The Turning Point

I came back from Mexico in November 2016 with a strong, passionate fire burning inside of me. My little taste of dancehall training I had while I was there left an unquenchable thirst that only resembled that of Tantalus in Greek mythology.

I began working hard once again to try to make my dance career a reality. I returned back to my small town, got a part time job, picked my Worldanz classes back up, and began researching ways I could go and train with the professionals to improve my skills. There was part of me, I'm not going to lie, that fell back into my old routine of grinding, which came out of pure necessity. I wanted to keep up with my aerial training, and get this new training I so desired, but I was confronted once again with the reality that I needed to make money, not only to live, but to make any of this happen. I can't say that I wasn't discouraged by this after all of the work I had put in previously to get past this point. I began to wonder again if this was something I really wanted to do. If I was making the right decision to pursue this path or was it even going to be possible even if I did pursue it.

 I sat with this uncertainty for a good amount of time until I reached a VERY clear turning point.

A couple years before I left for Mexico, I had taken a Dancehall workshop with an LA based choreographer and dancer named Laure Courtellemont, and began following her work soon after. It was right when my interest in Dancehall was beginning to spark, so a lot of what she was teaching went completely over my head. Not only was the room packed with 50+ people who all wanted her to notice them, the choreography was so quick and intricate, I felt like I could barely hold on. The one thing that stuck with me was her complete and utter passion that she put behind everything she was doing. Although she was definitely famous at this point, she seemed to notice everyone in the room, feel what they were feeling and communicate with them through movement. She had a gift. She ended the workshop explaining in detail some of the cultural aspects behind dancehall, her journey, and what it meant to her. The one thing she emphasized was that she wanted people to leave actually not feeling that they got it, but feeling like they needed to learn more, research, and pursue it if they were going to dance it.

THIS workshop a few years ago was not my turning point, but it did stick with me in a way I couldn't explain.

Her words and movement caused me to have a very deep admiration for her and the work she was creating. I began looking at it more closely especially when I was in Mexico with my newly found free time. While I was there, I found she was going to be teaching again in the Bay Area a month after I got back. I signed up for every single class, every single day.

When I was home in San Diego, I found myself talking to my sister about it, because I was so nervous and excited. She advised to be walk right up to her that first workshop, introduce myself, and basically spout the same script I just typed 2 paragraphs above. I told myself I would, even though deep down there was part of me that felt like there was no way in hell I was going to do that because I was way too anxious and shy. In my head, this woman was basically a celebrity, so the thought of having a real life conversation with her was still so unreal for me. I was worried about even making it through her choreography let alone actually speaking to her.

Sure enough, the workshops came up with frightening speed.

The first one was Friday night in Sacramento...and I missed it. I left my house in Santa Cruz at 3 PM to get there at 7PM, but hit the worst traffic of my life, so I wasn't able to get there until right before the second one started. Already I could see her intimidating crowd of admirers, and a packed room of extremely talented and gifted dancers. I took the first workshop in the back row, hung around for a little after trying to get the nerves to talk with her, and left.

The second set of workshops were on Saturday in Oakland. Instead of coming back to Santa Cruz, I decided to spend the night at my friend's house in San Jose to shorten my commute the next day. The next morning I woke up with a new found fervor, and drove up sure that this day was going to be different. It was, but not in the way that I wanted it to be. It seemed as if there were even more people than the previous night, and somehow THESE people had even more talent and were more on point than the dancers the day before. She even pointed out one of the dancers there and asked her to come train with her in LA in front of everyone. I was so jealous. I wanted that to be ME! I was an insect lost in a sea of beautiful birds. I tried to stick around and talk to her, but I just couldn't. I felt discouraged and disappointed in myself for not being better and not even the courage to go up and speak to her. I confided in my friend at dinner later that night about everything, and later that night had a dream about it. In the dream I did exactly what I meant to do and looked exactly how I wanted.

I woke up for the third set of workshops the next morning disappointed that the dream I had the night before wasn't real. I said bye to my friend and drove up with haste to a small town right above San Francisco where the final day of classes were taking place. The moment I walked in, everything seemed different. First of all, there weren't as many people, and second of all, everyone seemed to be a beginner. I wasn't relieved, but just a little confused. Laure immediately assessed the crowd, and explained she was going to teach a basic routine so everyone could get it. Just when I thought things were not going to go my way, and I was going to disappoint myself once again, something shifted. All of a sudden, I could feel my body move the way it wanted to in comfort and with ease. I could feel the music shape me, and through all that hazy mist, I saw her standing on the outside with a smile so wide that only perfect seemed to compliment her... shouting...? What was happening? I knew we were performing the routine so she could watch us, but was that me she was shouting and pointing at? I kept looking behind me because I was sure it wasn't, but there wasn't anyone there.

