Q: How did you begin dancing? 

I love moving. I always have. I started dancing when I was 10, which is late. I started dancing because I went to St. Paul’s Community Baptist Church. The men would dance at the church — it was beautiful and powerful and strong. We did a musical about the African experience, moving through our times as kings and queens into the transatlantic slave trade and bringing enslaved Africans to the U.S., through enslavement in the U.S., up until the Civil Rights Movement and now. It was called ‘Maafa,’ which is a Swahili word for suffering. So I did this musical. The man who choreographed it had a dance studio called Creative Outlet Theatre Dance of Brooklyn, and when the new school year started, I joined the studio. I fell in love with dancing. They were good at getting you to fall in love. The philosophy was that the technique will come later if you are bitten by the bug. I was definitely bit by the bug. I went to LaGuardia High School, which began my technical training. What kept me coming back was that dance was so difficult. I was not the one that people looked at and said, “He is built for dance.” I was short and chubby and not flexible, but I was passionate. I never felt I had to work hard to get good grades, and then I started dancing, and it remains to this day so hard, and you never arrive. Every time you reach a new plateau, there is something else to achieve with this art form. It keeps me coming back every day because it challenges me, I'm never satisfied or bored. And then there is the euphoric drug of being on stage. In the early days, sharing the energy high of being on stage definitely was something that I was very into. I get that now more from producing a show, watching my kids succeed, coaching dancers, and being a part of processes. It gives me that same high that I only used to only be able to get from being on stage. 

‍

Q: What has dance taught you that you have applied to your everyday life and how you engage in the world? 

Dance has taught me how to be a fighter. This profession is very hard. Anybody in it knows that. Not everyone saw greatness in me when I first started dancing, or the potential to really make an impact on the field. But there were some who did. Every step of the way you have to decide if you are going to let people decide for you what your capacity is, and that takes a fight. Especially when you are young, when your teachers and directors place a ceiling on you, and you’re fighting to crack one ceiling down at a time. I have felt that at every stage of my career. In junior high, people didn't think I'd get into LaGuardia. When I graduated from Julliard, people thought I wouldn't be able to dance in Europe, and I should stay in the U.S. and dance for predominantly Black companies. At every moment, you have to decide… There is something masochistic about being a dancer, standing naked in front of a mirror with someone telling you everything you are doing wrong your whole life. And you don't let it break you; you use it as fuel. And dance has given me resilience, tenacity, and a fight that helps me navigate the world and makes me feel like there is nothing I can't do if I put my mind to it. I'm from NYC — you have to be aggressive, you need fight to get through the city and through this field.

‍

Q: Has dance helped you overcome any hardships in your life? 

I have dedicated my art and my life at this stage towards being a change agent. What I realized when I was in my late twenties was that I spent most of my training and career as the only one of few Black faces in the room. So my art and my work now is to make sure that I am a part of a field that is more reflective of the world that we live in, and actively do everything I can to make that dream a reality. I do that in every facet of my career. Directing Gibney Company, (I ask myself) which creators are we inviting into the room? What stories are we deciding to tell? What is the makeup of the company, in terms of age, race, body type, physicality, and textures? How different can everyone be down to the training level, where we are making sure we are developing a diverse cohort of dancers who are ready to step into the field? We can't talk about diversity unless we talk about access in order for more people to have an invitation to the table. So many struggle with navigating my training and career and feeling isolated.

I lived in Germany and Sweden, two of the whitest places in the world. I went to a school that historically did not have so many Black dancers in the program, and that is just true. In Sweden, I was often harassed and attacked in the street because people thought I was a Somali refugee. Dance didn't help me overcome that, but I am using my art form to create the change that I wanted to see during my experience, so I kind of flipped it. I am using dance to create the change that I want to see — it is my vehicle. But the work is much bigger. The lack of diversity we see in dance, we see everywhere in virtually every profession. The same reason why we don't see as many people of color at ivy league universities, the same demographics running these major Fortune 500 companies, that work is universal. But dance is what I know how to do, and so that is how I can make the biggest impact. Knowing that I am doing something concrete and tangible is healing to me, because my hope is that I can be a part of creating a world where the young dancers I train don't have to go through the psychological things I have gone through because of the nature of the dance field during that time. 

