We recently connected with Charlene Widzinski and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Charlene, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I was cast as an angel (aerialist / stunt double) for a Counting Crows music video set to a suite of 4 of their songs a few years back. It was truly an unforgettable experience to be a part of a largescale production at a major film / TV studio in Downtown LA. They provided wardrobe and hair / makeup, and I wore a huge set of angel wings as I was holding the lyra hoop with one hand, spinning and being pulled up 20 or 30 ft in the air while dancing in, over, and under the lyra hoop as 5 or so different cameramen were shooting. As an aerialist & musician who envisions eventually combining my own original music with aerial dance through the creation of my own music videos with a team of high level creative professionals, it gave me a deep glimpse into what this process would entail and feel like, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity and for all the outstanding human beings and artists I met and collaborated with there.

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 got into what I do now by following my heart wildly through all the unpredictable and often challenging paths it has led me down, and I feel incredibly happy that I did! I always knew that I wanted to be a dancer / aerialist, especially after seeing a TV commercial at age 5 or 6 for a luxe hotel where a woman was in a glamorous hotel room with high ceilings and long windows and as she was opening the curtains to welcome a new day, the red silk curtains transformed into aerial silks through VFX and she started dancing on them through the room. It was one of the most enchanting things I’ve ever seen, and it never left my memory. My parents didn’t allow me to pursue dance or any movement modalities when I was growing up, even though I had a burning desire to and begged them for about a year. It was devastating to my spirit at the time, but I know they were doing their best and I love them nonetheless; if anything it just added to the richness of my journey. Fortunately my parents did allow me to pursue music, which was also stimulating to me and allowed me to channel my creativity in some kind of way. I went incredibly far with that, later on performing and touring professionally worldwide with orchestras and major music artists such as Peter Gabriel. After I finished grad school for music, however, I decided to more or less allow that path to crumble, as I felt I needed to pursue my passion for dance & aerial arts. I began going to classes at some extraordinary studios in Texas so I could lay the foundational groundwork for overall technique and basic building blocks of various movement modalities. At the same time, I began writing, singing, recording, and performing my own original music because I felt there was so much more than classical & other people’s music that wanted to be expressed through me. After that, I bought my own aerial apparatuses and a lot of my deeper learning of the craft was truly as an autodidact in the forests around Austin, TX. I would hang my aerial apparatuses on tree branches in the middle of nowhere and play around with movement combinations I had seen in videos, following my inner feelings to create movements and styles that were my own and had never been done before. I would consider myself a mystic and someone who taps into an immense amount of intuitive wisdom while alone in nature, and what I am most proud of in my work is the way I combine the physical with the ethereal, channeling deeper messages from my own heart and the heart of the Earth to share with humanity through my movement, the lyrics and tonality of the music, and the poetic words I write as the caption for each piece I create. In my eyes, we can only thrive while being deeply connected to the nature around us and our own inner nature, and this is the only way we will be able to find true love within and without, which I feel is the only thing that’s real in a world full of illusion. These are definitely some of the major themes that can be seen in my work, and I feel another theme that’s visible is the sensual feminine, which I feel has been condemned for far too long on this planet and which holds a key for liberation in both men and women when they can fully embrace their physical vessels and what they are capable of feeling. When nature, the sensual feminine, and the journey toward true love are all combined, it feels like we as humans would be in a position to be stewards of a planet that has done so much for us and that truly needs our highest and deepest expression to evolve and sustain itself at this time. I would definitely say that I have always created my artistic work in dedication to these visions and higher causes. I have and continue to perform for a wide variety of events, shows, productions, and video shoots, and I am gearing up to begin work on a new music album in the near future that I can perform for audiences combined with my own aerial & pole dance expressions. I also train aerial and teach aerial lessons at Original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica next to the pier and train and teach pole dance at various studios around LA.

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

I touched upon this somewhat in my last response, as to me my goal / mission is inexplicably intertwined with the way I describe my work itself. To express it in an overarching way, though, I would say that my goal / mission is to express the higher truth of my soul through my art, in whatever genre or setting it flows through, and to continually become a more evolved version of myself in doing so. I have never believed in limiting myself to being one type of person or one type of artist, and I believe that we can do literally anything we dream of doing with enough practice and discipline behind it. I believe the dreams we have in our heart are sacred and meant to be brought to life. Above all else, I aim to touch the hearts of any human beings I come in contact with through my work, and speak as a voice for this immense planet we live on as well as the mysterious realms that lie beyond.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is that I always have a means through which I can express myself and feel alive with electricity during times when I might otherwise feel the opposite. During moments of heartbreak or loss, frustration or challenge, pain or stagnation, my creative work has continually remained there for me like a rock or even a lover that I could turn to when I needed to let out and transmute everything I was feeling into a higher expression that might even provide healing to the hearts of those who came into contact with it. Creating truly makes me feel on fire, and unlimited, and oftentimes immediately after finishing a creative session suddenly solutions to 5 different problems immediately come to me, just from reigniting that inner flame. I especially feel that developing our physical vessels to their full capacity, both in terms of muscular function and the capacity to sensually and emotionally feel, are essential to the stoking of this inner fire, and I feel so truly grateful to have my body itself at the center of my creative process for exactly this reason, because the immense amount of daily training that goes into developing it for aerial expression has truly stoked my fire to the point that it is now roaring.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: charlene.widzinski

Image Credits

Davit B (DNA Photography)
Scott Bixler
John Vogt
Sun Chowdhury