It turns out, it was me she was shouting and pointing at, and surprisingly NOT because I was messing it up. It was because I was dancing the way she wanted it to be danced. She called me out in front of everyone and had me perform it with her, RIGHT next to her. I didn't fully recognize what was happening until I had everyone in the room starting at me and had her right next to me dancing. Right then I froze in time, and knew this wasn't just any passing moment that you forget 2 years down the road; this was definitely something I was going to remember.

When the class finished, I finally had the courage to go up and talk to her. I had an energy flowing through me that I couldn't explain. I wanted to ask her so many questions. The first one being, "why did you pick me?", but I concluded that, that, would definitely not have been the right choice of words. So, I just walked up and told her thank you. She hugged me, and told me the fire she saw in me today, was something that she rarely sees in anyone, even the professionals she trains. She told me I had something special and I needed to pursue it, leave my life in the Bay, and train with her in LA. She could help perfect my technique, because the fire I already had.

 THAT was my turning point.

The woman I has so admired, looked up to, followed, had noticed me, not just superficially acknowledging talent, but truly saw the intense, burning passion I had for dance. My dream literally came true. As I cried my way home calling everyone I knew recounting what just happened, I couldn't help but feel like I had just had some sort of spiritual awakening. Like the universe just interjected in a very real way and pointed me straight on the path I was already on and considered steering a way from. It happened. I WAS SO GRATEFUL.

Nothing was hazy now. I knew I need to keep learning Dancehall, and do whatever it took to make that happen.

Crossing the Border

Before I left for Mexico, I couldn't quite remember what it was like to have "free" time on my hands. In the last 26 years, the most time I had gotten off from work or school was the summers from ages 0-14. Even then, I was usually whisked away to summer camp or at rehearsals all day while my mom was at work. When I got to high school, my free time was either filled with a load of homework that could take over my whole, desk, room, and floor, my part time job at Cold Stone Creamery, or both. After college, the only component that was taken away from that equation was my part time job, that was eventually replaced by full time work. My early mid and late 20s, as described in my last post, was filled with my grown up job in during the day, and my dance training at night and on the weekends. Needless to say, I had no idea what it was like to have chunks of my day completely free, and I sure as hell had no idea what it was like to just be at home by myself.

So, it's definitely safe to say that I had some pretty severe moments of personal growth during my months in this new place.........

The  plan I had when I decided to move to Guadalajara, Mexico with my friend to train full time was as follows: Move to Mexico without knowing anything about the city I was going to, hope and pray that my coach, Juan actually has a place for us to rent, and wasn't joking, and train 4 hours a day.   That was all I knew before I stepped on the Vivo Aerobus plane going from Tijuana to Guadalajara.

To say the first leg of the journey was "shaky" is a severe understatement. My friend and I had planned to do the entire leg of the journey from Santa Cruz to Guadalajara together. When she called me from a two day long traffic jam coming out of Burning Man, 2016, saying she probably wasn't going to make it in time for our road trip down to San Diego, and definitely wasn't going to make it for our flight out of Tijuana, I couldn't say the word fuck enough times to get me through the anxiety attack that was about to ensue. I had definitely traveled by myself before this, but never with this much uncertainty of exactly I was getting myself into.

To everyone's surprise, I made it through all legs of the journey safe and sound. Crossing the border to Tijuana by myself was not as scary as I thought, the janky $50 round trip airline I chose to take there got me there safely, and Juan, my coach kept his word and met me at the airport. My friend was also able to get a flight down two days later, so it all worked out.

Juan let us rent out an old photography studio owned by his parents that was turned into an apartment for $200 per month. Our bedrooms were only separated by a plate of glass, but we got our own kitchen, bathroom, and a giant patio. To add to this, we lived right in the center of the best part of the city ( the barrio with all of the clubs and bars).

Our little makeshift apartment and patio 

My first handstand in Guadalajara. Proof that I made it. 

We had two options for transportation: the bus that cost 30 cents or an Uber that cost $2.00. An Uber was obviously more convenient, but the two of us took pride in figuring out public transportation. We ended up figuring it out, but not without learning that you could in fact get stranded at a Mexican Walmart with hands full of groceries, that bus rides were more like roller coasters where you weren't really sure if you were going to survive, and that bus drivers never really made a full stop, but more of a rolling stride to let you get out. This was one of the many quirks that came with learning a new city.

