We would like to introduce you to one of our company’s talented dancers, Andrew Magazine! In this post he tells us about his dance journey, how he has come to love dance, and how he has evolved into the dancer he is today.
It’s safe to say that dance has infiltrated my psyche; my thought and decision-making processes, my devotions, my prospective on human-to-human interaction and reaction. Most concretely, a wise woman and dance/life mentor of mine, Debra Fernandez, Chair of Dance at Skidmore College, imbued in me Merce Cunningham’s extraction of the I-Ching: life is a series of broken and unbroken lines and each set of broken lines is made up of many unbroken ones. This idea has both grounded and shaken me many times over, giving me solid solace in the most unsure times (and as a dancer, there are certainly plenty of those) and reminding me that life will hiccup soon, when it feels stagnant.
I began moving at age ten, when my middle school, The Trevor Day School, required all students to take two weeks of each art form offered at the school. Cycling through the visual, fine, and performing arts, I was unamused, uninspired, unsatisfied until that first day of dance class. I was in a period of great transition at the time, dealing with loss, new and unfamiliar environments, and a shaken world with a whole lot of uncertainty, but then I began to soar; I found that flying through space and time in the studio was much more tangible and alive than other art forms and, quite frankly, than anything I’d ever felt (except maybe really good chicken noodle soup).
I was exposed to high caliber modern dance early in life, as I was fortunate enough that my school brought in such choreographers as Tere O’Connor and David Thomson, among others. Those opportunities left me hungry for more of that rigorous thought towards movement, so I sought after more of that intelligence when I attended Skidmore College. It was there that I fell in love with classical ballet and the cleanliness that accompanies formal modern concert dance. I became enamored with the classics, but wanted more questions answered. I began to demand efficiency of myself, not just accuracy (as classical ballet provided) thanks to my fantastic teachers and mentors there at Skidmore. I was truly hungry, which is why after graduating I took an apprenticeship with Vertigo in Jerusalem and found my somatic and physical significance when I was exposed to the value that the Israeli dance community places on Contact Improvisation. I guess you could place my gravitation towards a dance form somewhere between the Ballet Russes and cliffside contact jams in the desert.
BodyStories has helped me find my voice as a professional dancer, it has shown me how fast things can change, how important the individual is to group work, and to value the opportunity to move. I am grateful for what I’ve gained through my experience with BodyStories thus far, for the people I’ve been privileged enough to work with and learn from, the work I’ve had the freedom to investigate, and the positivity that pours out of Teresa through all of her dancers and collaborators.
