Artist Interviews - Allison MacLaury
How a choreographer and small business owner makes her life work
Hello everyone! Welcome back to another Artist Interview. Today I’m so excited to feature my lovely friend, Allison MacLaury.
Allison and I go way back. In fact, I was friends with her husband before I was friends with her. Then she stole me as a friend, and the rest is history! She is one of the most creative people I know, and has so many good insights about art and life ahead. Thank you so much for chatting with me Allison, and read on for our conversation.
Note: this interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Thank you so much for chatting with me. We’ll start out simple here. What is your job?
I am self-employed. I am the founder and current sole employee of Allison MacLaury Performing Arts. That means that I do whatever I want, basically. Right now, I am teaching dance and acting to private students in 5th grade to adults, and taking adult clients for my creativity coaching service, Muse Magic. These one-on-one services are my focus for now. Eventually, I will be teaching classes and working on shows, which is something I've been doing for a long time. But now I'll be doing it as myself and paying myself which is great.
Do you teach specific styles of dance? I know you have kind of a broad background, so when you teach, do you focus on anything in particular?
Yes. I pretty much teach everything except ballroom and hip hop, because I don't have experience in those. But the kind of crazy thing about being a choreographer for theater is that sometimes you have to do it anyway. It'd be like, oh, there is a hip-hop number in the show. And you're the choreographer, so there you go! And there's been shows where there's a waltz or there's a tango, but I'm not teaching professional waltz or tango. I would not call myself a hip-hop dancer. You do what you got to do when you're the person choreographing it. I teach ballet and have been teaching ballet since I was 15 years old, if you count assisting. Ballet is what I know how to teach the most. I also teach jazz, mostly musical theatre type jazz. And recently, I have been teaching a lot of tap, which has been really fun. And I by no means would call myself an advanced tapper. But it's really been great to teach beginner tap. It's a lot of fun. As I said, like, when you're a choreographer, you do what you have to do. So there have been times where I've had to choreograph people with a lot of tap experience, and you go in and you go, Okay, what are your favorite tap moves? and I'll use my choreography skills to make it look polished.
I like tap because you're allowed to take up space and you get to be loud. I didn't get a lot of tap experience growing up; I did baby three- to five-year-old tap. It's so much less structured than ballet is. I love ballet too, but with tapping, you're supposed to be relaxed in your body. I tell my kids all the time: shake your foot, shake your ankle, let your foot like not be tense at all, bend your knees, let your upper body move the way that you feel like it should and like, be loud. I want them to pay attention to the rhythm and have fun. It's very cathartic. You're getting out a lot of stress when you get to be so percussive like that. That’s why I love it.
This is a great segue. It sounds like you've been dancing your whole life. Were you put into dance? Or was it something you had an expressed interest in doing?
I got put into classes. I was three years old and really enjoyed it. I remember specifically really liking the creative drama and story movement. There was a song they would use about hiding from a troll in a cave and it was so much fun. Great teachers come up with little cute things for you to do to learn. And I’ve remembered the things I loved the most and gone on to use them when teaching my kids. For pointing and flexing, you do ‘Cinderella feet’ and ‘Ugly Stepsister feet,’ and do lots of imaginative stuff. As a kid, I really liked anything that combined acting and dance. I loved dance when I was little, and then I got to second or third grade. I think a lot of people can relate to this: I went through a phase where I just absolutely did not want to put on the tights. I was so sensory averse and exhausted; I didn’t want to wear the tights anymore. Like, “I'm not going to ballet class because I'm not putting on those freaking tights.” So, I took one year off when I was eight. And I did Baton that year and got to march in a parade. I was still doing dance; I just wasn't doing ballet. Then the next year I went back because I missed performing on a stage. By that point, we were going to a studio that was bigger and more accomplished, and I was performing in The Nutcracker every year. We did a lot of storybook based ballets and classics. Year round, I was going to ballet five, six days a week. Once I came back, I basically didn't stop. Then as I got older, I evolved into, How do I find a way to love this? How do I do this for me and not for achievement, or somebody else telling me what to do anymore? Also as I got older, I started doing more theatre. I started acting again. When I was very little, I was in musicals at church, but as I got more serious about ballet in middle school, there was less time for me to be in plays and musicals. I reconnected with acting in high school and appreciated that the atmosphere was much less stressful than ballet. With all of my performing background, I decided to pursue theatre education, in effect training to be a theatre teacher for my college degree. I was going back and forth if I wanted to do more dance, but I did end up going towards theatre. I've gotten a lot of experience in both throughout my life.
