Q: What has been your professional dance journey?

I am originally from Trinidad and moved to the states when I was 8 years old, to south Florida and that is how I came to dance through the magnet schools there. I went to the Ailey Fordham BFA program for college and that set me off on the journey I am on now. I worked in the commercial world, theater, concert dance world, and a little bit of film. I was always attracted to how people have assimilated to America and have spent my life looking at the assimilation of the melting pot in New York. I’m attracted to changing gears quite often and that’s how I’ve found myself in so many different roles over the years. I feel as artists we find every way to do what we love. I am also at a place where there are still deadlines and potential opportunities out there reaching as far out as 2021, and so I assume we will be out of this by then, but I don't know what lies ahead. It is challenging but I have not lost hope. It feels like Mother Nature has put us in a corner on a timeout and this is a time to slow down now. It does feel counterintuitive. I find myself being very tired most of the time and in other moments I feel anxious, like I have to be doing something like creating. 

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

Permission. I can always bring it back to that word. Being a concert dancer, there is such a clear codified technique and structure you are supposed to follow, and because it is an aesthetic art form you have to look a certain way. I didn’t look like the ballerinas that I was aspiring to be, so I was always looking for permission. I found myself jumping from company to company trying to find one I fit into, and then I got injured and had to slow down and had to figure out what I wanted to do. When I wasn’t influenced by others and wasn’t constantly asking for permission, I found my own voice and that was the most life-changing professional shift. And it came from so much earlier, just trying to assimilate and code switch, which I used to be ashamed of but now I feel is a superpower. I have that going into classical ballet rooms and more diverse contemporary style rooms and back to my culture with social dances, so it’s complicated.

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Q: Do you believe dance can be a platform for social justice topics? If so, how? and/or Have you used your art form to make a difference?

Yes, yes, yes! In fact I don’t think it should be a question — I think we should just do it. How? In every way. I am working on a piece right now, on my passion project — all you need to do is figure out what you want to say and how to articulate it through movement. I am all for collaborating with other artists. I think that more voices in the room gives you more diversity that will mirror our society more accurately. Working with Camille A. Brown was the first time I saw that as an artist, because she invites so many people into the process, both in terms of creators and audience members. I think that if you are committed to social justice then it is important to have a reflection of the society there in the room with you to help make and inform the work. I think we should make work that reflects the times we live in because if it isn't about that, then what is the point? 

Q: What inspires you and drives you forward as an artist and a person?

So many things. I find that I am always most driven by music first. When I hear something, I feel an emotion. It triggers a memory or a step, like oh, I should move like that. I think connectivity to people (also motivates me). When I should be working on scheduling and applying for grants, I find myself more driven to have conversations with others. I don’t know how to explain the pure love for the artform because this is the way I interact with the world. My husband is a journalist and we co-work together at home and I watch him researching and writing stories, and that is what dance feels like for me. In my bedroom I balance and tendu and it is in every part of me.

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Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you as a performing artist?

I keep saying to people I've gone through the seven stages of grief as far as cancellations. I was talking to a friend — the hardest thing I have an issue with is cancellations. It’s not necessarily the cancellations themselves, it’s the language we use around cancellations that sucks the hope out of the whole community, not just dance. I want to have conversations with artists about the fact that, even though we are cancelled indefinitely, how do we keep building? Financially I will lose a lot, as many people will, and I have to put that in perspective. I can only process it through my own lense, but when I look at the whole world at large, I am ok. I have a home and food. I may not be working right now but I have a husband that has a job and can still be working. But it is hard to feel like the things you worked towards are cancelled… and just may never happen. I hope that when we come back we don’t completely cancel the things that were already [supposed to happen], but that we just figure out a way to postpone them and move them forward— that is important because they are still important pieces of the conversation. I like to think of my mentor telling me how the AIDS epidemic ravaged the arts community and how we lost so many artists that were vital parts of our story. We will never have those stories again, and we need them — I think that is a part of life and it is important when we come back to remember to pick up where we left off, hopefully with greater awareness and hope, and with a little less speed. I think the pandemic has made us see we don't need that much and we don't need to move that quickly. Now more than ever, we need responses to this as far as community engagement. But also in the same way it is a time to slow down, like what is really necessary and what can you do without? And when you can trim away the fat and the excess things we don’t need, we can find our way to more clarity as creators — and I think all humans are creative. If we can find what is essential, we can start again with more purpose. You don't need to pick up exactly where you left off but we can look at it from a new angle and vantage point.

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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.)

I don't know yet. I don't think that we were blissfully unaware of this. I think we were all feeling a build to something — just a moment in America, with the divide that’s going on everyday. I really hope that the change will be more of a coming together. I hope the cancellations will highlight the fact that the arts are so underfunded and that what we thought we had, we don't. And even for the largest organizations, the bottom is coming out from under them. For me it's like, I am grateful for the awareness of that because it will make me approach my work differently. I want to make sure we have more support because the things we are talking about are important and with social justice, we need to create art to be on the lips of every person, not just those we are reflecting in our work or that are underserved and see themselves in our work. I hope our community asks more from the government, asks for what we need. I don't want to sound naive, like we deserve this and that and everything, but we need to figure out what we need and set a new bar. Freelancers having to wait for a stimulus package — if that didn't happen and I didnt have a husband and I wasn't privileged in these ways, where would I be? I know there are artists out there that don't have what I do and I hope these new conversations of seeing what we need will propel our art.