We recently connected with Mackenzie King and have shared our conversation below.

Mackenzie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

My mom is a floral designer and owns her own business in a destination wedding town. I grew up helping her in her shop, whether it was sweeping up at the end of the day, delivering, setting up and cleaning up weddings, or helping with some of the administrative work. Having been in the event industry for over 30 years, I’ve learned a lot from my mom when it comes to planning, attention to detail, and collaboration. As a floral designer, my mom is involved in every step of the wedding, so it’s important for her to always have a timeline from the other professionals, as well as a good working relationship with them. She goes out of her way to make their job easier and the people she enjoys working with, try to do the same. I have always admired how well she and the people she has worked with many times are able to coordinate with one another and keep the chaos of the day hidden from the bride and the guests. The only way this is possible is through the clear communication prior to and during the event.

While growing up, I was also privy to my mom’s highs and lows while running her business. When she would come home upset from a wedding, we would always ask why, and every time, the answer would be because the bride was upset about a little detail that wasn’t exactly what she wanted. What people tend to forget is that flowers are a part of mother nature. There is no way to control them or to predict what product will be available, or what the exact color will be. My mom would always explain this to brides, but inevitably, the ones who were control freaks and needed to be precise about each flower and each specific color were ALWAYS unhappy. The brides that would give my mom a general sense of their style, some inspiration photos, the colors they liked, and then would say “I trust you” were always the ones that cried when they saw their bouquet because it was better than what they could have imagined.

What this made me realize is that when you choose to work with people who are professionals in their specific field, they tend to know what they are doing and when you give them the space to be creative, what you are given is better than what you could come up with on your own.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My parents put me in ballet class when I was about 3 years old. I had always been dancing around the house, stealing my mom’s scarves to do “interpretive dance” for my parents, and I’d been fascinated with whatever performance was on PBS in the evenings. So when I took my first ballet class, I intuitively knew what to do and fell in love with moving. As my passion grew, I took more and more classes, participated in more performances, competition team, school dance classes, summer intensives, basically anything I could participate in, I would. All I ever wanted to do was dance, I missed out on birthday parties, school dances, family reunions, after school sports, and a lot of other formative experiences as a child, because to me, dancing was all that mattered.

Eventually, I outgrew the opportunities in my small town, so my family and I decided I needed to attend a performing arts boarding school in Massachusetts, Walnut Hill School for the Arts. While there, I was challenged by the mere amount of dancing we were doing, as well as the fact that I had gone from a big fish in a little pond to a small fish in a big pond. The other students were so talented, and had the perfect dancer body (which I didn’t have) and my confidence took a hit. Luckily, I found modern dance while I was there and realized there were other paths besides ballet for me to follow. I finished my high school education there and then moved on to The Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, SUNY.

At Purchase, I had a similar experience of feeling unseen. I worked so hard, showed up every day, was dedicated, took it seriously, and it was just never enough. There always seemed to be other students that would be chosen for special awards, cast in pieces, or chosen to study abroad. After considering transferring after my sophomore year, I realized that I needed to finish this chapter of my life out. I stayed and things started to turn around. The teachers gave me more attention, had me demonstrate, I was cast in pieces, my choreography was being noticed, yet there were always people that were seemingly given more merit. I ended up graduating Magna Cum Laude with my BFA in dance performance and moved to NYC.

I’ll keep this chapter brief. Dance in New York is oversaturated. There are so many talented dancers and so few jobs. The jobs that do exist want to a hire a specific look, gender, race, etc. The fact that there was so many prerequisites before even seeing someone dance was so frustrating to me. I saw people who were seniors when I was a freshman at Purchase, still on the grind, working in restaurants and showing up to the same auditions I was attending. It really made me think that I wanted to see my life progress 4 years down the road. After coming to that conclusion, I packed up and moved to Chicago.

Moving to Chicago was the best decision I’ve ever made. I met a lot of wonderful and talented artists and after freelancing for several companies, I’d noticed a hole in the Chicago dance community. Again, there were a lot of decisions being made on the package someone came in rather than their talent. I also noticed that a lot of my friends felt like they were dedicating a lot of time and energy to projects that they didn’t feel passionately about. The job might pay well, but the work wasn’t fulfilling, or the work is fulfilling, but you are treated like a commodity rather than a person. After experiencing a lot of this myself, I decided to take a risk and start Moonwater Dance Project in 2018.

Moonwater’s mission is to focus on the ethical treatment of dancers while creating high-quality concert dance. We have now been around for 5 years, performed throughout the midwest, we have worked with mostly female choreographers, giving their voices a platform, all of our dancers are female identifying, proving that women are capable of not just being soft and delicate, but also strong and powerful. It is my goal that the environment we provide is safe and has a familial atmosphere so the artists are able to challenge themselves without fear of judgement or rejection. Over the past 5 years we have seen tremendous growth in the artists we work with as well as the audience. We curate work that has something for everyone, and by doing so, it allows the audience to see more diverse contemporary dance.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think anyone who pursues a career in art is resilient. The art world is filled with a lot of rejection and judgement as art is subjective. That being said, I’ve had a decent amount of challenges, especially physically. While I told the story about how all I ever wanted to do was dance, my body decided to put that to the test.

