We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eryn Renee Young. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eryn Renee below.

Eryn Renee, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I founded my ballet company, XAOC Contemporary Ballet, when I was just 19 years old. At the time, I didn’t think I was taking a risk – I just knew I wanted to make dance, and for that I needed dancers.

At the time, there were tons of small opportunities to show work and when you’re all young and hungry and in it for the dream, it’s easy to find artists willing to create with you for $50 bucks and the chance to be on stage. I was so fortunate to find dancers who were as passionate as I was and who were willing to join me on the journey, knowing that we were all young and broke and doing the best we could. We did close to 100 shows in just a few years.

I grew so much in those formative years, I learned my creative voice and developed my distinct choreographic style, came to better understand my place in the dance world. I learned the business of choreography – of coordinating studio rentals and managing schedules and producing and applying for and securing performances and funding (as much as possible). I went from a shy artsy kid to someone who knows how to be at the front of the room.

As I got older, I also made the transition from “say yes to every opportunity – you never know where it might lead” to learning when to say no. I learned to say no first to easy things “No, we can’t dance on a stage that’s really just a concrete floor in a warehouse – it’s not safe for the dancers” and eventually came to saying no to opportunities that didn’t pay. We learned our worth as artists and the value of our skills and this was the biggest risk of all.

There’s a big gap in the NYC dance scene between opportunities for “emerging” artists that pay little or nothing on one end and the big institutions like Lincoln Center or the Joyce that only show extremely well-known groups with international followings. There isn’t really a space for established professionals making high quality work on smaller scales. It becomes a sort of DIY professionalism among like-minded people simultaneously supporting each other and also competing for the same limited resources.

We navigated this for a few years before the pandemic hit, with a decent amount of success but also a lot of trepidation. I received some incredible opportunities that had me optimistic for the future, even though the chances to make and show work were fewer and farther between than in the early years.

When Covid-19 hit, it was a definite period of transition. Many of my long-time dancers retired from dancing or left the city and as the landscape of opportunities changed, what funding we did have dried up as well. To rebuild the company from scratch post-pandemic, in a manner that befitted the level of work we wanted to produce and create, and appropriately compensated the skilled people involved, just wasn’t financially feasible.

At this point, I’ve transitioned pretty much entirely to freelance choreography. The opportunities are definitely harder to come by than when I had a group of talented professional ballerinas standing by rehearsed and ready to step on stage, but there are some definite benefits, too. Now when I enter the rehearsal studio, someone else has booked the space, hired the dancers, paid everyone (including me), and arranged the performances.

I can focus entirely on the craft and the creative process. Together the dancers and I can explore how music can be made visual or how we can rearrange and combine the geometry of the human form in the geography of the space in ways that elicit emotion or tell a story in space and time. And that was the point all along, so I just have to cross my fingers, hope my work speaks for itself, and hope the opportunities to create continue to come my way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Eryn Renee Young and I’m an independent ballet choreographer in New York City. I started dancing as most kids do in a local studio in my hometown. I’m old enough that this was before kids and teens had smartphones and social media wasn’t yet a business tool, so I really didn’t have any concept of the professional dance world or the art form at large before I moved to New York City at the age of 17. I just felt this deep connection to movement, dance, and ballet in particular. Ballet just makes sense and feels like home to me in a way that little else does.

I learned pretty quickly upon arriving in the city that a performing career wasn’t going to be for me. My anatomy is all wrong for classical ballet, I was already too old to get the necessary high-level training, and I am extremely injury prone. What I did gain very quickly was complete immersion in the professional dance scene and a fly-by-night introduction to choreography that would change the course of my life forever. I saw multiple shows every week in every style of dance from post-modern exploratory situations to the opera houses at Lincoln Center (gotta love student discounts!). I took up to 5 dance classes per day on top of my college classes (gotta love unpaid internships at dance studios!). I begged the teachers and professionals I met to mentor me and quite a few of them were thrillingly supportive. I met dancers who were excited and willing to try the type of ballet I had to offer and developed strong collaborations with them that often lasted for years.

