everyday that they wanna train so public spaces even though they are less intimate would be an incredible thing and once I’ll find as I shared on my Instagram everyone will know about it. Also I mean all year long not just seasonal
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Image Credits
The photos with the orange and green background were taken by @geomantillaphoto and the black and white by @kwunstudios