Bringing our inner self to life
My mission with dance is to draw connections between myself and others.
My work is heavily improvisational, allowing what is inside to naturally come out. From there, we can shape it into choreography. We can create community. We can be uniquely ourselves. I like to explore the extremes – how can we express ourselves in a way that we otherwise wouldn’t in our mundane life?
Quirky. Refreshing. Deep. <— A few words have been used to describe my work.
In my teaching, history is crucial. We connect the past to the present. We consider other cultures. We fuse.
I too, am a student. I learn from youth, and I continue my research.
About my dancing self
Nominated as “Dancer of the Year” for the RVA Dance Awards in 2018, I consider myself to be a versatile and well-rounded dance artist who is dedicated to always learning. My current movement practice consists of Latin social dancing, weight training, yoga, calisthenics, and any form of cardio outdoors.
While I am now fascinated by many different movement modalities, dance for me started as the only activity I would willingly participate in as a child. It was my happy place, my outlet, and my excitement week after week. As I grew through adolescence, dance became a mind-body-soul connection for me, and I started adopting a holistic approach to well-being through food, movement, self-expression, and bodywork. In 2017, I graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Dance & Choreography, and a Minor in Medical Humanities. As published in the Journal of Medical Humanities, I am interested in “interacting with bodies in space [as] more than a physical relationship.” Through history, science, narrative, and philosophy, I have dedicated my energy to painting a holistic picture of the human body (Adams, 2017). Having been a teacher since age eighteen, I continued to teach upon graduating, in addition to performing as a singer/dancer/actor, traveling, and earning certifications in Thai massage, plant-based nutrition, body alignment, and yoga.
I like to do lots of things! I incorporate dance into those things. And those things come with me into my dance.
My dance journey…
I’m not sure if dance classes for 2-year-olds counts as “training,” but either way, I started dancing as a toddler. My formal background includes ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary, and modern. In high school I started to get serious about dance, performing with the company at Chesterfield Dance Center. Additionally, I was on my school’s dance team, was dance captain of the show choir, and took part in musicals. After high school I found myself in the world of social dance. I fell in love with swing dance, including balboa, blues, solo jazz, and the history that goes with it. As I entered university, I met the people that are now my dance crew, who introduced me to forms of street dance such as hip hop, house, waacking, and breaking. Prior to the 2020 pandemic, I was dedicating weekends to travel to DC to train under the teachers at Urban Artistry. Loving the improvisational forms, I soon after found a love for Latin forms of social dance, including salsa, bachata, and fusing different forms together to create unique stylistic expression.
Some of my favorite experiences with dance include working with youth at the American Dance Festival, performing a site specific work at Bates Dance Festival, volunteering as a dance diplomat in Panama, working at VCU with guest artist Liz Lerman, Dance Exchange, & an intergenerational cast, performing and assisting with local community theaters, and many others!