It sounds like you were heavily focused on ballet, other than that interlude with baton. Did you just take ballet year-round, or were there other classes or other styles of dance?
Once you went to high school, the dance company required you to take more classes as part of your membership. This was not an adult company, this was just a youth company, but more responsibility comes when you're a company member versus being a student. Being part of the company was like being at a conservatory where they required certain classes to maintain your status. They required Jazz at that point, so I did take more of that in high school. Every summer we had a two-week intensive that was mandatory. We had guest teachers come and teach. I took classes in hip hop, jazz, modern, contemporary, and we had a teacher come and do African dance with us. That was actually one of my favorite things to do because it's similar to tap, right? Because it's so percussive, and it's so much about the beat rather than the ballet type musicality of it. African dance is not strict and it’s expressive. You’re using your whole body and releasing through it. I really loved the exposure to different types of dance. Now that I'm looking back and thinking about it, I didn’t have a lot of ‘official’ jazz training. That was something I sought after for myself. I learned how to teach and learned how to choreograph jazz on my own.
What do you like most about dancing? I'm assuming there's something that kept drawing you back.
For me, it has to be about expression. If it is not about expression, then I won't do it. I think that was why I didn't want to pursue a professional career in ballet. Because you have to do a lot of training, you have to do some stuff that's boring. And you have to do stuff because it's the right way to hold your body. We don't dance to music with words in ballet class. I trained in a classical ballet program, and I loved parts of it. I liked being in The Nutcracker, I liked telling the story. I liked when I got to do more contemporary ballet. Those were things that lit me up. So if it's just going to be about repetitions of something over and over again to train my body, I have to find a way to make it expressive or fun, or I'm not going to do it. I think that's a lot of why I've dealt with overuse injuries, like the tendinitis I get in my shoulder because I don't like doing the cross-training. I just want to do the fun parts. I've had to get better about that in the last couple of years. Because of that, I am really intentional about music that I pick to teach to and to choreograph to. It should feel like you're connecting with the music on a personal and emotional level for it to be valuable in my opinion. I'm not somebody who thinks of myself as an athlete when I’m dancing. I think of myself as an artist first.
Ok, so you've been taking dance since as long as you can remember, you're a company member now. I'm guessing around high school you’re looking ahead to college. You mentioned you did theater and music education. Was there a point when you knew when you wanted to study that?
I like being in charge. Because of that, I was really drawn to teaching. This is going to sound funny, but I like telling people what to do. Not in a ‘power trip’ way. I mean that I really love when I get to share something I am excited about. It’s so good for me to work with someone else and see them succeed and grow. That's what I like about teaching and being in charge. I knew I really enjoyed that. And I like learning and all sorts of classroom environments. I was drawn to something that would allow me to stay in that. I loved being in theatre, and I was drawn to try directing and choreographing.
Also, if you're majoring in dance education, there's not a ton of places to do that. There's not many places to major in theatre education, either. Normally, if you’re pursuing a career in teaching dance, you major in dance and perform. As I said before, that wasn’t something I was interested in. I wanted to try the more creative side of dance, I wanted to make my own things, I wanted to tell my own stories. I wanted to show other people how to be expressive, so directing and choreography definitely fell into that. I consider them facets of teaching as well. I enjoy storytelling and it was exciting for me to think about what shows I would put together. So that's why I chose to major in theatre education. I did consider majoring just in theatre as a performer as well, I considered going more towards the actor-dancer route for a little bit. What really made me want to follow the education route was this teacher that I had my junior and senior year of high school.
