In Dance

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An Interview with Lucia Verzola

In Dance Guest Editor Rowena Richie sat down with Lucia Verzola, Dancers’ Group new staff member and recent MFA in Creative Writing graduate. We talked about how she got into dance journalism, what questions are being asked by artists, and advice from her 80-year-old self.

The full 48 minute interview can be listened to and contains additional content. The published interview has been edited for a more streamlined read.

Rowena Richie: Hi Lucia! Introduce yourself and tell me your connection to dance.

Lucia Verzola: My name is Lucia Verzola. I don’t think my introduction is very uncommon: my mom put me in class and I really liked it and ballet quickly became the favorite.

I think I was twelve when I told myself, I want to become a professional ballet dancer. And then when I was a senior in high school, I moved away from my family to go to Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet year-round. I was 17, and I was like, this is where it gets serious. I’m gonna really make this goal of mine happen. And in my two years at the program I actually realized I don’t want to be a professional ballet dancer.

RR: Wow.

LV: I realized if I can’t dance with a certain caliber company, the sacrifice that comes with a professional ballet career was not worth it. There are physical limitations I can’t change about my body and I know where I stand within the talent pools. There are a lot of super, super talented kids who start this serious training from a young age, or they’re just gifted with more natural ability. I was always someone who worked really hard. I really wanted to be there. I love to move my body. I love to listen to music but it was not ultimately in the cards for me.

My older brother, Durante Verzola, is a choreographer. He teaches at Miami City Ballet School. So I have that connection which is really special. And I just feel like “once a dancer, always a dancer.” I still have such a deep appreciation for the movement, not just ballet, the art form in general. And it makes me happy to go watch it, and be around dancers and talk about dance.

RR: I didn’t realize how deeply you had pursued dance. So now tell me about your creative writing formative experiences.

LV: For the longest time when professional ballet was the goal, I was like, I’m not going to college. And then when I realized I’m not gonna dance professionally, I was like, I guess college is what makes sense. And I was just so overwhelmed. What the hell am I gonna study? I don’t wanna be a dance major but what is something that I can still express myself, that feels creative to some degree? But then the practical side of me took over and a family friend was studying communications and they were like, “It’s gonna get you the job after you graduate.” And so I tried it for like a year and some change. And it was not for me.

RR: Communications?

LV: Yeah, communication studies was not my forte. So, my mom was actually an English major. For one of my pre-requisites, I took a Jane Austen English course and I really liked the professor and talking about the book and my mom was like, “Why don’t you switch your major? Do something that makes you excited.” There was a creative writing focus. And I thought, that sounds really fun. And simultaneously I was also a journalism minor.

RR: OK!

LV: I wrote for the school paper about things that interested me and joined the staff and eventually made my way up to Editor in Chief of The San Francisco Foghorn which is the name of the student run newspaper at the University of San Francisco.

And so those two: the creative writing and the journalism were kind of happening at the same time, but always felt super separate. Dance journalism had not occurred to me till I went to get my graduate degree at Saint Mary’s studying creative writing where I had the good fortune of meeting Rachel Howard who actually does both. I was like, wow, that is something that could happen.

RR: Rachel was your grad school professor.

LV: She was my professor. I had stalked her bio before class and casually slipped it in that I used to dance, and she was so encouraging from the get go: “Dance journalism needs more writers.” I was like, well that couldn’t be me. I could never do that.

RR: Now look at you.

LV: It just takes one person sometimes.

RR: Yay! That’s wonderful.

Do you feel like your dance experience, the experience of moving your body through time and space influences the way you write?

LV: As a dancer you have to have such razor sharp attention to detail. In my writing I like to focus on the physicality of a space, or the physicality of a face, or what they were wearing. And I think that has followed me from my dance background. You’re so aware of the small tiny things.

RR: What sort of dances do you love to watch?

LV: I’d be lying if I didn’t say neoclassical and contemporary ballet is what really gets me excited. But also just any dance that feels fresh and energized, and not trying to do something new for the sake of doing something new.

I want to feel a certain kind of connection to the movement, both in terms of the dancer working as an instrument, and a beautiful collaborative process, because it’s also the job of the choreographer to make the dancer shine on stage.

I just got to see Ballet 22 perform. Continuing to see works that challenge expectations within traditional dance norms, especially classical ballet. Let’s have men, non-binary and trans men en pointe. I wanna continue to see dancers—artists—finding ways to express themselves to the fullest degree. As a human being, can it be less about these binaries, man, woman? What can a dancer be?

RR: I love that.

So dance, journalism, creative writing, your dance background. What do you want to do with all of this?

LV: Such a good question.

RR: (Laughs).

LV: Going back to the gender binary thing, I think that exists in art too. How do we blur the lines? How do we combine these different interests? Find new formats to express ourselves? So, finding publications, like zines. I think there’s a lot of power in the ability to self-publish these days.

I went to the SF Art Book Fair a couple weekends ago. It was just happenstance that I walked up and was flipping through this book, a family archival project of photographs. It was just really organic and felt exciting to touch. I write about my family a lot in my creative work. And I was like, wow, I wish I could do this. I told the man at the booth, “I want to get published. It can feel like there are so many barriers…” And he was like, “Publish yourself. Yes, it takes time and energy and obviously financial resources, but what’s stopping you?” It can be overwhelming but also really exciting that the possibilities feel endless to a degree. It’s as much as you wanna take on.

RR: That’s awesome. Okay, so some kind of dance journalism, potentially through a zine, or other self-published channel.

LV: Right.

RR: Who do you imagine your audience is?

LV: There are so many of us dancers who almost get there and don’t quite. Maybe we auditioned and couldn’t get in, or only got offered a job at a company that paid nothing and we have to make money, or we had a career-ending injury. I have been trying to tackle writing about that because I think as human beings, at one point or another, you learn that lesson of something that wasn’t meant to be, the acceptance and what it feels like to fail. I see this part of myself in this art, in this writing, helping engage and open up those conversations and dialogues.

RR: People can have such baggage around their dancer self. Personally, when I’m dancing, I feel like a dancer, and if I’m not, I’m not a dancer, I have imposter syndrome. Maybe your zine will rekindle some dance-adjacent affection or participation in the dance community for those who have shut themselves out.

