Friday, June 24, 2016

Dancer Interview (Post #4)


For this post, I informally interviewed one of the dancers in the company. AJ Guevara is a New York based artist originally from California. He holds a BFA in dance and choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University and joined Eryc Taylor Dance earlier this year.

What did you do right after you graduated college?
I guess I was trying to save money before coming to the city, so I lived in Richmond and would take the bus to audition. I was working for a local dance company for a year and then after that I moved up to New York for a job.

What else are you involved in now?
I'm in a DC based company called Company E and we work with the state department for cultural diplomacy. We used to tour a lot internationally and now, in conjunction with that, we are trying to gain a domestic audience so we tour the U.S. too and have our own studio. We're staying in Israel in July and performing in Palestine.

How do you feel about your work life?
The thing that people don't tell you is that your first year out of college is great. It's exciting, you're auditioning and taking class and ideally you have some money saved up. But in your second year, a lot of the glitz and glamour of it has worn off and that's when it's really trying of yourself. You have to consistently muster up the motivation. At one point I had three jobs and none of them were dance related. You have to keep checking in that you're in New York for the right reason. I realized it was more important to be more involved in dance than to have a greater amount of spending money.




2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Even though I'm not a dancer, I appreciate the honesty your mentor had in this interview. Especially the question about how he felt about his work life. Often times I think many people do not give the reality of how working as an artist actually is. I'm sure you have much more to learn during your time there

    ReplyDelete