I moved when I was 16. Before, I was in a really big school district outside of Atlanta that has a really, really great performing arts program. The dance company I was in was there, and then I moved when I was 16 to South Georgia, which was pretty much the opposite of that. I was at a private school, and I went from being at a school where I was one of 900 in my grade to being one of 40. It was not an arts school; it was a much more sports and academic school. There weren’t a ton of opportunities for me there, but I did have a really great teacher. Her name is Amy Bishop, and she taught music and theatre. We did one-act plays and did little chorus performances. She was a really great, kind teacher. We got to talking, almost at the end of the first semester of my senior year about, “Well, where do you want to go for college?” I had been looking at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) for their Performing Arts major, which is acting focused. I had auditioned and I had gotten a scholarship, so I was strongly considering going there. But Mrs. Bishop said, “Oh, well, have you considered Columbus State?” And I was like, “What’s that?” Truly, I had no idea that there was this state university that had an entire arts campus, so it's like you're at a conservatory, but for state school tuition. In Georgia, we had Hope Scholarship, which meant that if you had a certain GPA and went to a state school, your tuition was basically covered. Obviously, it would be way more affordable for me to go there than it would be to go to SCAD, which is a private school. I was like, How does this exist? I've never heard of this. Mrs. Bishop had lived in that area for a long time, and she had been really active with the Springer Opera House, which is the State Theater of Georgia. I was like, Oh my God, how did I not know this?! What have I been doing? But she really helped me prepare what I should audition with, and she called the department and got a meeting for me, because I had missed the deadline by that point. I was able to apply and I got accepted to the Honors Program. It seemed like a pretty clear-cut choice for me to go to Columbus State because of the price, and because they have a theatre education major there. I was excited because I didn’t have to pick between studying general theatre or teaching. I'm very grateful for her guidance in telling me that this place existed in the first place, because I don't know where I would have ended up otherwise.
It's so interesting because both you and Sam had very pivotal experiences with teachers. Like, oh, okay, I can actually make a go at this. That's a really great model of being at a state school, but having a campus with an arts focus. You're self-selecting in a way. It's like if you don't want to do this, don't come.
Yeah, absolutely, it's very unique. I know of nowhere else that has a program like that, and it started out as a state college, so it was a lot smaller. Then it got even bigger in the 90s and 2000s. And they ended up opening this beautiful arts campus with state-of-the-art theaters and dorms. I was immersed in it. They also have a really prestigious music school and international students come to major in music there. I would relate it to what I know about Boston Conservatory here, although that's a much more prestigious name and pricier school. It's very cool to me that I got the experience I did while saving money. I didn't have to do a conservatory program where I was only getting the art stuff. I was getting a normal Bachelor of Science in Education degree there.
Can you talk about your program a little bit? Because you got accepted into this specific program, I'm assuming there was a certain track that you had to follow?
With the theatre education track, you have your core theatre classes that all the theatre majors take. These are variations of acting, theatre design, script analysis, theatre history, those type of courses. Then you need your theatre education specific courses. In my case, that was more design courses, and several different iterations and levels of theatre teaching. I took a class where we learned about children's theatre and read a lot of plays and learned about the history. Then there was a course that was called Creative Dramatics that was geared towards teaching early elementary students. We also had a residency where we were sent to an elementary school in the area with a teaching partner, and we'd teach for a couple of weeks. As you kept progressing, there was a class where you designed an entire curriculum, mostly geared towards the high school and middle school level. I did an assignment within that where we acted in a Christmas play for local elementary school kids. I also choreographed some of that show as one of my additional assignments. It was a really a unique course variety that I got for my major. Then I did an entire semester of student teaching, which was fantastic. I owe so much of who I am to that semester. In addition to that, we had the general teaching education classes with the main campus. Those included a little bit of child psychology, differentiating learning styles, integrating technology, all of that stuff. It was a lot. I had a good variety of stuff that I was taking for those four years.