What is a favorite article that you’ve published?

LV: I had the pleasure of meeting Alyssa Mitchel. She did a project called Endure. It was a marathon multimedia piece that was inspired by her entering her running journey. She invited me to sit in on a rehearsal the week before they went to Dance Mission Theater. That was a moment that I really started to feel like, wow, this is dance journalism.

Sitting in the studio and watching the rehearsal and hearing them breathing really hard and sweating and stopping the music: “Let’s try that again.” Chatting with the dancers after the rehearsal, knowing these artists as people, individuals, too, feeling that excitement and passion. And then seeing how the performance had changed since that rehearsal, and seeing it with the backdrop, with the multimedia element. It was really cool and it was fun to write that, having that very full experience.

RR: Yeah, it’s really fun to read that article, too. I feel like we become more invested or have deeper engagement with the dance piece when we know a little bit more about it.

LV: Right.

RR: Was it a review?

LV: It was just a preview.

RR: Have you written any reviews?

LV: A couple weeks ago I wrote a review for Tether Dance Project. That is also a rush I hadn’t felt in a while: I have to finish this tonight, send it off to go to print… which is scary but exciting. To digest what you’ve watched in real time, at a quicker speed. It worked a different part of my brain for sure.

RR: What did you want this review to do?

LV: There’s so much privilege and power that comes with getting to cover dance journalism. You have a voice and you get to share it with whoever happens to read the article. To bring more attention to what Tether is doing was really important to me. But also to challenge myself: what was memorable, what were those moments where they really shined as a group? It was hard.

You have your little notes that you write in the dark. Then try to write a cohesive review that will make sense to both someone who is familiar with dance and the layman who happened to just stumble across it. What is gonna encourage them, pique their interest to say, “This is something I want to go see and spend money on.”

RR: Sounds anxiety producing, writing a review, both the time pressure and representing what you thought as a voice of “authority.” And, at the end of the day, I personally want to read a review that’s championing…

LV: Great word.

RR: Yeah, championing culture in general, and specifically getting people out to see dance. Living in the Bay Area and being a guest editor for In Dance has really exploded my conception of how much dance there is, including all of the festivals, all the non-presceinium spaces, dance happening in gymnasiums and in the street. I’m really glad you’re finding ways to make a career for yourself in this art space, marrying these things that you are fascinated with. And I hope you keep falling in love with them.

LV: We’re champions for the dance world! And, I might have some feedback that’s not positive but I hope this doesn’t destroy their dreams as a dancer.

Having been on the receiving side of someone saying something critical or negative about your dance or your movement can be hard.

RR: We put ourselves out there, but some performances we make are duds. Some articles you write might be duds, some of the performances you see might be duds, and hopefully we’re not so fragile and the economy isn’t so cutthroat that one false move is the end of your dreams.

What is your idea of happiness?

LV: I think the first thing that comes to mind is being in community. For me it’s my siblings, my partner, my closest friends. That just brings a smile to my face, even thinking about that group that I have to fall back on, and hope they can do the same with me. But also the larger community: folks that you are aligned with in terms of your values, you’re working towards the same thing, your artistic community, those that feed my soul. And then in terms of simpler things, sharing a good meal with people you love. That makes me so happy.

RR: What’s a good meal?

LV: I just went to Zuni Cafe for the first time in a long time. That chicken. Come on, that’s a great meal.

RR: I can smell it.

LV: Yeah, it’s so good. It’s worth the hour or 70 minute wait. I have a huge sweet tooth. I like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge.

RR: Favorite writers?

LV: This is such a stereotypical answer for a creative nonfiction or essayist out there, but Jo Ann Beard is a favorite. The Boys of My Youth is her very famous essay collection about growing up in the Midwest. She’s really good about returning to childhood and playing with POV shifts.

Marilyn Abildskov, I had her at St. Mary’s. She’s also an essayist and an incredible human being. I feel honored that I’ve not only gotten to read her work, but also she’s read my work and given me feedback.

And then Carvell Wallace, he’s based in Oakland, and his book, Another Word for Love, just blew my mind.

And all of these writers, I think, again, it goes back to being observant and detail oriented. The little things that they’re able to sprinkle into their writing. I think that’s key as a dance writer too. You can’t miss the details.

Their voice is so distinctly theirs on the page. And I think as a writer, both in dance journalism and creative writing, that is something you’re constantly striving for. It’s so easy to have a conversation with someone and be like, yes, that is what Rowena sounds like. That is what Lucia sounds like, but how do you capture that on the page? There’s magic to it. And they’ve got it down.

RR: Thank you for those recommendations.

Do you have a favorite performance?

LV: The day before Valentine’s Day, 2019. Doris Andre and Joseph Walsh of San Francisco Ballet performed Justin Peck’s Hurry Up We’re Dreaming, which is also the name of the album by M83 that the song they danced to came from. The song is called “Splendor.” This ballet all takes place in sneakers, very Jerome Robbins-esque. So, strong ballet foundation, but to this French pop song. And it’s a slow, slow pas de deux. The chemistry was just so good. The movement was so precise but dynamic.

People ask me, do you ever miss dancing? I don’t really miss it a lot. But that performance, I was like, wow, I do wish I could learn that.

RR: What questions are artists asking right now?

LV: I think “How?” is a big one that’s coming up. How can I continue to pursue my art? Is this gonna pay the bills? Are audiences going to come to these performances? Is what I’m saying, does what I’m doing matter? In the larger landscape that we exist in today where there is so much happening—AI, social media, funding is being cut—is there going to be space for us to come together and create even? And that is such a scary question.

I also think artists are thinking about “Why?” Does this even matter in the grand scheme of things? This story I’m trying to write about my family is very personal to me and feels special, but is it gonna even make a difference? With social media we’re so consumed with the immediacy of things happening. Art that takes time and energy and years and years to create, once I make the thing, will it have even been worth it? And will there be anyone to listen or watch the show, or read, or engage with what I created?

