how to dance with professional dancers
Don't. Just stand there and marvel.
I love New York City because as soon as I land I am doing 3-4 times the amount of things per hour I would in my normal life at home in the Bay Area. I am walking briskly from one activity to the next without going home first and making a snack, I am darting around people when they suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk, I am telling strangers I like your hat! I am dismissive of traffic signals, I am going directly from my musical workshop to a dance work shop and I don’t even really dance.
I was invited by director, choreographer and artistic director Jennifer Jancuska to be a part of the 2025 BringAbout cohort- The BringAbout invites composers and musicians into ongoing collaboration with dancers for development of new work.
Jennifer choreographed to a couple new songs on the album and it was incredible to watch artists of this caliber at work/play. I’m so envious and in awe of the way dancers move and express themselves in space. They isolate and make dance muscles I don’t even know if I have.
As far as I have ascertained there are two lanes of letting go of dreams in this life- one is for things that could have been in the cards but as time goes on you keep drawing from the deck and the ones you think you want keep not coming up and you make initially sad peace with it all but after a while and some release work the sadness dissipates and you realize oh all these other cards in my hand have things I love and are for me.
The other way less depressing lane is accepting you will not be all the things you definitely never had a chance of being. They were NEVER even potentially in your cards and if you ever had even a sheen of greatness for any such thing you would have demonstrated it from an early age and at least four people would have gone out of their way to tell you you had talent and promise, and one of them would have offered to connect you with someone who could help. But no one ever did (for good reason) and you have fully accepted this from the beginning. Being a professional dancer is one of these things for me. Would have loved it, love to dress like I just got out of dance rehearsal, but every time I’m asked to just isolate my left hip and move it to the beat along with everyone else I know deeply what could have never been.
This new album is a lot about physical embodiement, and it’s so gratifying to see how these songs begin to converse with those for whom their bodies are instruments and canvases. I will gladly settle for getting to make music that dancers might like to dance to, and to get to work with and be in awe of them up close every now and then.
For the song Enemy. This is after maybe 20 minutes of dancers learning the choreo. Remarkable, impossible.
xx
t
p.s- just to share- in case you needed this like I did— I first read about Ayodele Casel in the pandemic and then I got to see this show of hers at the Joyce in New York a couple years ago and it was one of the best times I’ve ever had as an audience member.
pps
Your powerfully evocative, emotionally intelligent music is a natural for dance!!
You are a dancer!