So it sounds like you took classes not only for young children, but also for high schoolers as well. From knowing you personally, I know you've taught a lot around the middle school age. Was that a choice you made in college? Or was that how the cookie crumbles? And you just realized, Oh, I like teaching this age group?
I think I've taught pretty much every age group at this point. I have taught kindergartners and people in their 70s. That is not what I thought would happen when I was in college. Even when I went into my Master's degree directly after college. I decided to continue studying theatre education, and went to Emerson in Boston. I remember the first day of orientation, our professor did an exercise where it was like, Raise your hand, if you want to teach high school! Raise your hand, if you want to teach early elementary! Raise your hand, if you want to teach adults! Raise your hand if you want to teach middle school! And I said ‘absolutely not’ to everything except high school. I was like, I'm only going to teach high school. I'm not going to teach other things. As far as classroom teaching that's what I thought I was going to do at that point. I had taught at dance studios, I had taught ballet to middle schoolers, but in the context of what school classroom are you going to be in? I was convinced I was going to teach high school. I did my student teaching at a high school for a semester and I had done a couple of musicals with high schoolers, and I really, really liked it.
Then two weeks into living in Boston, I was interviewing for teaching gigs to get more work experience outside of school. And I got hired to choreograph at a middle school. And this person, Summar, has become one of my best friends. Despite my hesitation, I was immediately choreographing middle schoolers. It was great. I loved it. It was so much fun. And I had a terrible experience in middle school, I think most people did. I think we associate how bad middle school was with what it would be like to teach middle school, and those are two very different things. I also think a lot of us had some not-so-great teachers in middle school, too. I had some good ones, but I also had some that I would blame for a lot of my ongoing trauma as well. I was not expecting to like teaching middle school. Soon after that, I started teaching creative drama and acting after school classes at several elementary schools. And then I did a summer program where for six weeks, I was choreographing a show for elementary school students and teaching musical theatre dance. The Universe said, “Nah, you're not only teaching high school, you're going to teach everyone.” It all unfurled very differently than I expected it to. I have taught workshops for college students, I've taught some classes with adults and choreographed professional productions, I've taught all over. You have to be able to meet people where they’re at and get silly with people. That's just as important for five-year-olds as it is for the 50-year-olds. If you're not going to get silly and let it be fun, then it won’t be worth it. I will say, kindergarteners are some of my favorite kids to teach. I taught six-year-old ballet at a studio for several years, and six-year-olds are just like some of the best humans in the world. They just want to tell you ‘You’re pretty’ and hug you. There's positives about every age group, so it's been cool to kind of chameleon through all of them.
The other thing that I noticed is that there's a level of prestige attached to teaching high school. If you're teaching college, people consider college professors to be on par with professional adult theatre. I have noticed that the majority of people who ended up being professors come from professional acting and directing and not from teaching. A lot of professors, especially in the arts, do not know how to plan lessons and they don't know how to compassionately, and safely, teach young people. Even when you're 19, you're still a young person, your brain has not fully developed yet. I wish that there was more respect given to people who teach youth because it requires a lot of skill. Middle school teachers who love it and do it well, especially theatre teachers and music teachers, are salt of the earth humans. They have to teach at an advanced enough level so that the end result isn’t just kids being cute. They also have to deal with attitudes and puberty. They have to be really emotionally intelligent, and a safe person for these kids. And adapt to their attention spans! It's wild. People will judge you if you have not taught high school or adults. And that's wrong. That's just backwards, you know what I mean?
Can you expand a bit more on what you mean by compassionately and safely teach kids?
