Meet the Dancers

Mad Dog: Dance allowed me a space to fit in, where it didnt even matter if I had the coolest clothes or anything. And so, I liked that dance allowed me the space to communicate and build healthy, sustainable relationships with folks regardless of where they from, where they was at. My name is Christopher Mad Dog Thomas. I'm the program manager and artistic director for Kumba Lynx Performance Ensemble, and I am a member of the Creation Footwork Battle Clique.

When I decided that I was going to dance for real was when my friend Fred had passed away. He was like a brother to me and I just saw him the day before. And he, a blood clot, ruptured.

I was like 19. I was 19 about to be 20. So it was like 2005. It's like 2004, 2005. And yeah, I was just going through a rough time, I was a bricklayer and I worked at this place called Edward Don & Company. I moved my family into a little two bedroom apartment, basement apartment. It was about seven or eight of us in there. And, you know, that's kind of what was, like, motivating me to do something that I love doing versus just working. Even though I liked the money, it was something missing, didn't love it.

And then Fred died. And so I was outside listening to a gospel song called Yes by Shekinah Glory. And I was just dancing because I was sad. And some kids saw me and said, “Hey, you should start a dance group.” And so I was like, all right. And at this point I've been through a lot of ups and downs athletically and not being able to go to school and I always put dance on as the last thing that I did. I always did it, but I didn't commit real time to it. But when some kids said you should start a dance group, it kind of motivated me to take it fully serious and I'm going to see where it go. And so I started a group called Not Enough with some kids at Cooper Park, and that's how I kind of really got going. Then everything kind of just switched. I wanted to work less and dance more. I was always around dancing. I danced since I was like eight years old. And so I developed a passion for dance always but I never took dancing serious until the kids bumped into me.

It allowed me to communicate with my peers. So especially when you in the hood, you mask up. So you mask up with materialistic things, but when you can't mask with the material things, you are the one that's picked on, right? So dance allowed me a space to fit in where it didn't even matter if I had the coolest clothes or anything.

And so I liked that dance allowed me the space to communicate and build healthy, sustainable relationships with folks regardless of where they from, where they was at. I think that's what I liked most about dancing.

Simone Stevens: My name is Simone Stevens and I am in my third year as a company artist with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

My mom introduced me to dance when I was about three years old. She was taking dance classes and I really wanted to imitate my mom. So I went was doing those classes. And then as I got older, different mentors showed me that there is a career in dance. I didn't know that that was really an option, but probably it feels like it was late but things work out how they're supposed to. It was my junior year of high school that I was looking at where I wanted to go to school and what I maybe wanted to study in that just kind of kickstarted me looking more seriously into if this was a career that I actually wanted than what that would look like, what I might have to shift in my training, what I might have to research a little bit more on how I wanted a career to line up for myself.

Even then, I wasn't aware of contemporary dance. And so I wanted to be a dancer in Alvin Ailey or something of that regard. And that's not to say that that is not something I admire or anything anymore, but I think even my scope back then of what was possible was pretty narrow and pretty limited.

As far as range, I really knew New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater and Alvin Ailey. And those were my only gauges of what was possible in the dance world.

My senior, that year, is from Chicago and she showed me Hubbard Street for the first time and she was just like, oh my goodness, I really think you should look at this company. And I was like, didn't even know people danced in Chicago, like, I didnt know that was a thing.

Jonathan Pacheco: The Ensemble Espanol allowed me to have a fufilling career and allowed me to see the different possibilities that were there for me. My name is Jonathan Pacheco and I am currently a company dancer with the Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater.

I first began as an actor in musical theater around the age of 13, 12. I think many people started similar as me in church performing there, singing there. And then fast forward a few years, I did musical theater for some time here in Chicago, some regional community centers theater there. And then fast forward, I attended Northeastern Illinois University and my theater teacher at the time knew that the Ensemble Espanol was in residence at the university, and she knew I loved to dance, knew that I wanted to perform, and was thinking about what avenues I could take to have a career in the performing arts. And she knew that the Ensemble Espanol being in residence at Northeastern offered classes for college credit. So she was like, “Hey Jonathan, you should check it out. Check out a class. Take a class, you'll get college credit for it. See if you like it and see what happens.” So I began taking classes there with our current artistic director, Ima Suarez Ruiz, began in Spanish Dance 101 with her, did that for a couple of years and then eventually fell in love with the art form of Spanish dance and eventually auditioned into the company and made it in. And now I am entering my ninth season with them.

I think I was more curious about what the possibilities were. I knew I wanted to be a performer. I did not know how to make that dream into a reality. And I think the Ensemble Espanol, what it did for me was create that path for me of allowing me, someone that's born and raised in Chicago, a Latino that did not have a lot of mentors, I would say, or people to look up to when it came to a career in the performing arts. I didn't have that. So coming to the Ensemble Espanol, and I'll also add that I started dancing relatively at an older age than many professional dancers do. The Ensemble Espanol allowed me, in my specific circumstances, to still have a fulfilling career and allowed me to see the different possibilities that were there for me.