RR: One of my heroines is Susan O’Malley, who wrote a book called Advice From My 80-Year-Old Self in which she interviewed people of all ages asking them: what advice would your eighty-year-old self give you? Especially in response to what you were just saying—Why? Does it even matter?—what do you think your eighty-year-old self would tell you?

LV: Life’s too short not to. If this is something that brings you joy, brings you happiness, feels important to you, that’s enough.

We can get so consumed with the reaction from others. Am I gonna be liked? Will they like this thing that I created? And yes, of course, that’s a human thing to feel but also it’s enough that it matters to you. And you only get one life to do these things. So don’t waste your time and don’t get caught up in what other people are telling you is important: making money, having a big house, driving a fancy car. Those things all go away. But art is what will outlive you. If someone picks something up that I wrote after I’m gone and it means something to them or moves them in some way that is enough.

Monique Jenkinson aka Fauxnique. Photo by Robbie Sweeney.

You can listen to this piece on Substack! 

A pivot is a dance move

Last fall I performed my cabaret show, Fauxnique. So Relevant. at the beloved queer nightlife and arts space, Oasis, shortly after they announced they were closing. In the show, which is about growing older, weathering changes, staying engaged, and of course, the concept of relevance, I offered a moment of tribute. I moved the tribute swiftly from solemnity to levity, as one must in a cabaret show, and, thinking about the moves Oasis-owner D’arcy Drollinger was going to have to make, reminded him about his background as a dancer and the vital skill we dancers know: the “pivot” – that word we’ve all been hearing for the last six years? It’s a dance move.

Rowena Richie, my friend and guest editor of In Dance, came to the show, and, hearing my tribute to Oasis and knowing my three-decade history in this city, invited me to write something about it. Indeed I know, from my experience, in my body, about what has come and gone in this city. I arrived in 1992 and made my first solo show in 2000, which was the last show to happen at the space at 22nd and Mission, where Dancers’ Group had a theater space. I remember the exact feel and smell of that wood floor on which I took so many classes and made so much early work. I started to conceive of an essay about spaces in San Francisco, about the ways in which they come and go, what it feels like to occupy them, keep them, lose them. I gathered my hopes for what might grow up in the empty space that’s left, and intentions of how to care for what we have. Then, as in a fairy tale, magic happened. A kind-hearted fan of Oasis convinced his billionaire family to swoop in and save our dear, queer nightlife safe space. Hurrah!

I could still write about other spaces, other losses, other hopes. Then I read the gorgeous “A Lungful of Possibility (or, A Wishlist for the Bay Area),” by Eric Garcia and members of the dance community. They articulated many of my hopes and dreams for what we might cultivate for the future; in the wake of loss and grief, yes, but also with forward-thinking, positive energy. They dreamed many of my own dreams.

My intentions for how we might care for what we have? That concept feels more slippery in the precarity that underpins the time and context in which we live. There are no guarantees. Even when you buy the building, even when you get the grant, even when you surround yourself with likeminded people. Even when the billionaire saves you. No one is coming to save you. That sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Maybe it could also lead to something that looks more like liberation. No one is coming to save us. And yet here we are. With and for each other.

As I began to pivot my plan for this writing, I found myself in the midst of digging deeply into the muck of my next show, How Do I Look? (which premiered at ODC Theater in April, and moved to On the Boards in Seattle May 7-9). “I’ll have something for you soon!” I kept yelling up to Rowena from inside the pit of the deep, dark, psychic space in which I went spelunking. Hi-ho. I went deeper. One voice told me you’re too busy to write a thing right now. Just say “I can’t.” “I can’t” is a complete sentence. Another voice said Yes. You want to write about this. You must write about this. This? What is this? What is the “this” I’m writing about?

Art is hard

This piece, this this I’m writing, I’m embarrassed to say, is, like everything, about how hard it is to make art. And when I say “how hard it is to make art,” I mean to be an artist, to place oneself in the state of being an artist. I hate art about how hard it is to make art. It’s a rookie move. But here I am. It’s what is on my mind. We endure and propagate a lot of clichés about how art chooses us, how it calls us. And, well, they’re right. That is the annoying thing about clichés.

I chose art and it chose me. I am not blameless nor helpless, but it is, in a sense, beyond my control. Art is hard and also I am miserable when I’m not doing it. And the “doing” of which I speak…. It isn’t just being creative, which is great. I will never not live a creative life, but being creative is not enough. I have to be in this process. I have to have something to really dig into. A big show. And so, as if my life depends on it (because it turns out it does) I’ve been digging, digging, digging into my newest work, How Do I Look? How Do I Look? came out of a period that was, both chaotically and predictably, challenging. I can’t fully articulate all of the details of how and why this time was so challenging. Some of it I do not want to say out loud and some of it is just inarticulable. The part I can and will say out loud is that I am a middle-aged, mid-career artist in a field and a world that valorizes young people (which I was for about five minutes) and ancestors (aka dead people, which we will all be someday). It is unconscionably boring to complain about being uncool and irrelevant. If you are lucky enough to live past fifty and cursed enough to wish to remain relevant, you too will know this feeling and maybe even complain about it. I know, cringe right? Ha ha.

One annoying cliché about the state of being an artist is that it requires resilience and also sensitivity, which is a complicated combination to manage. If one wishes to mature as an artist, one must manage it. I have seen some great talents collapse under the mess of its mismanagement.

Some of my favorite artists crumpled several times. The writer Eve Babitz, one of my problematic faves (look her up, I don’t have the space here to explain her), started as a painter, but quit when a dear friend looked at a work-in-progress and asked “is that the blue you’re using?” Eve told (or re-tooled) it as “is that the blue you’re using?” and used the phrase as shorthand for any diminishing remark around any creative process. We’ve all heard some version of “is that the blue you’re using?” and perhaps it has upset our own delicate balance of resilience and sensitivity.

I’ve been struggling to manage this balance myself over the last couple of years. I want support for my work, but I want to make what I want to make. I need to make what comes from my own unique experience, my own sensitive soul. And if that isn’t what the culture has decided it wants, what it needs, that news has a way of hitting one in the sensitive spot. The piece by Eric Garcia, et al, floored me with this one: “We’re tired of forcing every idea into a neat social-justice elevator pitch just to get basic resources. We want grants that don’t require us to pretend we’re public health departments, superheroes, politicians, or social workers.” Thank you! Thank you for writing what I’ve been afraid to say out loud, but shouldn’t be. It is exhausting to have to try to prove that our art is necessary. It is exhausting to try to be what you’re not.

