Artist Statement

"When I started dancing at the age of 12, I danced because I was the child with asthma that never had the chance to do the outside sports with my friends because I was forced to stay inside of the front office every recess and color through the cold months with the office ladies, so I didn't get bronchitis. I was the child who got bullied for being overweight because I couldn't participate in activities in the same way as the other kids and this led to my mile time coming up to seventeen minutes because I had to walk and I had a parent teacher conference every few months because I was also struggling in P.E. My mother passed away, my dad was an alcoholic, and all of a sudden, I was in the foster care being adopted out and praying all of the feelings from it would go away. Through all of the hard times, I always could turn to music to understand my pain and even though I felt like I had no one to turn to. I always knew I could turn to music and when 12-year-old Sierra saw the colorguard flags twirling a beautiful blue and green with rifles flipping in the air, and a girl executing a calypso into a roll on the floor. I knew that I wanted to become one of those girls and I dedicated hours of my day in rehearsal, practicing at home, watching online videos, and asking any questions that I could think of to my coach. Now I am 25, I have two degrees, I have been dancing for over 12 years, and I still hear from my peers when they hear that I am a dancer, "aren't those girls skinny," or they exclaim, "I was worried when I first came to watch, but you are actually really good." I am plagued by my weight as a definitive factor to my success in my career not only by myself (my worst critic), but also from my loved ones, strangers, colleagues, and every person who hears my name on this planet.

I say all of this to emphasize that my statement in dance is that everyone can be a dancer because every individual is unique and there is never another copy of you. Even though, I was not raised in studios doing competitive dance because of my asthma did not mean I allowed that to slow me down and prevent me from chasing my dreams of studying the art form and sharing it with others. I create work that delves into the overlooked and misunderstood traumas in the world because I feel like too many people are afraid to discuss these topics because they make them feel "uncomfortable", however, by doing this we can cause others to feel shame for going through it preventing them from truly healing from it. As a society, we create stereotypes and put people in a bubble of what we "think" they went through or who we "think" they are and by doing this, individuals will refuse to hear the reality of someone's actual life experience. My works are to shine a light to these life experiences without words needing to be spoken in order to start the conversation by putting the experience in front of the audience's faces and even if they don't understand the intention behind the piece, at least I know they are impacted by the work, and this will leave them thinking on it years later from the time they first experienced it." ~Sierra Marie Jespersen~