‍

Q: What other interests and passions do you have outside of dance that influence and inspire your artistry? 

I love to travel. What I love about traveling is experiencing different cultures and different people. I love examining the ways in which we are different and finding out all the ways in which we are the same. I think that makes me feel connected through everyone and I think it helped me with having empathy for other people and cultures I don't necessarily understand. It helped me realize I don't know what I don't know. I thought everywhere was like NYC, and the more places you see, the more people you meet, and the broader your perspective is. Hopefully that has influenced the way I walk into the studio, the way I create art and interact with others, and my own artistry as a dancer, as well as my ability to connect to people when I am on stage and performing and when I am in the studio teaching.

‍

Q: How can dance be a platform for social justice issues?

This is my life. It is interesting because my art doesn’t necessarily feel like a political message, but it is political to see a large group of Black and Brown bodies on stage at a very high technical level, doing work and flowing through aesthetics not typically associated with those bodies. It is political to populate the top conservatories in the country with Black and brown and Asain people who are empowered in their cultural identity and are poised to be the future leaders of the field and being cultivated to take the field by the reins and move it forward. That is inherently political to me. On the other side of that, I think art creates safe spaces, and so people do tell their stories and experiences through art. What I love about art is that the process of radical sharing with a room full of strangers who all come from different backgrounds and may have different perspectives and cultures… If I go to a dance show, what happens is there is a safe space to have a discussion that may be hard to have if we're just talking —  I have to consume the entire thing before I get to comment…  By and large,  you sit through it and you learn something. With Gibney, we have a curated platform called Company Curated and we bring in companies to perform. Last year we had two companies comprising the evening —  one was a solo work by an African American man from the Bronx which talked about his childhood and growing up with his father in prison, a work of art talking about growing up with a single mom in the Bronx. I have never seen that story told with so much nuance, because who is doing the telling of these stories? The way he humanized the father that wished beyond anything he could be there for his son and mentored a young man in prison who reminded him of his son, and the son’s journey of acting out and how that affected him and affected the bad choices that he made — I am Black from the Bronx, and even I left thinking differently about these people and humanity. It is not just some absent father and another delinquent child. I learned something about the people. I have known Maleek [Washington, the performer] since high school. Can you imagine walking into a room of total strangers and telling them all your deepest darkest secrets? You don't do that — you put your guard up and then somehow you turn off the house lights and you open up in a world where you have the bravery and vulnerability to share all of our cracks and scars, and it's only by doing that that we can empathize with each other. Dance is really powerful. Right next to that was a dance theater work by Laja Martin. The guy [Martin Durov] is from Slovakia and there is a Jewish woman from Utah [Laja Field], and the way they infused the cultures and created a dance theater work, I felt like in one night I went all over the world. And half the audience came for the first piece and half came for the second, and it created a safe to radically share and have dialogue. Art does that in a way most other things don't. 

‍

Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you as a performing artist? (community, financially, initial reactions, company shift, online class, emotions, initial cancellation reaction) 

My entire profession has been cancelled. So, there’s that! Concretely, my functions as a dancer all took place in studios and congregating with other people have completely stopped. Actually, the Gibney Company was supposed to have a premiere today at 8 P.M. of our spring program called ‘INSIDER/OUTSIDER’ and we had created two of the works for that already and were in the stages of creating a third work when things got really bad. We had to cancel that creation. Days after that was when the entire Gibney structure shut down. Gibney is a theater with 23 studios, classes that happen everyday, rehearsals, rentals, performances  — all of that has stopped. 