Devika Dhir: I just had this, like, feeling of urgnecy. Anytime I would watch a dance performance, I would love it, but I would also feel kind of unsettled like "hmmm I want to be doing that". My name is Devika Dhir and I am a freelance dancer, I dance with a few organizations. I started learning classical Indian dance when I was four years old. My mother got me and my sister into dance classes and we studied that kind of on and off throughout our childhood. We moved around a lot as kids, so we didn't have one consistent teacher, which is kind of unusual for a classical dancer. Around the time that we started high school, we moved to a small town in Georgia and there just weren't teachers around. So we stopped dancing for at least 10 years. And it wasn't until I moved to Chicago in 2012 when I decided that I wanted to return to dance as an adult. So I sought out a dance studio, started taking classes again. After a few years I met another dancer, an Indian classical dancer at a networking event, and we kept in touch for a couple more years and she reached out at one point saying that she was putting together this Indian classical dance production and asked if I would like to audition.

The audition just consisted of showing up to a rehearsal and dancing with everyone else who was there. And after that she was like, "yep, you're in". We'll do this production together. At the time I was dancing with another studio in the city and after a few months of preparing for this production, I ended up leaving that studio and joining this other studio where the woman that I had met was the artistic director. So that was in 2016. And from that point on, I have been dancing professionally with Kalapriya and with other dance organizations for other dance styles that I do. And yeah, the thing that brought me back to dance though was I just had this feeling of urgency. Anytime I would watch a dance performance, I would love it, but I would also feel kind of unsettled. I want to be doing that. So it was always something in the back of my mind that I wanted to get back to and do it a serious way.

Lyn Cole: Dance has been a part of my being. I didn't go the instrument way because of other life things, but I went the dance way. My name is Lynn Cole and I am a studio owner, teacher, choreographer, computer person, jack of all traits type of person.

I got into dance at age nine because I was sick for a year and my mom's boss told her that if she put me in dance I would get better. And so I started dancing and I liked it, and then I started choreography. I started choreographing my own numbers. I was hooked from there.

My father was a blues musician. He wasn't a part of my life, but I got that part of him and he was talented where he could pick up an instrument and play it. And I knew that from a little kid. And when him and my mom were together, he would practice in the basement and I would be down there singing the blues. I was two and they split up when I was three, so I was able to do my thing at two and once he left, he left albums and I would listen to those albums, dance my little heart out, sing my little heart out to the albums, and it is just music and dance has been a part of my being. I didn't go the instrument way because of other life things, but I went the dance way.

When I was 13, I moved from one school to the other because my mom wanted to see recitals and the first school didn't have recitals and the new teacher I had was instrumental in breaking this relationship that I had with how I was being treated and how I should be treated. And so she'd started treating me very well and she saw something in me. And I did that all through high school.

When I got to college, I went to University of Illinois at Chicago. I almost minored in dance but I still maintained a relationship with a dance studio. And so I took classes outside of going to college. And so I stayed in the dance world because I was happiest there. And once I graduated from college, I went into the work world, but I still danced and I still choreographed. On the drive to work and back I would choreograph all the way there, all the way back. I just would choreograph while I was driving, choreograph and choreograph. But I didn't do any performing except when the studio performed. So it was about seven years of me being in the working world and just dancing on the side. Then I had some tragedies in my life and I cut back on dance for, like, four years and I got back in and I was offered a job and I stayed with that job for 19 years. And then when that became something that was not feeding my soul, I started my own dance studio and that's how I am here now today.

Silvita Diaz Brown: I am Silvita Diaz Brown, choreographer dancer, and artistic director of Sildance/Acrodanza.

When I was about 12 years old, and, uh, I was actually, I wanted to be some sort of performer. I didn't know what kind, but I thought I wanted to be an actress. So I asked my dad to take me to this conservatory program in Puebla, Mexico where I grew up and through the conservatory program they have dance lessons besides acting and other things. And honestly, the class that I enjoyed the most was dancing. And there was another class with worth and movement. And the movement part was always the most interesting part to me. So right there, the ballet teacher I was taking classes with, she was like, well, it seems like you really love it and you have ability, so you should just take it more intensely, more seriously if you want to. There is a school, there was the dance school above the Conservatory Theater program, and so I went and asked the director of the school and I was always very independent since I was a kid. So they did some testing and he was like, yeah, and they gave me a scholarship, have a scholarship to start the training everyday, as a kid. But it was like, I was, like, 12. I wasn't super young, but I was like, yeah, I want to do this.