Tell us about your dance journey 

My journey with dance has always been the driving force in my life. It started very early, I don’t even know at what age. The earliest memory I have would be of running around some coffee table with baby-proofed edges to Cyndi Lauper “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” stuck on repeat. Cyndi Lauper then graduated to Nelly Furtado while backyard dancing graduated to training at competition-dance schools in the suburbs of Illinois. When I was 10, my family moved to New Jersey and though I was eager to keep up with the competition scene, it wasn’t the same as how I remembered it in the Midwest. So I added ballet to the mix. Funny enough, I remember really hating ballet when I was young, it felt too restricting for me. But the discipline it offered was a great way for me to channel all the intense feelings I was experiencing after having moved away from my childhood friends and life back in Illinois. Gradually the ballet training became more intense and I started to spend my summers training at whatever ballet company who’d accept me into their program. These summers made me realize that I both wanted and needed to take it all more seriously if I wanted to do this professionally, so I had applied to Walnut Hill School for the Arts outside of Boston and ended up boarding there the last 3 years of high school. After graduating in 2015, I had continued training as a trainee at Joffrey Ballet Chicago while studying improv with a small contemporary company 'Cocodaco' on the weekends. It was dance every day and all day that year, all the while auditioning whenever and wherever I could. The first audition I got lucky was for Ballett Dortmund’s Junior Company in Germany, so I immediately left to begin my professional career in Europe. 
Nederlands Dans Theater was always my ultimate dream and so every year I was eligible, I auditioned. It wasn’t until after numerous rounds and years of getting cut that in 2017, NDT had given in and offered me a contract with their second company. The next 3 years must have been the most vibrantly charged years- a spectrum of only extremes- until in 2020 NDT had offered me a contract with their main company. Finally, after another 3 years, in 2023 I had decided to leave and become a solo artist.

Tell us about your experience in NDT2 and NDT

Nederlands Dans Theater is no joke. It certainly has a reputation and it was fascinating, while extremely taxing, to understand the cost of such high stakes. When I look back, there’s such an array of emotions that quite honestly - need to be properly unpacked before I can give any truthful hindsight. 
What I can say however, was the one thing that pulled me towards the company in the very beginning was not just the sheer strength and grace their dancers have physically, but the extreme and undeniable intellect behind this very physicality. It’s incredible to observe. While there, this very quality that first spoke to me as a witness, started to articulate itself behind the scenes. The colleagues I had and friends I made, I believe, are of the most inspiring creatures. It’s absurd, and oh so lucky, to look back in hindsight that I was able to share my days and time with minds and hearts like theirs. It made testing our body’s capacity - physically, mentally, and spiritually - every day worth the toll it took and I have nothing but immense gratitude for them all.

You had the opportunity to choreograph for Opera de Paris. How was this experience and what did you create?

Choreographing for the Paris Opera was insane ! Prior to this creation, I had always feared choreography. I thought of myself as strictly an improv-artist and would even get irritated when people assumed that improvisation and choreography go hand in hand. For a long time I saw them as polar opposites; one as a craft of concrete ideas fixed together to become its own withstanding, never-changing product while the other as a craft of respecting the moment which is always in motion so could never be regenerated without losing its integrity. However Aurelie DuPont (director of Paris Opera Ballet at the time) saw something in me that I couldn’t see myself. While understanding that this could very well be a once-in-a-lifetime chance, I undergo-ed quite a tremendous internalization of believing in myself through a craft I always feared. The night of the premier, I've never felt such a strong sense of pride in myself like that before and feel as though I've been chasing it ever since.
A very special shoutout to Antonin Monié and Marion Gautier de Charnacé, who performed this duet so purely and to Éve-Marie Dalcourt, a close friend of mine from NDT II who was my rock throughout this tumultuously challenging time.