Trainee Program 2016
Interview with Olivia Lou Jordan
As part our community outreach & engagement activities this April Company Danzante continues with its 3rd year of our Trainee Program.
This program serves as one of Company Danzante’s Arts Education Initiatives and gives students training at a pre-professional level the opportunity to work with professional artists in their community.
Olivia Lou Jordan, shares some of her personal experience through her creative process as our guest choreographer for this year’s trainee program:
CO/DA. Hi Olivia, how are you doing today?
OLJ: I’m great! Thank you for asking.
CO/DA: What can you tell us about your work with the trainee program this year?
OLJ: It’s a piece pulled from real life feelings and experiences.
CO/DA: Is this a new choreography? How did you come up with the idea for this piece?
OLJ: Yes, It’s a brand new piece. I was first inspired to create a new work based on a
couple of lyrics I heard in a song. “There’s a secret- I can feel it through the floor- cry out in helpless agony of broken memories and things I thought that I would never be.” Those words really sat with me and I couldn’t get them out of my head- it inspired me to create the movement. Then I randomly heard a new song called “Rise up” by Andra Day and I just knew I wanted to use it for this particular piece. I incorporated white flower petals in the piece to represent memories and people that you know you have to let go of in order to move on in your life and survive the pain- in order to “Rise Up”.
CO/DA: What else can you tell us about your experience in participating as a choreographer with Company Danzante’s Trainee Program? How does this translate into your own experience as a creative artist?
OLJ: It was a wonderful and challenging experience. As a choreographer its always a challenge that what your own body can create doesn’t always translate to another dancers body- especially when they are young kids. I also knew going into it that my idea was a little mature for the age of the trainees-So I wanted to create it in a way that could be translated to all ages. Everyone experiences pain, even kids, so when I spoke with the trainees about expressing themselves through the movement in a “human way”- It was fun to try and create ideas and analogies that they could relate to.
