WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU SUBSCRIBE TO CATCHING BREATHS?
Watch This:
Thank you for reclaiming the value of words for many of us, and supporting my hope for a “website” that I wish existed in the world to show that “success” can be defined even amid sickness, and that we can be chronically jacked up and still aim to make meaning.
YOU are giving me the impalpable gift of feeling I have agency and accomplishment despite the fact I am mostly trapped at home right now. (Words can’t explain what that kind of sovranty and abrecation means)
To be blunt, despite prolifically writing a column for so many years and writing novels out of passion and love, I’ve never had an agent or made more than $50 or so for each self-published novella, and thus I truly write for the love of it.
(But I’ve never had writers block, so I’d love an agent one day too! hehe)
To be blunter, I did almost all of my dance education (teaching), choreography, private lessons, and manning our large scale (60+ dancers) for almost-always free or very very nominal amounts, and thus… I have pretty much worked for the last decade out of passion and out of love for specific people. (No regrets)
I often think that caste systems are real in the US (where I live) and no amount of boot-strapping can make a relentless work ethic work (unless you’re hit with luck) but that cynicism is built on years of constant creation and dedication and not being able to pay for groceries… but THAT is why this space matters for me.
This is a way to slowly shift every cynical, sunburned part of my mind, and fight for hope and wonderment again.
Want to know a little more about this chapter of my life and why I am currently aiming to write my face off from home? This video explains my disease… but to know me, I’d be honored if you’d sign on to read
Okay, I’m going to drop a brief bio so you know my background, but there is no way to do so without sounding a little arrogant sooooo…. feel free to sigh a little.
Time FOR a Speed Bio
I have spent the last 8 years running a company called Company 360 on the east coast: the first body neutral, large scale, professional dance theater company in the US.
I am a Deaf and disabled choreographer, dancer, director, and journalist, who creates the ‘book’, world build, makeup/costume design, soundtrack, personal audio description, copy and marketing, and base lighting design for our 2 full-length shows we had per year (a total of 10 until our current pause now), BUT the beautiful thing about @CompanyDanceTheatre was that no one cared.
My culture mattered, yes, but we made a space where our merit mattered the most, and who we are outside of the space is not the basis for the story.
This, as someone in a disabled body with multiple surgeries per year, is and was the definition of freedom.
In terms of Artistic Direction, my job included a surplus of choreography, scene work and world building (here is a storytelling reel as example of the work and videography)… audio description for the blind with the help of amazing VI consults… company ethos, characters and story… lighting design, costume and hair and makeup design… marketing and photographic concepts… writing complete novellas to accompany each of the stories (shows), as well as cinematic dance films for intentional accessibility.
(I couldn’t have done any of it without the people involved, it needs to be stated in the deepest of ink.)
A few links that might be helpful are the following coverage in Dance Magazine for working with ABT ballerinas (which oddly is still making news, which is lovely and the most surreal rewarding), as well as Dance Magazine recently again (2024).
Here is some commentary from Dance Spirit magazine and Pointe magazine, a quick Linked In which goes into New York Times Coverage and some of my published works.
I also directed an episode for the CW Network and was featured in a few web series for dance, so to speak.
(That all sounded kinda braggy and gross, right? I swear I’m not!)
The final logistical cherry on the top that really pushes the “accidentally arrogant” point home (forgive me), is my actually proudest accomplishment:
Other than being a mother, and a novelist, and creating this company and these theatre shows, and meeting some of my heroes (all of whom are human, it turns out- so working with the next generation is infinitely more rewarding):
I am the most proud of being the first body positive dance company to ever be honored at the Kennedy Center… because that made history for future generations of dancers who are told, always, that they do not belong.
I was proud to be the “Deaf ballerina” in a Kelly Clarkson music video during the pandemic with DeafWest, and to speak about inclusivity practices in dance to the San Francisco Ballet…
Or to work with the circus (more than once, oddly) and a few Broadway projects…
Or starting a brief but rewarding performance nonprofit for young dancers with terminal illness, or to speak out about body positivity in dance with AwareNow™️ media recently but ….
Getting press is just press. It comes and it goes. Working with students to help them find a healthy catharsis? And to have a healthy relationship with their body and see representation on a stage and within themselves? That is a paycheck no one can quantify.
(By the way, almost all of the last 10 years was ALL without payment, because I just felt that strongly about the need for this mission.)
Prior to my time focused on dance, I worked as a columnist for BioNews (this, alone, was and is an unending memoir) and xojane, was one of the original bloggers and vloggers before “influencing” was a movement (my website, Makeover Momma, was featured on Good Morning America, QVC, Vogue, Redbook beauty awards panel and Oprah Winfrey’s OWN blogging award network), a fashion and lifestyle journalist at New York Fashion Week, and wrote a long running Op-Ed for Gannett.
I have written 5 novels to date (and 1 children's book) that I’ve self published (many more that are sitting on my laptop and have not been shared)… though they were all for passion and (again) not a paycheck (see a theme?), because who has time to choose between the page or the stage?
Or who has the privilege of knowing an agent, a manager, a hook-up of that lofty lovely kind? (Hook me up)
I am rather proud of the prolific nature of my “pen” and wish I could one day have a proper publisher and continue “writing as I’m running out of time” as I am and always been (I wrote all my Kindle novellas in just 1 to 2 days because of impending surgeries at that time!)
At the risk of sounding braggadocios, my most natural skill is- for better and worse- a choreographic and lit-based mind that doesn’t suffer from “block”.
I never get writer’s block or choreographer’s block… which is sometimes a curse, more than a flex.
Though that mind currently feels trapped in a sort of Kahlo’d cocoon of misfit and misery. (Why sugar coat something that isn’t sweet?)
I am the proud mother of two girls who I have primarily homeschooled, and we have lived a happy sort of circus life that I wouldn’t change for the world…
I only wish I could change our little corner of it, faster.
** You can see some of the links in this hack-job of a pseudo-resume at LinkedIn, too, should you prefer.
Support artists who lack support? Support art, however you can **