For MOVENYC, which is an arts and social justice organization with a mission of cultivating greater diversity and equity in the dance field, our core program is the Young Professionals program that is a year-long mentorship and a conservatory prep program. The day-to-day functions haven’t shifted but we had to cancel our June 6th gala benefit dance concert, which is the biggest fundraiser of the year. There are concerns about sustainability. The young professionals program is tuition free, and we operate heavily on donations from individuals and foundations. We are concerned about the economic fallout of COVID-19 and if people will be as willing to give money. We are new to the foundation game. We just got our 501c3 a few weeks ago and we are worried foundations will get conservative and not give to new organizations. That is a long-term worry. In the short term, we were supposed to a five-burrow audition tour to find the next group of young professionals and we had to cancel that. We shifted to do online auditions for the first time. The young dancers do two minutes of class and a two minute performance to email to us. The larger implication is that we don't know when we will go back to work at Gibney. Is the summer intensive going to happen? Is the new creation that was supposed to be mid-June to mid-July going to happen? We had to cancel a commission happening in September because they are Canadian artists and we are concerned about visas. When will people feel good about congregating in a space together again? I don’t know. What does that mean for future shows? Lastly, it has forced me and everyone to get creative, to evolve quickly, to be innovators in order to respond to the new and rapidly changing reality. In that way, I think there is opportunity for some positivity through all of this. A lot was broken in the way that we were functioning, things that were antiquated and not serving us, but it was what we always did so we moved along. This is such a large disruption, so I think some new ways of working and creating may emerge. My hope is we come out of this a stronger community. I think artists are the most resilient people on the planet. I am excited to see how we can turn this around together. 

‍

Q: What other interests have you delved deeper into during this time? 

I lived a very fast paced life. That is partially geographical — that is just NYC, partially because I'm wildly ambitious and always on a mission, partially because I have 8,000 jobs. I’m a director and dancer and have my own organization and I’m adjunct faculty at Juilliard and SUNY Purchase, so just a lot is always happening. I work very late hours, and part of my job is being social — going to shows, dinners. I was moving at lighting speed, and this has forced me to slow down a bit, and I think that I say this from a privileged position. Gina Gibney has prioritized her staff. We are still being paid, and now we are being paid 80 percent and taking a pay cut to not lay off others. I am not concerned about my rent and not being able to pay for things. From this privileged position, I have been able to slow down and catch up with myself. My level of productivity has lowered because I also have started to create boundaries. Like, okay, I am done working for today. I did not get through everything but it will be there tomorrow and I am ok with that because I don’t want to do any more work today. That is a huge shift in my life. I am interested to see how on the other side of this it changes my day to day life. I love the dance community online classes… I just sat there in shock the first week and felt guilty for not being as productive as everyone else was being and after that week I realized I was tired and I needed to sit down. That has been the main thing I have observed. 

‍

Q: What social changes and responsibilities have you seen people making during the pandemic? 

I have seen a beautifully resilient community come together in a new way. I think the grip of capitalism has gone away, and so I have seen people offering things for free. I have seen a level of access to work —  people are posting full videos of pieces from all over the world. Companies like NDT [Nederlands Dans Theater] and Kidd Pivot and Alvin Ailey and so many others are in my living room, and I have access to places all over the world where I didn't have that access before. You have the director of the Juilliard School and principal dancers from major ballet companies teaching free classes online. You have Gaga for the People everywhere, whereas before, if you didn't live in NYC and Tel Aviv, you didn't have access. I have seen us be selfless and create opportunities for each other in this new normal. All of my students have been thrust out of a schedule. You follow this rigid set schedule. Now people don't prescribe what life is for the foreseeable future and I see my students taking autonomy and ownership of their lives. I spoke with my students and I asked, “What will you look like on the other side of this, artistically and technically?” It could be easy to fall off if you are not proactive. You actually have more access to more training than you did before, and you can design your own experience. Now you get to decide, and take ownership of how this is going to affect you. I hope my students keep this leadership role in their lives. 

So much of our work is physical, because it is dance, and what this has done is removed physicality in some ways. I have changed my practice — when I Zoom with the company or my students, I am checking in on them. And us checking in on each other and seeing how people are doing, what they see for the future, how they feel about a process… I think that practice of checking in was not done to the degree I have been feeling it now because we’ve been removed from the physicality. I want to see a dance field where that kind of checking in is more sewn into the fabric of the day to day artistic experience and training… I think we need to empower people to share feelings instead of just being receivers of information. I hope we realize even more the value of touch and sharing energy in space in real time. I hope we see that more in the way we develop art and the way people consume art… How can we  make art more accessible through virtual reality or digital media, so yes, come to the theater, but for someone in Wyoming, maybe there is a streaming platform where the world has access to the work that is being created. Maybe we can continue to have online class with in-person classes so class is more accessible to artists with varied abilities. I think we have widened the possibilities here and I hope that we add back in the great stuff we are learning how to do so we can reach even more people with our art.