Q: How did you begin dancing?

My mom owns a dance studio and started running it at 15 years old in her garage. She moved from Iowa to Arizona and ever since then, she had the school. I really loved dance as a kid and got all my training at my moms dance studio. I was always in the studio and my parents didn't want me to dance because it's such a hard business they tried to get me to do other things but that made me gravitate towards dance even more.

Q: What was it like having your mom as your teacher?

She more so ran the school not so much taught me. She taught the babies. She taught 3-4 year olds. The other teachers taught me more. I really didn't have her as much as the teacher, but she was always there running the school and helped me get the proper training once I figured I wanted to do this as a career.

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

Constant exploration. It is something for me that has no end. Dance itself and kind of how everyday I go in and I train and work and explore and dive deeper into things, thinking about the world and life in general with patience and allowing myself to dive into and explore whatever is at hand.

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

I think instead of one specific thing, it's more helped me overcome hardships daily. It is something where when you have stress or sadness you can go into the studio and move and that helps me overcome whatever emotional thing I am feeling. I think it is an overall help in overcoming hardships.

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

I enjoy choreographing and making pieces. When I come home, I teach kids at my mom’s dance studio and I choreograph for them. At NDT we have events where dancers in the company can create their own pieces. I have gotten to create on my colleagues, which is super cool and they are so inspiring. I'm so consumed with what I do in dance. I am interested in space and astronomy. It intrigues me and I think about it a lot in dance and space in time and how the universe has always intrigued me. As far as studying, I don't think I have time for that, but it definitely interests me.

Q: What have been some challenges in your pre professional and professional career?

Growing up as a competition dancer, one day I saw a video of Netherlands Danse Theater on youtube and I wanted to go there and do that, but it was so different from what I was being trained to do. I had to shift all my focus and training from point A to Z and get the training needed to audition for NDT or just the European kind of dance company since that was something that intrigued me, but I wasn't really doing it at the time and I needed to work hard a different way to be able to be ready for that kind of dance. That was hard because I really had to change. I moved to Canada for two years to study at Arts Umbrella and the director brings in different European styles to have us learn from them. I learned so many more movement languages apart from the comnp style.

Now being in the company, there is pressure. The company is amazing and produced so much, there is not a lot of time to process and think about things. It is a long demanding work season with not a lot of time to process from one thing to the next. We do so many different pieces when casting is so all over the place. Every time you do something, even though you are in the company, it is an audition for every piece and everyone wants to be in every piece. It is a great group of people and there are 19 in the second company and we are all very close and i didn’t think it would be like this and really the people are amazing and close and I'm so thankful for that. When we are on tour, we are already working towards the next show so very little time to process and sit in something.

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

I think it can be a huge voice especially. A lot of the works that we do are super interesting. A lot of them are about global issues about injustice and people issues and global struggles, a lot of the work that we do at NDT just 5 pieces have something to do with social justice. All the pieces are group pieces and the choreographer… Every piece is very different and every choreographer has a different voice for each piece and many pieces are about different things. Where we are based in Europe, a lot of European crowds get to see us, but we are often not in America. I wish other people could see more of what we do. We do a lot of pieces about everything involved in social justice and very global pieces and hardships of the world. I wish that American audiences and other audiences could see more of the work we are doing. For example, Crystal Pite, everything she does is about something huge that can influence so many people and more people should see stuff like that. She is super inspiring and she creates pieces that are huge for humanity and the amount of people that see it vs should see it, there is a huge difference. I think audiences weren't so dance audiences just like people that don't know about the arts if they saw pieces like that, it could do a huge deal of influence for a better direction for many people.  Everything Crystal does has such a huge story, everyone should see. She did a piece on syricam refugee crisis on the Royal Ballet in London, it was a huge piece and about refugees crossing the border and not enough people see art like this and if more did it could impact the world so positively.

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)

We got the news a day after we were on a tour in the Netherlands and they said we can't perform until mid April. We were still kind of coming in and then it got worse and everything was getting cancelled. We have been on break now for a month. A few weeks ago, I flew home to be with my family. We have weekly meetings with NDT to see what the Prime Minister is saying. We still get a salary each month; we were worried about that at first. We don't know when we will go back. Obviously right now we are not working or performing. That is kind of like half the season just done and that was difficult for everyone.

Q: How did you feel about the initial cancellations and shut downs being outside the US?

Very hard. We had opened our 2nd program of the year. The company as a whole was very into the particular program. It was a nice program that everyone was so proud of and we only got to do it a few times and then we knew we wouldn't get to do it anymore. It only ran from March-May so it was really hard. We were all excited to keep growing within the performances and it was completely cut and it was so difficult as a group. We were all at a time of individual growth within the works we were doing. Everyone was quite saddened it was cut and especially the works from Ohad Nahirn, they were so fulfilling and everyone was so excited and it was very difficult, but also understandable. We were all on the same page. We don't want to get sick or spread it to others. No one resisted or anything.

Q: What did the Netherlands look like during the initial shut down? Did you plan to go home to the US right away?

My mom and dad were calling me because it is crazy here in the United States. People don't know how to process because there are so many mixed messages. People didn't even know what the disease was and my parents were hearing from the states and borders closing and the next day borders weren't closing. My mom told me about what was happening well before we knew anything in the Netherlands. My mom was panicking and it didn't hit the Netherlands for awhile. The Netherlands are taking measures, but not super strict, nothing was ever completely shut down. You can still get a coffee one at a time in the Netherlands and it is not as strict as in the US. I think the Netherlands is just starting to really buckle down on the restrictions.

Q: What made you decide to go home to the US?

I knew I could come home and have the sun and be with my family. I think family overruled everything else in this hard time and I helped teach the kids at my moms dance studio through zoom and I knew I could help in that way.

Q: Was it hard getting back into the US?

It was hard to find a flight home. I had to take 3 flights. Usually I don't have to do that. Barely anyone on the planes which was almost creepy. Barely anyone in the airport because only a few flights are running a day. When I got back to the US, I had to go through a health screening and fill out a form on the plane where I had to say if I'd been feeling sick and at the airport I had a fever test.

Q: What is a message you would like to say to health workers and other essential workers on the front lines on the front lines if you could?

So much. I don't even know. Thank you. Your bravery and courage is something that I admire so deeply and we definitely wouldn't survive this without you. I am amazed by you and it's inspiring.

Q: Using the idea of “worldmaking” how do you imagine the performing arts world after the pandemic? (Worldmaking: How you can re-imagine the world in your own terms, the way you want it to be. Using this tool one can construct new worlds and write themselves into narratives that have excluded them and systems that have disabled them.)

After the pandemic, I would hope humans have more compassion towards one another. I hope it improves on an emotional level. I hope that we can come together more on a personal level and see each other with more respect globally. More unity.

Q: Do you notice that companies in the concert dance world often remain very separate? Do you think it would be beneficial for companies to perform at the same concert?

I notice it and I think it would be so cool to have more evenings where you see a piece from 5 different companies in one evening. I think it would bring companies together more which would be really beautiful. This year NDT1 and 2 did the performance together in one evening for the first time ever. For the 2nd and 1st company to come together is huge. Just imagine NDT and another company press the world coming together, that would be very special.