Q: What have been some challenges in your pre-professional or professional dance career?

Courage—having the courage to go on the train and sing in front of strangers; taking that first step and believing I was able to do the things I wanted to do successfully. Professionally, it’s been patience, discipline, and leaving space to be open to learning new things.

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Q: Do you believe arts can be a platform for social justice topics? If so, how?

I think the arts are the perfect platform [for social justice] because we are both the storytellers and the messengers. We create realities through our perception-altering messages. We can show the future before it’s even something real. We can write songs about freedom before it becomes a reality. We wrote songs about love equality before there was space for it. Now, in Quarantine, social justice is so important because people are waiting to hear what will come next, and what to listen to.

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Q: Using the idea of “worldmaking” how do you imagine the performing arts world after the pandemic?

I imagine more space for more art. I think that this is going to push our understanding of one another, which will bring us together and mold our future and our children's minds. In the future, I would like to see more art. I would like to see art that is free, and costs nothing to share and receive. Also, artists would be given credit for shaping the world, and changing minds and to create revolutions and destroy hierarchies.