As someone who got an ADHD diagnosis six months ago as a full-grown adult, I only got tested because my students with ADHD had kindly asked me if I had ADHD. I was someone who was a ‘good student,’ was high achieving, got awards, all of that stuff. I can hack it at school, which is designed for neurotypical people. The way the school system has historically been designed is to breed discipline and obedience, that's why it rewards memorization. It rewards conformity, and those are very neurotypical and capitalist, white supremacist ideals. Continuing to teach people as if they can sit still and retain everything is harmful. And not even productive. If you're teaching as if everybody in the room has neurodivergent traits of some sort, people are going to be a lot happier. You're going to get different perspectives that you would not get before. You're going to get creative ideas. You're going to have people who feel comfortable sharing and problem solving in different ways. It's so silly to me that even in work environments people stand there and lecture or read off the PowerPoint that they've created and expect the adults to just sit there. You'll notice people just get on their phones now. How are you going to expect a kid to not do that when you're doing that, and you're a grown adult? When you take discipline and blind obedience out of the picture as the values that you're trying to instill in people, it flips the script, and it totally flips what's possible.
A bit of a left turn here. Was your Study Abroad program through your college? Did you take any theater classes while you were in Florence? Because it must have been super fun to study theatre through an Italian lens.
One of the things that was very cool about my college experience was that the University has a very robust study abroad program and International School. They have campuses all over the world. The trip offerings rotate, and they have lots of different trips by major and department. You want to jump on it when there's one that comes up that you're really interested in, because it may not be offered again. But there were always different opportunities. Between my sophomore year and my junior year, I went to Florence for a little over a month for what we called ‘Maymester.’ It was a theatre department trip, so the professor who went with us was my directing professor. Her name is Kate Musgrove, and she was awesome. I learned so much from her and had really great experiences in her classes, so it was really cool to go on a trip with her. Several of my really good friends also went. We had such a level of independence there because we were living in apartments in groups of four all over the city. It really felt like we were living there and going to college. I took theatre history while I was there, and I also took English with two English professors who came on the trip as well. I mostly studied theatre history of the Italian Renaissance. And we studied Commedia Dell'Arte a lot, which was so much fun, and then a little bit of opera. We studied historical stuff about the Roman Empire, too. And in English, we did Dante's Inferno, and Boccaccio, and literature of that era. We had a really diverse course load in such a short amount of time. In addition to that, we had some Italian classes. I wish we had had those for the full month because they were great. It was amazing how much we learned in that period of time to like when you're immersed in the language.
Can you please tell the Cinzia story?
The first day we were there, obviously we're all jet lagged, and we’re going to this Italian class at eight in the morning. And this very stylish woman comes prancing in her heels and her embroidered skinny jeans and rhinestone top and she's just so chic. So she comes striding in and looks at my classmate and goes, “Mi chiamo Cinzia. Ti chiami?” and this girl had no idea what was going on, so she said Cinzia. This woman said, “No, no mi chiamo Cinzia. Ti chiami?” and my classmate said Cinzia again. It just continued like that probably four or five times with the student saying her name is Cinzia. And then finally the teacher said in English, “Okay, my name is Cinzia Pace. Cinzia is like Cynthia, Pace means peace.” She did a peace sign while saying this, and was just so adorable, so engaging, so fun. Once we got over how tired we were, we were up and playing games and conversing in Italian basically immediately. This was like over 10 years ago, so you have to remember, we did not have smartphones with us. I did not have an app helping me translate stuff. I had one little book that I had in my purse, and we were living on a prayer. But Cinzia was a good adult teacher because she was really engaging. I'll never forget those Italian classes.
I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Spanish was actually one of the majors I considered. I had really great experiences in Spanish class. I think the reason for that is how creative language is. When you're teaching a language, you have to teach as if the students are totally brand new to the material. So it's not that different from teaching a three or four or five year old; you're going to break it down, you're going make it fun and memorable. You have to differentiate learning styles because people don't know what the words mean. You’re doing creative projects, and you've got pictures up and you're role playing and doing little skits and using music. I loved Spanish. That’s something that I could have seen myself teaching because teaching theatre is very similar to teaching a language. It's great to get to be a little kid again, no matter what age you are.