An exercise in futility

His name was Jonathan. He was a darling boy. A thoughtful hippie type, of whom there were a disproportionate number among the scant amount of boys at our tiny liberal arts college. He approached me awestruck after a dance show, one of the last before graduation. “That was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it! Wow… But, dance? Isn’t that, like, an exercise in futility?” I was furious, although he wasn’t being malicious. He was just wondering out loud the way we all did. The way our school had taught us to. I was furious. Furious because I had just poured everything I had into that show (well, half of what I had. I was a double major. The other half went into my literature thesis on an obscure Russian Symbolist poet). I was also furious because I kind of knew. Yeah.

I think about sweet Jonathan’s comment from time to time. I don’t dwell on it, but I’ve never ever forgotten it. During a waxing phase of my feminist anger (my feminism doesn’t wax and wane, but its anger does), I thought about it, and him, with disdain. That was around the time when I read somewhere that one had a better chance at getting a novel published if one’s name was Jonathan than if one were a woman. I just spent forty-five precious minutes searching for the source to no avail on a platform whose hivemind is meant to replace the work in which I am engaged right now. I thought about it again a few weeks ago amidst the Timothée Chalamet calamitée. I too got real mad at TC for calling ballet & opera irrelevant. I too felt the tingle of schadenfreude as arts communities defended their highfalutin’ aunties with memes and discount codes. But I also kind of knew. If ballet and opera, the establishment, felt betrayed and diminished by the comments of that callous child, where did that leave contemporary dance?

In the midst of relentless doubt, fear, sadness, joy and self-critique, and with the deep spiritual support of my collaborators, I premiered How Do I Look? In it, I: discuss my deepest fears, lay out many of the measurements of various parts of my body, dance around a lot on my two titanium hips, do a standup routine in which I roast myself, sing a song by a suicidal Gen-x troubadour about the ambivalence of being perceived, show my fifty-five-year-old tits. It is not about how hard it is to be an artist, but it’s not not about that either. The piece, which received a blessed amount of institutional support in the form of presentation (deep, eternal gratitude to ODC and On the Boards), but for which I applied for zero grants because I was convinced I would not get them, pulled me out of the quicksand in which I’d been sinking. It may have actually saved my life. It has also received a glowing reception, another reminder, which I receive constantly, that one’s most personal work is invariably the most resonant. It’s about me, but maybe you’ll find that it’s also about you, about us. Many people have told me they love the piece and some have even told me that they need it. And this is why I continue to do this hard thing of being an artist. To make that connection. Not to have people tell me they love my work (although that is undeniably nice), but to remember that here we are – with and for each other. It might be all we have.

Gold medalist Alysa Liu of Team United States poses for a photo during the medal ceremony for Women’s Free Skating at the Milan-Cortina Games. Alysa LIUAsatur Yesayants – YantsImages

You can listen to this piece on Substack! 

I was in the depths of a caregiving slump when figure skating champion Alysa Liu helped me figure my way out.

Alysa Liu made headlines and heads spin with her halo hair and her brilliant free skating at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. On the heels of her astonishing comeback, a reporter asked her, “What would you say to your younger self?” Alysa, all of 20, emphatically replied, “Nothing! She’s got it. She’ll figure it out. And I don’t wanna mess that up.”

On Easter Sunday, 2025, my partner Ed was hospitalized. After a series of agonizingly long days featuring a battery of tests and eventually a biopsy, we learned that Ed had rare but treatable stage 4 appendix cancer. Now, a year later, Ed is cancer free. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!” to borrow a quote from Alysa as she exited the Olympic ice. Looking back, there was a pivotal moment when my caregiving journey took a turn—nay, a Biellmann spin—for the better.

Cancer treatment—rounds and rounds of chemotherapy and “the mother of all surgeries,” caused me much suffering. Ed, too, obviously, but I was the primary caregiver, and as many people observed, “in some ways you have it worse.” Appendix cancer has a 75% chance of recurrence within 2 to 5 years. Ed will have regular CT scans to monitor it. With the first scan looming, I can already feel myself backsliding toward the anxiety abyss. We had tons of support—I had tons of support. Still, as the treatment progressed I was increasingly depleted emotionally and energetically, especially in the days following the surgery. This essay is about the ways Alysa Liu’s figure skating journey helped me figure my way out.

Me circa 1973.

I have done a lot of walking over the past year: to calm down, to keep Ed conditioned, to help Ed rehabilitate. When I’m out walking alone I talk to myself, and sometimes I text myself. The contact photo—and the confidant I imagine on the receiving end of my texts—is me as a little girl. In the photo little me is wearing a handmade Easter bonnet: an upside down paper plate with two glued-on bunny ears. Though she never replies, she is always listening. I turn to her when I’m feeling lost:

Text to Me, from the depths of care partner despair:
I lead with my emotions. How the hell am I supposed to keep this up?
I’m so. Done.
I never asked for this: journey. Responsibility. Vulnerability.
Maybe I just can’t. Don’t
have it. Enough…whatever it is. Whatever you say,
I’m not. Not strong enough, spiritual enough, evolved enough to keep this up.

Four years ago, after the Beijing Winter Olympics, at the age of 16, Alysa Liu retired: “Skating was not worth it.” She was burnt out, a child prodigy whose entire life had revolved around the rink. She learned to drive, goofed off with her siblings, finished high school (a proud graduate of Oakland School of the Arts), started college (UCLA), and took a vacation. It was on a skiing trip where she felt the adrenaline rush familiar to skating. “I missed the glide. You can’t get that anywhere…When I went skiing, I felt it. I glided for the first time since I quit, and I was like whoa.”

