Growing up as a dancer taught me strength, resilience, and how to be graceful. Dance was a medium for self-expression, exercise, and my happy place, but being disabled and queer caused me to feel like an outsider, even though no one else knew how I felt. I always dealt with pain, injuries, and insecurity, but I could never let go of the feeling that dance was an integral part of my life. Once I aged out of my dance studio and moved to college, the lack of practice caught up to me, and my body deteriorated as the true force of my disability made itself known. Now, I have fully accepted that I will never be able to return to the dancer I was in my youth, but part of me continues to yearn for my time on the stage. As my body, soul, and identity have shifted over the years, I wish I could have been myself in and out of dance.

“Alors on Danse” reminisces on dance years through images of recitals from ages 11-18 when I felt most out-of-place. In order to reconnect and heal my inner dancer, I choreographed and photographed a dance that expresses who I am now, while breaking out of the rigid style of dances I grew up with. Using cyanotypes, I connect to identifying as a boy and the melancholy I experienced before understanding that part of me. The collages help organize the years in my life, from young and energetic to in pain and nostalgic. My inner thoughts are scattered throughout the piece to visualize that not everything is always as it seems on the outside.