In my youth and still in my wildest fantasies, I had always been drawn to acting. I don’t know if I was ever good at it, but I always knew I was good at copying behaviors, accents and mannerisms. Maybe that was an adaptive tool since I moved to the States at the age of 11 – so it all could have been a product of wanting to fit in.

While I studied the craft at Dickinson College, along with political science, I was consistently pulled toward movement, music and the joys that came from learning dance and crafting dances. I decided to seize that momentum and upon my dance professor’s recommendation, wandered into an MFA program in dance at Temple University. A year into the program I felt as though I was not cut out for the emotional and often physical challenges that accompanied such an intense program. So I left and found a job at the Georgetown University Law Library – I was dead set on shifting my sights to law. I was gonna be a lawyer.

Sitting still, endless reading and the sacrifices needed just to get through a JD program felt very far out of my reach. As well, I didn’t like that my friends didn’t know about the value dance and choreography held in my life. It went hiding.

I clearly remember the day I went into my office, ready to do more legal research and I stopped in my tracks and understood I had to finish the MFA. I also negotiated with myself that I would have to tolerate the awful days as much as I would love the good days. I reconciled that I was choosing a path of incredible freedom and joy – walking side by side with agony, insecurity and doubt. When I declared that to myself, I knew. I knew what I wanted to become. What I didn’t know was how long it would take, nor how winding the path would be. And now, at age 55 – I could not be more grateful for the time this career takes. I would have squandered away so much if I had insisted on “arriving.”

So, that one spring day, in the law library, on capitol hill, in Washington DC was the day that changed it all. It came from within – and that was all the power I needed.

I am the artistic director of staibdance, a contemporary dance company in Atlanta, as well, I am a Professor of Practice in the Emory University Dance Program. The joys of my careers are steeped in the fact that the work, output and vision are always evolving.

Within the work in my company we are dedicated to creating and performing original, evening-length pieces. These works are always collaborative and always interdisciplinary. Often steeped in autobiographical events, we task ourselves with uncovering the most relatable aspects of singular stories.

We celebrate our community through a multi-cultural dance festival, art-driven podcasts, offering workshops in Atlanta, and a two-week intensive in Sorrento, Italy.

Our organization is dedicated to the questions: Who were you? Who are you? Who will you become? We live at the intersections of movement, culture and community – and we are still growing.

This question is probably the MOST important question for anyone dedicated to a life in the arts. The short answer is: Commit – Get Involved.

Our world has cycled into an era where a quick dip into an idea seems like it is enough. There is little urgency to be in a live audience, and even less urgency for audiences to engage with the work, less still, an inclination to be OK with mystery, symbolism and ambiguity. The hunger for and presence of immediate answers have eclipsed innate human curiosity. It teaches us that we no longer have to do our own thinking – nor our own feeling.

We have stepped far away from the times when people felt it their duty to attend cultural events – we are now in a place where artists and organizations have to make arts events sexy, short-lived and easily palatable. In short – recreate an in-person TikTok experience and you are good to go.

So, my challenge to anyone reading this – go see/experience something away from your normal roster of outings. Lean in, wallow in being lost -get closer to the work, which in my opinion, always puts us closer to ourselves.

No one is going to do it for you.

I had always imagined that grace, opportunities and “success” would just land in your lap. That someone out there was ready to knight me with being accomplished therefore all the fame and recognition would arrive in the mail the next day.

Nope,

And thankfully so. These distributions of instant funding, success, familiarity are painfully short-lived, based on another’s impression of what YOU should do, and has nothing to do with process. So, as I look back on the last 30 or so years, I see moments where I had to build the thing myself, not run away from the thankless work, do the thing, receive little or no recognition and start it all over again.

In the pre-social media age, magazines and newsprint gave false impressions of what life would look like after you”made it.” Today, social media suggests we have all made it. Reality reveals our impressions are just impressions – fabrications of hopes brought into digital reality.