On February 19th, 2026, a few weeks after Ed’s 10-hour operation I had no more fucks to give. (The surgery involved slicing him open from sternum to pubic bone, removing organs, and bathing his abdomen in hot chemotherapy for 90 minutes). Then, turning the TV on to watch the Olympics, I saw Alysa Liu skate out onto the ice. From the moment she assumed her starting position, I was mesmerized. She seemed so relaxed out there, like she had no more fucks to give, but in the sense of healthy boundaries. “Someone left the cake out in the rain,” Donna Summer sang and Alysa glided. She glided with every ounce of pleasure that she had saved up from those years of not gliding. “And I don’t think I can take it, cuz it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no!” Triple axel double toe loop combination—nailed it!

There was magic in the air. I know how rare that is, what we were witnessing. My entire history of dancing on stage and in school boils down to three magical moments, twice during performances, once during class. One day in college, a ballet teacher sub got me to have a more enthusiastic, springy plié prep that led to my one and only triple pirouette. That and the two performance memories total less than 5 minutes—when everything coalesced into an unforgettable, inexplicable sense of discovery, a portal of whoa, this is everything I’ve ever wanted and worked so hard for. And then it’s over, leaving its footprint in your consciousness for all time.

Alysa perfectly executed seven jumps and three spins, all the while seeming to forget about the stakes—the judges, the scoring, the other competitors—just dancing sublimely, loosely, as free as the ponytail she whipped around, the intricately choreographed steps she whipped out on ice skates, for fuck’s sake. She was feeling it. I was feeling it in the depths of my solar plexus.

Ed and I do yoga together. We took a class the day after we met 26 years ago, and the practice continues. “Hug the midline” is one of our yoga mantras. Another is “stay with it.” Hugging the midline is what I felt watching Alysa free skate. Gathering energy from all directions, spectators, spirits, from every atom in the universe, hugging all of that into her center axis, and then ricocheting it back out into space, into my living room, into my sushumna, the Sanskrit word for the channel through which prana, or life force, flows and energy rises. I saw radical self-possession. Sparks flying from the supercharged core of her being. My innermost self realigned, reignited and flared out like the rays of gold fringe on her dress.

“I didn’t want it to end,” Alysa beamed fresh off the podium. Nor did we! How can I get some of that? How did she figure it out? I got obsessed.

Her Olympic win was one of the most improbable comebacks in the history of figure skating. As I understood it, her retirement was not a departure from, but an integral part of “staying with it.” She came out of retirement committed to protecting her mental health, life-work balance, skating on her own joyous terms. “I think mistakes are beautiful, too,” she says, “because it’s about the journey.” She won a gold medal because she stopped chasing it. I saw no struggle. No split-second second guessing. No trace of self-loathing or self-aggrandizing. She was exactly where she wanted to be, having fun and liking herself.

Alysa helped me see that my aspirations to be the best—the most patient, doting, empathetic care partner ever—led to care partner failures. (On multiple occasions, in response to my unaffectionate “tough love,” Ed called me “Nurse Row-tched,” a reference to the antagonist Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”). Furthermore, my negative self-talk blocked a critical resource: my subtle body. In other words, my qi.

Alysa reminded me that I know how to cultivate prana. To engage in healing self-care. Plus, I had a wellspring of positive energy flowing into me. A village of healthcare providers, family, friends, colleagues, emotional support pets all hugging in towards us was powerful and beautiful.

Alysa didn’t take the burden or challenge out of care work, but she inspired me to “retire,” to let go of trying to be perfect and focus on being present. I skated through these last weeks with more grace and fluidity. I let others lift me up, and made time to goof off.

We recently toasted the end of Ed’s cancer treatment journey. I surprised myself by saying “I’m going to miss last year.” Alysa didn’t want her performance to end. I didn’t want this care journey to stop.

And it doesn’t have to. Even without cancer in the mix, I’m determined to glide forward with the lessons gained during a very rough patch.

Text to: Me
What would you say to your future self?

Nothing. She’ll figure it out.

Doña Jesusa has been weaving all her life and has taught the skill to new generations of Indigenous Lenca women in central Honduras. In February 2025, I visited her loom workshop in Honduras with my collaborators, dance artist Isadora Paz Taboada from Honduras and visual artist Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez from Germany, to conduct workshops and research with women from an Indigenous women’s rights group, MURILPAZ.

Yelkaram, which translates to “in the river” in Lenca language, is the second multi-disciplinary project from Isadora, Gabriel and me, artists with Honduran heritage, in collaboration with MURILPAZ, an organization of Indigenous Lenca Women from 8 municipalities in the area of La Paz. MURILPAZ’s mission is to empower Indigenous women to be resilient and adapt to changes while simultaneously preserving their identity and cultural heritage and defending their rights and autonomy. After finishing our first project Savia: Sap flow, presented in 2024 as part of an ARC-Edge residency at CounterPulse, the team felt the need to expand and deepen the exploration of Lenca culture and practices.

Our first meeting was with Indigenous women in Guajiquiro, a community known for weaving fabrics. Jesusa showed us the loom workshop and demonstrated how she coordinates her upper and lower body, pushing pedals with her feet and pushing and pulling with her arms to move the pieces of wood attached to colorful threads. We were very interested in learning the body movements that are executed to weave as a source of inspiration for the choreography. Outside the loom workshop, I guided a somatic movement exchange with eight Lenca weavers and ceramists. I incorporated pushing and pulling movement explorations in duets and in groups. We explored the common elements of the looms and the body, comparing the loom wood with the bones, and the threads with our tendons and muscles. We shared weight with hands, bending and extending the elbows, embodying the movement of the loom, bending-pushing-extending-releasing.

The group of participants was smaller than we expected. We learned that some of the young women weavers could not attend because it was coffee harvesting season, and many weavers depend on that income to survive given the scarce opportunities to sell their fabrics. The weavers are struggling to maintain their craft because local people and especially new generations are not buying and wearing their traditional fabrics. There is an invasion of cheap clothing, (“ropa de bulto,” bulk clothing), that comes mainly from the US, and appeals to local people because of low prices and trend-driven styles. It was sad to witness the detrimental effect of consumerism and fast fashion on local textile markets and Indigenous culture.