I founded my chamber-sized company, XAOC Contemporary Ballet, when I was 19 years old and a sophomore in college. I had a vision for the kind of dances I wanted to make and the kind of environment I wanted to make them in. Ballet is beautiful and exciting but it is also rigid and exists within a structure of outdated and unhealthy practices. I wanted to make a place that values the strength and intelligence of the primarily female dancers and artists rather than their fragility and docility. I wanted the dancers to feel like their individuality and diversity is celebrated and appreciated rather than something to be hammered into a mold. Most importantly, I wanted my rehearsal studio to be a space where they felt fulfilled, respected, and where they enjoyed spending time moving and creating in a like-minded community of artists and friends. I can’t say that we never had frustrating or hard days, but I think what we built was truly special.

I worked really hard to create and find opportunities, not just for myself to create and for the dancers to perform, but also to include other artists as well. I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with a largely female group of creatives including composers who made hauntingly beautiful original scores, costumes designers who brought stunning visions to life while making the dancers comfortable in their bodies, and visual artists who incorporated their work with mine to make collaborative productions that were more exciting and innovative than I could have imagined.

I did all this first while attending school full-time, and after I graduated, while working full-time in various arts-related non-profits. Every month I had to pay for things (rehearsal space, dancer pay) out-of-pocket from my meager twenty-something non-profit salary because there just aren’t enough resources and enough public interest in dance to keep things financially solvent. I did it for years because I believe in the mission. That mission is to move ballet into the future, to allow the art form to evolve for the 21st century, led by women with a vision of inclusivity, generosity, inventiveness, spirit, humanity, and love. I hope that can be my legacy, at least in small part.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think for ballet, the art form as a whole is struggling to find its relevance to modern audiences. There are so many ways to entertain ourselves, from doomscrolling to binge watching, that I think “let’s go to the ballet” doesn’t even cross the mind of the average American looking for something to do. In my parent’s day, ballet stars were international celebrities, but now you’d be hard pressed to get someone outside the industry to name a famous dancer. Without the general public interest and support, it’s impossible to get the resources and funding needed to support these extremely highly trained artist-athletes in their careers. The entire industry is working on ways to rectify this, from avenues like choosing more mainstream music or appealing to more diverse audiences by hiring more diverse artists (finally!), but I think we need to encourage a cultural shift in the everyday choices people make. We need to make ballet something that is both easy to access and interesting to people from all aspects of society, and get it in front of mainstream audiences. It’s a long road.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I love to be in the room with dancers making something together. More even than seeing the final product on stage. It’s special both with seasoned professionals with refined artistry and also with advanced students who are just discovering their voices and their gifts. My favorite days are the very first rehearsals of a new piece, where I give the choreography and see it brought to life by dancers for the first time. There’s a term in arts funding that separates “generative artists” – that is to say, choreographers, songwriters, composers, screenwriters – from “interpretive artists” – dancers, singers, musicians, actors. It’s only together that the art gets made. Without the artistic interpretation of dancers, choreography is just ideas. Without choreographers, dancers are just technicians/athletes. Together, what we make is art. Every step is exciting. Try this – no try that – what if we did it this way – does that work for you? With every step, we refine and we build. It’s hard work and requires effort, physicality, thought, and compromise, but it is also great fun.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.xaocballet.org
• Instagram: @eryn.renee & @xaocballet
• Other: https://vimeo.com/xaocballet

Image Credits

Paul Dubois, Noel Valero, Kyle Froman, Ennio Rizzi, Sarah Delgado for Jacob’s Pillow;
Performance Photo [ensemble in pink] by Kyle Froman; The Joffrey Concert Group in “The Relentless Nature of Dreaming” commissioned by the JCG, Creative Movers Choreographic Initiative 2024.