From L.A to New York

When I left Laure's workshop that day there was nothing in my view that didn't look clear. Within only a few weeks I was consistently making trips down to LA not only to train with her, but almost every teacher I could find down there. I'd meticulously comb social media for whatever workshop or class I could find.

I would leave Santa Cruz ( a ten hour round trip drive away), zoom down, take a few classes, then turn right back around that same night to drive home. Often times that meant leaving at 5 A.M. bright and early, getting to LA around 11AM, staying all day, then leaving again at 8PM to reach home at around 2 AM. I'd take three Dancehall classes in a row and splurge on private lessons. I'd walk into a class of professionals and fight to hold my own. I'd return home wide-awake and elated, but mentally and physically exhausted from the long journey; having zig zagged through dark mountains with the occasional stop at a deserted gas station. It was INSANE. Literally everyone in my life thought I was crazy. I knew I was, but I didn't care.

I continued with these charades until the next summer, when my friend and I decided to take a dance trip to New York and visit a friend of ours who was on Broadway. I craved more.We took classes all day every day, training with the best, getting inspired over and over again. If I thought the energy was alive in the Dancehall classes in LA, I hadn't seen anything yet. In LA, you would walk into a class feeling an excited extreme nervousness, and leave feeling accomplished because you just survived a class dancing next to someone who had been in Beyonce's last music video. In New York, you'd leave a class feeling completely transformed; dancing next to the bright lights of the city, and spill out onto the sidewalk completely immersed in the magnetic energy of the streets. I fell in love. When you walk around the streets of Manhattan, you are shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of people who are doing something with their lives, and/or are literally on their way. I kept thinking to myself, I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING WITH MY LIFE!

That's my friend, Ruthie who Gina and I went to visit when she was on Broadway. She's now a famous Disney Channel star. Not the point of this piece, but a fun fact!

This photo was taken in a bathroom somewhere in Manhattan. Along with my dance training, it was a really big deal that there was a mural of Beyonce in a bathroom. I had NEVER seen that in my life. 

Okay, last New York picture, I promise. Gina and I made sure we made complete fools of ourselves before we left. 

That's exactly what I did.

I knew that if I wanted to keep taking my study of Dancehall seriously, I couldn't just rely on these infrequent and exhausting trips to these cities inside my own country. I needed a foundation; a basis upon which I could actually study and transform. I needed roots. I needed culture.

I needed to go to Jamaica.....but how?