Many members of MURILPAZ live in El Jilguero 25 miles from Marcala, La Paz, an area of subtropical moist forests and abundant rivers that have been taken care of and protected by Indigenous communities for many centuries.

Being in the Jilguero landscape with its high mountains, mist, and abundant rivers brought back many memories of my childhood. I grew up hiking with my family in La Tigra’s moist forest during weekends and vacations. This place felt so familiar and comfortable and I felt my body relax, longing for this sensory experience.

There was also a familiar fear that I experienced the next day. We met for a second movement and ritual exchange and heard from Donatila Giron, MURILPAZ leader, that an environmental defender and his son had been killed in Comayagua, only 60 miles from Marcala. It reminded me of the impunity and systematic killing of people during the 70s and 80s when I grew up in Honduras under military dictatorship. Fifty years later, coercion and killing of Indigenous environmental leaders by powerful corporate interests is rampant. Honduras is the second most dangerous country in the Americas for environmental leaders. In 2023, 18 defenders were killed, and in 2016 prominent Lenca Indigenous leader, Berta Caceres, was assassinated for opposing the construction of a dam in the Gualcarque River.

The following day, the water of the Santa Ana River washed away our sadness and fear, reminding us that letting go is necessary to continue moving. Twenty women from Opatoro and nearby towns were on the bank of the river collecting branches, bark, leaves, rocks that they felt attracted to. We initiated a movement exploration connecting with the materials that we collected. Each participant explored ways to move with their favorite one using them as an extension of their chest, head, arms, pelvis or legs. Then, we entered the river with our treasures, we moved with them in this new liquid environment as a group, and then together we let them go and saw how the current of the river carried them away. We let them go, and this action, this ritual, deepened our connection to each other and this river.

These experiences and relationships to fabrics and objects from nature was the source of somatic explorations back in San Francisco with Bay Area performers Ronice Stratton and Kriss Rulifson. We spent time in the studio finding ways to communicate with them. Sometimes they moved us and created a character with a specific energy and soul. Other times, it felt that the objects and fabrics carried an essence or a way to be from many centuries ago; we were understanding who we become when we move with them. One day in the middle of an improvisation, I felt intense rage and a desire to protect my objects, and I found myself rapidly collecting and moving them into a corner. I felt the weight of colonization and the contained anger of many generations who were dispossessed.

Working with the Lenca fabrics in the studio was so delightful, the fabrics were alive, the hands who made them were present. Kriss’s body was moved by the fabric, the fabric folding and extending their joints, sometimes creating tension and sometimes releasing and propelling their body in space. Mystery and playfulness were embedded in the exploration. Ronice weaved objects in her body and dragged rocks attached to her chest, she transformed her foot into a powerful rock shoe and protected her chest with the bark of a palm tree. She became a warrior defending rivers and lands.

In June 2025, we presented the result of our explorations in Honduras and in the studio in San Francisco at ODC Theater. The 40-minute performance included visuals created by Gabriel who documented the journey in Honduras, and a dance-theater section performed by Isadora. Their contributions reflected the environmental destruction by extractive companies and the effects of fast fashion on the traditional Lenca indigenous fabrics and culture.

The performances were exhilarating, giving us an opportunity to share the transformative experiences we had, and the depth of Lenca Indigenous culture. But the current climate of fear around immigration was also present, notably in the absence of key collaborators. We could not process USA tourist visas for MURILPAZ members, and Gabriel was deported when he entered through San Francisco International airport even though he had a current tourist visa. Consequently, they were not part of the performance in San Francisco, and we felt their absence.

Fortunately, we were selected to participate in the 10th edition of the International Community Art Festival in Rotterdam, Holland, March 25-29, and the whole team came together to perform Yelkaram one month ago. Participation in the festival was a professional milestone. We watched inspiring artistic projects, many informed by the Theatre of the Oppressed, created by communities all over the world. We met musicians, actors, filmmakers and dancers. Through workshops we shared and learned the methodology and creative processes behind the performances presented in the festival. We noticed that there were few groups working with somatic approaches, and we felt that the festival allowed us to share the impact that somatic practices have on community arts. This is the second time we brought the Indigenous leaders and artists together in Europe. In November 2024 we came together to present a work in progress of Yelkaram and to hold creative workshops to further develop the piece. We had a two-week residency at Spore Initiative Cultural Center in Berlin. Learn more about our process, collaboration with MURILPAZ, and performances at Spore in this short documentary edited by Gabriel.

The Yelkaram artistic team returned to our respective countries nurtured and with the intention to bring Yelkaram to the Indigenous communities that are the source of the project. In this next and final iteration we desire to incorporate a group of youth in the performance, and present the piece in the area of La Paz. MURILPAZ members want to continue weaving art into their activities to foster artistic expression and bolster the revitalization of Indigenous practices and identity.

In order for a choreographer’s work to come to fruition, that dancemaker needs to do more than just the dancemaking. A dictionary might claim that a choreographer is just someone who creates movement, but choreographers do so much more than make people move.

Every choreographer balances artistic work and arts administration work to support their dancemaking. Someone has to manage the budget, write contracts, rent the studio space, draft grants, pay the dancers, update the website, design the program, contact the press, process ticket sales, coordinate production staff, acquire rights to music, and more.

While there are graduate programs and certificate programs in arts administration, the majority of choreographers don’t have a business degree, and very few choreographers have full-time administrative staff. Most dancemakers are project-based artists, working from gig to gig.

Nadhi Thekkek of Nava Dance Theatre, Lenora Lee of Lenora Lee Dance, and Antoine Hunter of Urban Jazz Dance Company are choreographers who have established dance companies in the Bay Area. All of them bring their artistic values to their administrative practices. Antoine explains, “Artists are business people. There doesn’t need to be a separation between the two. But just like business people, you need to allow yourself to make mistakes. In the same way that you take risks in art, you should take risks in business. In dance, you learn how to fall safely – take that learning to your business practices. How much risk do you want to take? How are you going to fall on the floor softly? Create your Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C, so that you know what you will do if you fall.”