What was the decision process like around deciding to come up North and go to Emerson? When did you decide, Oh, I'm going to keep going versus I'm going to enter the workforce?
I got dumped before my senior year by a guy I had been dating for about sixth months. Before that relationship, I had been with another guy for three years. I literally met him the day I moved into college. He was a theatre education major, and a year ahead of me, which meant that with him, I had somebody still telling me what to do. I went from living at home as a teenager to being in a really committed relationship that I stayed in for three years. I don’t think I really had my own identity, I was basing all my decisions off of what he would do. After we broke up and I jumped straight into the second relationship, I was still thinking in terms of what everyone else I knew was doing and where my boyfriend would be living. In my mind, I thought: I am going to either stay in this city, Columbus, or I'm going to move back to the Atlanta area. And I'm going to get a job at one of those big high schools with the big theatre departments, and maybe the big dance departments so I can teach both. And I will stay there forever. And that seemed good to me then. But then I got dumped. Then all I could think was, Why did I ever want to stay? And I don't mean anything against people who have decided to stay in Georgia - but it wasn't right for me. I wanted to learn more and see more, and I wanted to live on my own. One of the places I learned about in my theatre education history classes was Emerson, because they have a historic theatre education program. It's one of the only places in the country that you can go to get a Master's Degree in theatre education. I decided at the beginning of my senior year of college to apply to Emerson's program, I looked at a couple of other places like NYU, but Emerson made the most sense. I had never been to Boston, so I said Why not? When I got up here, I still thought I was going to teach high school. I thought, I'll either stay up here and get a high school job or I'll move back and get a high school job. But pretty quickly, I realized I can make a living doing freelance theatre and choreography jobs. I didn't even know that was a possibility because in Georgia, they did not pay well or not at all for those positions. To my knowledge, they did not pay contractors to come into schools and choreograph. That was something I was volunteering to do when I was in college. I didn't know I could even work in schools and not be a classroom teacher. We didn't really have big children's theatre programs in Georgia, and I was doing dance as a teenager, as I said, I wasn't doing theatre outside of school. So I didn't know I could make an entire living doing this. And I was like, Oh, I like this. I decided to pursue more of the applied theatre and professional, regional, and community-based theatre opportunities through my master's program. I really just took a lot of courses that called to me; we didn't have a ton of restrictions on what to take. Especially since I didn't have to spend my time doing what the certification track people were doing, which was learning how to write lesson plans. I took a really cool class where I learned about devising theatre where you're writing a script together with a group, and then I took another design class and qualitative research and lots of theatre history like Theatre of the Oppressed that I didn't even know existed before. That was what pushed my trajectory into staying in Boston and making my own path. Rather than going to a random high school where there’s an open position, this fits me a lot more. I'm not a nine to five person. I'm not neurotypical. I have to be creative. So this worked out for me.
To clarify, do you have a Master’s in Education?
I have a Master of Arts. My Bachelor's Degree is a Bachelor of Science in Education, in Theatre Education. And my Master's is a Master of Arts in Theatre Education, and my focus was called Theatre in Community when I was there, but I don't know if it's changed since then.
Now we get to the fun questions! What do you like most and least about your job.