Our days were structured the same for the most part. We would wake up by 8 AM, be on the bus by 9:30, be at the gym by 10 AM and train like beasts until 2 PM. Our journey home was a silent, bumpy ride of dehydration and exhaustion followed by eating as many calories as we could to make up for what we had lost.

Because our mornings had structure, I could easily factor that into the reality I had experienced before. Afternoons and weekends( where we didn't have an excursion) were harder for me to grasp. My friend handled not having structure a lot better than me, and couldn't quite understand my restlessness with my newly found free time. I would find myself going to the grocery store to buy couple items at abnormal times, awkwardly wandering around random places in the city, and making the same 10 feet trip from our living room to the kitchen 10 + times a day. It took my a few weeks to realize that what I really needed to do was dance. Full time aerial training was great and exactly what I wanted to do, but it couldn't fill that spiritual void inside me.

One of my views on my aimless walk figuring out what to do

I ended up finding a few different dance studios where I could go and train in the evenings and on weekends. While I missed the cultural dances I was able to do in the Bay Area, the city strongly lacked these disciplines, so I found myself dropping in to hip hop classes to take advantage of what was available. While it was great just to get my body moving in that way again, I found myself desiring something more specific.

A collection of cuteness from Guadalajara

Before I left for Mexico, I had developed a strong love of Dancehall music and dance. While there were no Dancehall teachers in my small town in California, I had started following teachers in other cities to get inspiration, and motivate myself enough to go train with them some day. To my surprise, with enough searching in this new, big place, I was able to find a class in a studio all the way on the other side of the city. I found myself going every week without hesitation, and with this new dedication to this dance style I had so longed to pursue, my empty space of time I had worried so much about filling, began to shrink.

As committed as I was to my aerial training, I became equally committed to learning Dancehall. I'd come home from training and instead of taking a nap, I'd look on YouTube or Instagram to watch and learn different choreographies. I started following every dancer I could, and figure out where exactly in the world they would so I could go train with them someday.

Weirdly enough, the end of my journey in Mexico seemed to take on a different form than I originally intended.  When I got to Guadalajara, I had an idea that when I left, I'd pursue a career in aerial and circus, have dance on the side, and have that be my path. When I left, however, I felt a reaffirmed attachment to dance, grateful for the fact that I gotten so much stronger, but 100% committed to the love of a new dance form I had gotten the space to explore. While part of me was confused about this dramatic shift in such a short period of time, I realized deep down, it was bound to happen. I came there to get a break from the unfulfilling grind I was experiencing in my small town, and to see how much I could discipline myself physically without the conflict of a 9-5 day job that took all my best-used energy. What I really needed more than the physical training, was the space to explore the possibilities of my potential as an artist. And I found it.

My final handstand in Mexico

The Long Road Ahead

Spain was such a whirlwind of experiences, that I came back to California thinking I had lived three lifetimes already. It was almost as if I was one of those characters who disappeared into a magical land, came back thinking years had passed and for everyone else, it was 10 minutes. Even though I had managed to teach my Worldanz classes in Spain, I still only had about 6 months of dance experience under my belt, so I still had a very long way to go. After all, I'm not writing about my experiences to explain how easy my journey has been, I'm here to tell about the process.

My friend was generous enough to give me one of her classes at the gym where she was teaching and where I had first started coming to her classes. I realized very quickly that building my classes and being a successful teacher didn't just mean showing up every week on time. It also meant putting in the time every week to practice the dances I was teaching, training myself to be more fit and strong so I could make it through a class without getting light headed, and not taking it personally if only one person showed up to to my class. The most crucial thing I realized during all of this was that I still had very far to go as a DANCER, so as a TEACHER I had double the road ahead of me.

My first performance back in Santa Cruz during that first year of teaching

I learned this the hard way by making all the mistakes I possibly could that first year of teaching. I have to be honest and say that back then, part of me thought I had already learned what I needed to; an easy mistake to make as a beginner. I would show up up not having practiced any of the dances I was supposed to lead, and still lacked a lot of the technique that I was teaching other people. I got so ahead of myself, in fact, that my teacher had to have a heart to heart with me about seriously changing my tune if I was to continue teaching and working with her.