Both artmaking and arts administration require risk-taking. What would we discover if we followed a choreographer’s administrative work, like we follow their artistic work? In addition to watching a choreographer’s premiere or attending their work-in-progress showing, we could ask choreographers to share the administrative path that supports their artmaking. Let’s start with these three choreographers who are doing the work – not just making bodies move, but experimenting with how to move administrative practices forward.

“It’s becoming more common for dancemakers to call themselves producers.
In the beginning, I thought, ‘I’m a dancer and a choreographer’ but I have realized
that I have to be a producer to make dances in the Bay Area.”
– Nadhi Thekkek, Founder and Artistic Director of Nava Dance Theatre

Nadhi Thekkek has always been someone who will figure things out. She explains, “When I decided that I wanted to make dances, everything was grass roots – if you’re doing it yourself, you don’t have to pay yourself! But then you start realizing that you are the go-to person for everyone’s questions. What’s your lighting? What’s your production schedule? Who are your dancers? How do we contact them? How do you fundraise for it? You are your own marketing, development, and finance department.”

Nadhi is a bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer who has trained for over 30 years in the US and in India; however, she first found arts administrative mentorship through bioengineering.

Prior to founding Nava Dance Theatre, Nadhi earned a PhD from Rice University. As part of her bioengineering degree, Nadhi spent six years doing cancer research in the Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging Laboratory, led by professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum. This research lab became excellent training grounds for arts administration because of her professor. In addition to teaching Nadhi how to write effective grants and papers, the experience taught Nadhi about “the kind of administrator that I would want to emulate. . . how to bring different projects together, run parallel projects, and manage a schedule over multiple years while also managing egos and personalities.” Most importantly, Nadhi admired “the integrity of my advisor – how she operated on a day-to-day basis, pausing on anything that even seemed remotely unethical. It was great to see someone who was so clear about what they needed to do and who they wanted to be in their circle of work.” Nadhi strives to lead her dance company with the same integrity that she witnessed.

At some point, a choreographer can’t do everything on their own, and Nadhi now engages a part-time marketing associate (up to 5 hours per week), a part-time program manager (10-15 hours per week), and a project-based tour manager. Nadhi explains, “Most of the dancers that I know in the Bay Area will do it all, but there becomes a natural progression to needing to hire someone. I started out doing everything myself, but our company was growing, and there came a time when I was doing more administrative work than dancing or choreography. When you feel that the work is not as good anymore because you’re always fundraising and always doing admin work, then you know you need to hire someone.”

Nadhi is now years out of grad school, and she has found “mentors, guides, and peers who I learn from constantly. My circle is full of generous artists, administrators, teachers who are building relationships and building programs that serve the community at large, locally, regionally, and nationally. And I work every day to pay their generosity forward.” At the same time, Nadhi’s leadership of Nava Dance Theatre continues to reflect her bioengineering mentor: “How I build relationships with collaborators and teams – it almost looks like we are developing a science experiment.” Also, similar to the Richards-Kortum lab, Nadhi looks for people that understand “not just how to do the work, but why we are doing this work.”

As a result of hiring administrative support, Nadhi is happy to report that “my capacity has grown so much. I’m able to do so much more programmatically. Now I’m not only a choreographer and a producer, I’m also the program director for Nava Dance Theatre’s residency program and presenting series, and I’m able to take on advocacy roles to support our local and regional network of artists and cultural workers. I’m in meetings with funders and asking how their programs can be modified to support artists . . . I believe that administrators can learn from choreographers, but that can only happen when choreographers are in those spaces.”

“Knowing how to work administratively is really the backbone of building a sustainable career as an artist – it’s the way that we have to survive here in the United States.”
– Lenora Lee, Founder and Artistic Director of Lenora Lee Dance

Lenora Lee learned about the business of art from other artists. For the first part of her college degree, Lenora was at City College in San Francisco. Lenora remarks, “I was really drawn towards the arts. At that time, I was taking dance classes in modern, choreography and improvisation, and I was also studying saxophone with Francis Wong.” A renowned saxophonist and composer, Francis was a leading force in the Asian American Movement of the 1970s and 80s. After transferring to UCLA, Lenora pursued a dance degree, and Francis continued to have a strong impact on her trajectory. Lenora explains, “Throughout my college years, knowing Francis and witnessing how he navigated the arts was very influential. I could see his strategy in motion really working – he understood the business side of the field. His artwork and practice were embedded in the community, and he worked in partnership with both community organizations and advocate organizations. ”

After completing her dance degree, Lenora started dancing with a couple Bay Area choreographers who were involved with Asian American Dance Performances (AADP), and Lenora was offered an entry level position as their administrative assistant. Choreographer Nancy Ng was the Administrative Director at that time, and Claudine Naganuma was the Artistic Director. They trained Lenora to become the Managing Director. “They taught me to write grants specifically for dance commissions, dance projects, and AADP showcases. I learned about budgeting, writing contracts, contacting artists and venues, managing productions.” Lenora worked at AADP for two years, eventually leaving to dance in New York.

As Lenora returned to San Francisco, she founded her company Lenora Lee Dance. At the same time, Francis hired Lenora as a Program Manager for Asian Improv aRts (formerly Asian Improv Records), the nonprofit that he co-founded in 1987 with pianist and composer Jon Jang. Through her position at Asian Improv aRts and through Francis’s mentorship, Lenora continued to develop the administrative skills to support artwork grounded in community-based activism and social justice. These skills have enabled Lenora Lee Dance to create large-scale, immersive dance performances, such as Within These Walls, a site-specific dance experience and film at Angel Island Immigration Station as part of a community-wide commemoration of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and A Bridge to Now, a multimedia dance collaboration between U.S. and Peruvian dancers expanding perspectives on immigration in the Americas.

For the last 19 years, Lenora has led Lenora Lee Dance while also working at Asian Improv aRts (AIR), and Francis continues to be a key mentor and collaborator. In 2023, Lenora and the AIR team, along with Francis, officially launched the Asian Improv aRts (AIR) Fellowship program to support community artists in “expanding their artistic practices through one-on-one mentorship, grant writing support, professional development workshops, and production support, all towards bolstering these fellows as they step into becoming leaders of the next generation.”