At 9 years old I was diagnosed with scoliosis. Most people are diagnosed until they are 13 or 14, so the fact that I was so young was concerning to my doctors. I was sent to a specialist and he told me that if it progressed any more in the next 6 months I would have to have surgery. This was back when the surgery was putting a metal rod through your spine, which would not have allowed me to continue dancing. I went back for my 6 month appointment and I had progressed 10 degrees in both my thoracic and lumbar spine. Realizing my dreams would be crushed if I had surgery, my mom and I found another specialist that was willing to take a gentler approach. I was put in a back brace that I had to wear when I wasn’t dancing or showering. The first time I put it on, I blacked out and had a panic attack because it was so constraining. I wore the brace for 2.5 years until I had finished most of my growing. While my spine is not as deformed as it could be, I still struggle with skeletal alignment and have to be very good about going to the chiropractor and keeping my muscles as even as possible.

At 16 years old, I was rehearsing a piece at Walnut Hill on a very hot day. There was a puddle of sweat on the floor and when coming out of a leap, my pointe shoe caught the puddle and I slipped and rolled my ankle. I tried to stand back up to continue rehearsing, but the second I put weight on it, I fell back down. I went for an MRI and it turned out I had torn all but 1 of the ligaments in my ankle. If I had done anything else to it, I would have had to have had a complete ankle reconstruction. I was put on crutches and in a boot for 6 weeks, eventually the crutches went away, then the boot, then I was put in an intense ankle brace. Instead of spending my summer dancing at Magnus Midwest and Complexions Contemporary Ballet, I spent the summer in physical therapy and was told the likelihood of me dancing again wasn’t high. I didn’t take that well, so I decided to prove them wrong. I went to yoga to work on stabilization and then the pool to try to keep my technique up. In the end, my ankle healed, I was able to return to Walnut Hill in the fall, and now it only slips out of place every once in a while.

At 17, I walked out of ballet class to get some water and my knee made a weird cracking sound and I couldn’t put weight on it. So again, I went to the doctor and got an MRI. This time, I wasn’t so lucky. I had something called osteochondritis dissecans which is where part of your bone dies and then pieces fall off. If I didn’t get surgery to fix this, one of the bones that was floating around inside my knee, could get stuck and stop my knee from tracking all together, which could have ended up in paralysis. Needless to say, I had surgery in the spring of my senior year. They drilled holes in the good bone to send blood to the dead bone, took a few pieces of loose bone out of my knee, pinned a few pieces back, and then cut the muscles on the side of my leg to prevent my knee from being pulled while healing. Again, I spent that summer wearing a very large leg brace and attending physical therapy, trying to rebuild 17 years worth of muscle.

While I was in college, we were all dancing so much, small injuries were common. I had my fare share of sprained toes, strained muscles, twisted joints, etc. Everything was going well until the fall of my junior year. My calves were getting exhausted after only a few exercises in our classes, when I would finish class, my legs would throb, and I would have to take multiple breaks walking from the dance building to my apartment because my legs were so tired. I went to our athletic trainer and she referred me to an Orthopedic surgeon because we were concerned I had compartment syndrome. After another MRI, we were proved to be correct. Compartment Syndrome can be dangerous if not treated, so yet again, another surgery was scheduled. I had a double faciotomy on both shins and calves and was in a wheelchair for a few days, then was able to walk with the assistance of crutches. I had about 5 weeks like that and then was able to slowly start bringing physical activity back into my routine. We were lucky that I was able to have the surgery the week of Thanksgiving, so I only had to sit out of 3 or 4 weeks of school. Over the holiday break, I had been training as hard as I could to be ready to dance by the time we got back from break for the next semester.

I made it through my senior year with only a strained rotator cuff and a herniated disc, then freelanced and managed to keep things fairly healthy. I pinched a nerve in my neck here and there, but that is an occupational hazard. In Moonwater’s second season, things were picking up. People recognized us and we were really excited to keep growing. One evening I was teaching and was demonstrating a plié combination when my other knee made a crack and was immediately unstable. After the amount of time I’d spent in doctors and physical therapists offices, I did some research and was pretty sure something was really wrong. Several doctors appointments, x-rays and an MRI later, I had something that was like my first knee injury, only much worse. My right knee had an osteochondral lesion, which was a giant hole in my femur that was causing trauma to my kneecap. This injury required 2 surgeries. The first was the same surgery I had when I was a senior in high school, basically cleaning up the debris in my knee and taking measurements of the lesion (about the size of a quarter and 2.5 centimeters deep), the second surgery was a bone transplant. Within a month I had both of those surgeries, I was non-weight baring for 6 weeks, slightly weight baring for 4 weeks, walking with the brace for another 4 weeks, then was finally able to remove the brace, but not cleared for physical activity until 7 months post op. By the time I was cleared to start doing physical activity, it was the holidays, so I was traveling and seeing family, when I got back to Chicago, I started slowly easing my way back into dance. This was February of 2020. As soon as I started to move again, the world shut down and my rehabilitation had to stop.

I just turned 30 a few weeks ago and am somehow still dancing. It doesn’t feel as great as it once did, but for some reason I keep pushing through. My body has tried to get me to stop so many times, but I keep willing it to dance. As long as you love something and are passionate about it, nothing can stop you.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is when people have an emotional response to something we’ve created. That can be a dancer needing a piece to help them work through something personal and feeling very tied to the choreography, or an audience member who saw a piece and it evoked something in them.

Recently, I created a piece about building yourself back up and the community that surrounds you after hitting rock bottom. After the piece premiered, it was so rewarding to see people I know coming up to me with tears in their eyes. Seeing a reaction like that is so wonderful. I’m not sure exactly what about the piece touched them, and really it’s none of my business, but creating art that allows people to feel things that words can’t describe is something special.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moonwaterdanceproject.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonwaterdanceproject/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moonwaterdanceproject/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK4FyQzndGMbclKqsCZwCXQ
• Other: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/moonwaterdanceproject

Image Credits
Ren Picco Freeman