We recently connected with Rachele Domond and have shared our conversation below.

Rachele, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I’ve had multiple jobs teaching dance and not all have paid a full-time living but I knew that it was a strong possibility in the future for me. I knew that Dance, Choreography, and Teaching was something that I wanted to pursue professionally. However, coming from a Haitian family, and I am the first-generation Haitian-American born in the U.S.; I knew that the stigma with pursuing it would come with a lot of adversity and challenges. What was and still is most important to me about pursuing a career, includes 1. If I physically and mentally enjoy doing it. 2. Keeps me active and creatively stimulated 3. Provided financial security. I was brought up by a single Mother who raised me and my younger brother with very little money. My childhood and seeing my mother struggle and overcome challenges to raise me was an example of how I did not want my life to be like. I worked hard and chased freedom, fun, and happiness. I love dancing, I love choreographing, and I love teaching; not only did I Pursue dance, I pursued Dance Education (PreK-12) so that I would become a certified and licensed Dance Teacher for the NYC DOE. With my full-time career, I earn a good salary plus benefits. My only regret is not pursuing my passions at an earlier age due to fear of resentment and no support – even though that happened anyway, it gave me the motivation to put my all into pursuing my career, and continuously work to be a better Dancer, Choreographer, and Teacher every day.

Rachele, 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?

My name is Rachele Domond, I am a first-generation Haitian-American woman. I’ve always liked to dance since I was a toddler watching movies or music videos. However, I did not take my first official dance class until I was eight years old. From then, I discovered that Dancing was something that I not only liked, but I was good at, and it provided me with happiness from creative expression, and even exercise. Back in 2008-2016, the spaces and opportunities for Dance or a Dance education weren’t so accessible + inclusive for a poor black girl that is overweight like I was. That still did not reduce the impact that Dance had on my life. As I got into middle school, I got exposed to programs where I saw Dance full of people who looked like me with my background. From there, I made connections, and I started my first high school job working with kids (K-8). I wasn’t initially hired to teach dance; but as the years went by, I got experience doing so, until it became my official job, “Dance Specialist”.

I wanted to give children the experiences I had with Dance plus more – not only was Dancing my talent, I discovered that creating Dance, and teaching Dance were my passions. I officially got into the business of Dance and teaching when I decided to drop what I was doing, start over and go to college for both Dance and Dance Education. My mission, my focus was to become a professional at what I loved to do, and use my skills to give back to children. My work, my career is very much children focused, education focused, and creative expression focused.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I decided to drop everything and start over, I was about 21 years old. At this point, I have been studying at my former college for three years, thinking and planning about how I am going to change plans, schools, and major so that I can pursue Dance. I did this secretly because I know that my loved ones would discourage me – family most likely. Both my friends and family knew how much I loved to dance, and how talented I was at teaching but they never considered it a “real job”, the thought of me dancing or teaching for a living was something unheard of. I considered myself the black sheep to break out of limiting beliefs. Fast forward to January 2020, it was the spring semester and my first semester at Hunter College as a transfer student majoring in Dance (education came, a year later). Two months later, the pandemic happened. Being that I graduated High school in 2015, my family expected me to graduate from my initial class in June 2020.

I broke the news to everyone in May 2020 at the last second, the adversity, disappointment, discouragement, belittling and more that came with it was expected but still hurtful. I believe that it was more an issue that I was pursuing Dance during a global pandemic and not that I was starting over/changing plans.

My emotions of course were all over the place, the emotional and verbal abuse (passive aggressive aggressions that I endured from family and even strangers, of course made me doubt myself and my decision. My resilience looked like taking up as much space as possible as a dancer despite what everyone thought – my virtual online classes, consistently praying, talking about my career path and even educating my family. I had to learn that all the negativity was a projection of my families insecurities and the fact that they did not have the freedom or means to choose what they wanted to do in life but rather settle just to make ends meet.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I currently own some music NFTs from a few artists, hoping to keep the albums for a long time while they increase in value. Overall, I do like the idea that artists are placing theirown monetary value on their art work; and they are in control of who gets access.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.domonddance.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/domond.dance/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@DomondDance?si=pW1DNYeeV3gxEKKq