“For me, the administrative side of dance didn’t come from formal training—
it came from necessity, survival, and vision.”
– Antoine Hunter, Founder and Artistic Director of Urban Jazz Dance Company

Antoine Hunter (aka Purple Fire Crow) was an early adaptor of emerging technology. As a Deaf artist, he utilized these tools to communicate with audiences and artists who weren’t fluent in American Sign Language. Antoine explains, “around 2005, before I even had a formal dance company, I was already building platforms to share my work. I used early tools like MySpace, YouTube, and basic HTML coding to create blogs which were also used to make invitations and newsletters. At that time, newsletters weren’t a common practice, but I found it as a way to connect with people—sharing Deaf culture, dance, and opportunities to attend performances. I also used a BlackBerry (given by the East Bay Center of the Performing Arts) for texting early on to stay connected with dancers, teachers, administrators, and collaborators, even before texting was standard practice. I was self-taught and very tech-driven, which gave me an early foundation in administration. Communication became one of my strongest tools.”

In the early years of Urban Jazz Dance Company, Antoine did everything himself. He says, “access has been one of the biggest ongoing challenges. As a Deaf-led company, not only does Urban Jazz Dance Company face barriers, but we also carry additional responsibility. There is a significant amount of extra work required to coordinate access—securing interpreters, aligning schedules, budgeting for accessibility, and ensuring communication is equitable across all parts of the process. This work is constant and often invisible, but it is essential. There have been times when programs offered multiple resources, but because I needed an interpreter, then I received fewer opportunities. Instead of being supported in five areas, I might only receive support in two. That meant I had to become even more resourceful, teaching myself the remaining skills and finding ways to fill those gaps independently. . . Over time, I learned how to protect myself and the organization better—writing stronger contracts, asking better questions, and thinking more strategically. Asking questions is one of the most important skills in business.”

Antoine now leads Urban Jazz Dance Company in partnership with assistant director Zahna Simon who joined the company as a dancer in 2014. Zahna became rehearsal director in 2015, and she stepped into the Assistant Director role in 2016. Antoine admits that when Zahna first offered to take on administrative responsibilities, “I wouldn’t give her anything! I wouldn’t let anything go. I had taken on everything for so many years because folk always dropped the ball then it’s on me, but Zahna continued to ask.” The process required patience from both of them. Zahna adds, “When I moved back to the Bay Area, I performed in the second year of the Bay Area Deaf Dance Festival, and I was extremely inspired. I let Mx Hunter know, ‘I want to support you. How can I do this? How can I support any further work?’ It was inspiring seeing other Deaf artists in the festival with the same passions as me and I wanted those opportunities offered for other Deaf artists isolated in the world. Mx Hunter gave me just a little bit of work at first, and I kept telling them to give me some more. Give me some more. I can do more. I know that I can. Mx Hunter taught me a lot while trusting my wisdom too.” Antoine and Zahna have now worked together as artists and administrators for over a decade.

Urban Jazz Dance Company reflects the strengths of its two leaders. Zahna focuses more on internal operations and infrastructure, while Antoine focuses more on external relationships, networking, and vision-building. Antoine describes the structure as “a rhythm, taking turns, adjusting and continuing to move forward. . . Administration has become another form of choreography. Administration is not separate from the art—it is how we build space, create opportunity, and sustain the work for the future. “

When we ask choreographers to share their administrative paths and practices, we can more fully appreciate the artists and their artwork. We also find opportunities to learn and challenge our own best practices:

Nadhi learned about administrative skills during her bioengineering graduate program.

1. Where have you witnessed or experienced success outside of the arts ecosystem?
2. How can that learning apply to your administrative practices?

Asian American Dance Performances and Asian Improv aRts were key points of learning for Lenora’s administrative development.

• What organizations align with your artistic values?
• How can you become involved in those organizations – as a volunteer or as an employee – in order to both support their work and to learn new approaches to arts administration?

Antoine’s partnership with Zahna transformed the Urban Jazz Dance Company.

• Who are the people that already know and care about your artistic work?
• What are the circumstances that you need to cultivate in order to give an administrative responsibility to one of these people?

Perhaps these questions aren’t new to you. But just like in the studio, sometimes we need to practice the same moves in order to find a new way forward.

The questions can also continue beyond our own practices. Nadhi, Lenora, and Antoine are all choreographers. By expanding the definition of choreographer, we recognize that these artists are also business people, producers, community organizers, advocates, and more. How would the dance ecosystem change if this expanded definition of choreographer were more widely acknowledged and discussed? How would the relationships change between choreographers and funders, donors, audience members, presenters, researchers, writers?

Perhaps the creation of new work and the latest premiere would no longer be the primary focus if more individuals and institutions valued all of the different aspects of being a choreographer – the business in art and the artistry in arts administration.

Nava Dance Theatre is a bharatanatyam dance company that uses the south Indian dance form to navigate place, identity, and politics through the lens of our lived experience. Their latest work Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies earned Nadhi a 2024 nomination for an Isadora Duncan Award for Best Direction and Choreography. Nadhi serves on the board of the Western Arts Alliance, was on the conference committee for APAP|NYC 2026, and was recently named as a 2025-2026 Dance/USA fellow.

Lenora Lee Dance creates and presents large-scale multimedia, interactive performance works integrating dance, music, video projection, and text that connect various styles of movement and music to culture, history, and human rights issues. Lenora has been an Artist Fellow at the de Young Museum, a Djerassi Resident Artist, a Visiting Scholar at New York University through the Asian/Pacific/American Institute, an Artist in Residence at Dance Mission Theater, and a United States Artists Fellow. Her performance series Convergent Waves was a recipient of NEFA’s National Dance Project Production Grant, with sister productions in Boston, San Francisco, and New York City.

Urban Jazz Dance Company provides opportunities for Deaf and other-abled artists to contribute to the arts and larger society, increasing awareness around Deaf issues via the performing arts. Antoine serves on the board of Disability Rights California and Black Deaf Advocate. His awards include the inaugural Jeanette Lomujo Bremond Award for Humanity and the 2023 Dance Magazine Award. Antoine has been producing the Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival since 2013 and is launching the World Deaf & Disabled Dance Film Festival in November 2026.