The thought of not being able to do what I has set out to do when this all started, just wasn't an option, which means I had to completely rework my whole approach, and begin to put the time in to what was about to become a lifetime practice. I very soon started religiously attending almost any technique class I could in my small town. I took Afro-Haitian, Senegalese, Afro-Brazilian, jazz, and ballet on a regular basis, and was the first to sign up for any workshop hosted by a master teacher passing through. I started taking aerial dance and circus classes to strengthen my body, and yoga to work on my flexibility. I would wake up at 6 every morning, get ready for work, work all day, then immediately race to classes at night. My weekends were full of practices and rehearsals, and my evenings at home were basically non-existent. My pure exhaustion at times was only coupled by our exhilaration because I could feel myself improving every minute. Going from someone who, at 20, couldn't do a push up, definitely couldn't touch their toes, and could barely follow a routine in a technique class, to someone at 25, who could do all this things , and more, was only accomplished by my pure dedication and drive to get better.

This was taken about 2 months into doing aerial.  You can clearly see my beginner technique :)

While the process towards self-improvement that I went through in Santa Cruz completely served me in the time I needed it, I soon realized that I was outgrowing the small town. I started hitting a wall with both my physical training in aerial, and my technique training, at times feeling bored and unsatisfied. Being 25 and working an office job where everyone around me was married with kids made me feel restless, and consumed by so many thoughts that mostly were along the lines of "Is THIS going to be my LIFE, for the next 40 or 50 years?!

This was taken 2 months before I left for Mexico at a dance intensive in Santa Cruz dancing Afro-Haitian.

I dwelled in this place for months deciding what to do. I mean I was 25, I still had so many options of where I could go and what I could do. I debated saving to go to professional circus school, debated moving to New York to full dedicate myself to my dance training, and also toyed with the idea of moving back to San Diego to be closer to family and get a different experience in a big city. The answer eventually came from a spirited conversation between a friend of mine and I after a late night training session. The answer was....... Mexico!

My aerial performance right before I left for Mexico. You can see the improvement in technique from the first photo. 

In the time both of us had been training aerial, we had a visiting coach that would come up from Mexico, and basically condition us so hard we couldn't walk or squat down for 3 days straight. He was a champion of perfect technique, and stressed the idea that in order to be successful at aerial, you had to be strong; not 10 push ups in a row strong, but more like 20 pull ups and a back flip strong. He had made the offer to come train with him in Mexico (for cheap) the previous time he had visited. Now that we were both in a place to make a big change, we took him up on his offer, and made plans for the next big move. For me, this wasn't just a chance to "level up" my aerial training, it was an opportunity to make my desire of being a full time artist and athlete, a reality.

My Spanish Experience

Spain was a whirlwind, to say the least. I went there with some big dreams and little to no experience under my belt, ready to take on anything, and determined not to fail. It was almost as if 6 years of experiences were packed in to 6 months. I taught at 3 different gyms, joined a vagabond dance group, and performed a variety show at one of the most famous hotels in Europe. I immersed myself in training, learned all the ins and outs of a new city, and, above all that, gained all the confidence I needed to completely make myself vulnerable and put myself out there to complete strangers, hoping that they would trust me enough to teach their clients.

My daily walking route I took to go bug gym owners to give me a chance.

 I will not be telling you, however, about my experience teaching at the most high end gym in Granada, or how I had floods of people flocking to my classes, and the massive following I subsequently built because of it. In fact, I taught at the smallest places that city could possibly hold, was lucky if I had more than one person show up to my class, and, was also lucky if I actually got paid for those classes. My great performance opportunity at the Alhambra palace was more of a community event, and did not result in me being booked for JLO's worldwide tour.

A scene from our performance at the Alhambra Palace. (Important Note: more people on stage than in the audience)

 But honestly, what great success story starts out with IMMEDIATE success? If that had happened I would have succeeded only in annoying every singe person around me, and only proved a terrible point that you do not have to work hard to achieve your goals, because that drops in to your lap with only 3-6 months of dedication. After all, my point in writing this blog is to show anyone that with enough hard work and resilience you CAN achieve those things you want, but you have to put the time in.

Me straight up performing this African dance routine at a bar. The audience obviously has no idea what to do. 

One huge thing I did gain from my experience that I mentioned before, was confidence. I did actually achieve what I set out to do, which was teach in a foreign country. I didn't let myself entertain the idea of failure, which was something I could have done at any step of that journey. That confidence would help me make some pretty key decisions in the coming years that would affect my future as I knew it. I still had a long road ahead.