I love pretty much everything about what I do now in terms of teaching and choreographing and directing. Sometimes I do perform too, and I love doing that. What has been difficult for me is administrative tasks: all of the stuff that I have to do now myself because I have my own company. I'm the only employee at the moment. But I did have administrative experience in my previous job when I was Director of Education at a large arts nonprofit. I have done admin before. It's just now it's all me doing things for my own small company. What I struggled with, before this career shift was feeling like I had to constantly be creating even when I wasn't feeling ready. At the arts nonprofit, we had to adhere to really strict schedules. I would have to block certain scenes or choreograph on certain days and there was no flexibility. Sometimes I'd be working on three shows at once, so I might be with third graders, and then teach 11th graders. It was a lot of switching in my brain and I started to get really burnt out on having to just produce art endlessly. And sometimes it wasn't even shows that I liked, and I had to do them. This career change was a very intentional shift away from working on projects that I don't feel connected to. I now only take on projects that I'm passionate about. The font of creativity is not constantly dried up. The other thing, the biggest con I would say, is the money and the social expectations, both the spoken and unspoken norms of this industry.
How so?
As in, people often believe that if you're an artist, then that can't be your only career, unless you're a classroom teacher, or have a title at a nonprofit. If you're not doing one of those, if you're just doing here and there jobs, you have to have another job, because you're not going to be making money doing those things, or you have to be working every day of the week forever. I know people who didn't have days off for two months straight. Like, they worked every day. And I'm not saying like checked an email, I'm saying, they ran a rehearsal, or taught a class every single day for two months. That will kill me if I do it, so I push against that. I'm not into the idea that if you're doing what you love, then you have to accept whatever is available, that you have to understand the circumstances of the company, that we wish we could pay a lot of people more, but this is standard for the industry. And oh, well, hopefully in a couple of years, we can reevaluate this or like we have to get more donations, if we're going to pay you more. That is manipulative, and it is perpetuating a standard that is really harmful and it needs to stop. I don’t buy into that. I will pay myself a salary with my company. And when I hire people, I will be paying them as much as I can, or I won't hire them. I will do everything myself if I can't pay to hire someone for what they deserve. There was a lot of this - not knowing what to ask for when somebody offers you a gig. You then accept whatever they give you because, particularly in choreographing, there's not that many choreographers out there. Especially in this area, I don't have a lot of friends that I can compare notes with. I had no idea what I was supposed to be getting paid. Then at some point, I found out what other people were getting paid. Companies should have told me how much they could pay and not shrugged saying, oh, well, she didn't ask for more so we're not going to offer. That's messed up. I've gotten smarter about this. As a business owner now, there's this idea that you're supposed to work nonstop. Because you're the owner. And I've seen that with role models in my life, and it's not healthy. I think you can be successful without working yourself to death.
Plain and simple, it's not worth it to me to be making more money, if that's what that entails. However, I think it's a false logic that society has; if you don't work more, you'll make less money. We’ve seen that isn’t true – people work three jobs, and they're not making enough to pay rent. Working harder does not mean you're making more money. I'm not a billionaire so I don't know, but I highly doubt billionaires are working every single day for 12 hours. I think they're taking vacations. And they're super smart about how to make money and how to delegate.
With billionaires, there's an exploitation aspect there. Taking billionaires out of it, people who make five or six figures a year, they're probably smart with how they manage their money, or got lucky with an investment property that they can rent and make passive income.
Maybe they're not making thousands more dollars a year, because they're not burning themselves out constantly, but their quality of life is probably a lot better. I don't see money as the be all end all. I also think that we should be paid fairly, and beyond that, like, we should be able to be happy. We should all be able to be happy and be able to buy the things that will make our lives better. It’s a balance of am I enjoying my life? By working hard? And do I need help? Who can I reach out to? so yeah, I think this idea that the small business owner is an island working away forever is inaccurate and silly.
I also get really angry about this idea that teachers are supposed to naturally be giving and be responsible for like taking care of the collective and doing things for the community. That's also very manipulative. The burden should not be falling on the most empathetic people to do all of it. You don't have to work for free. People will try to pressure you to do that. There are all kinds of nonprofits out there. There are all kinds of places where when you're applying for space, or you're applying to be featured in a festival, they want to know how many of your programs you do for free. That's an actual question on these applications. And I think that's bullshit. Why would I be applying for low-cost rehearsal spaces if I could afford to give away my services for free?! Yes, I believe that there should be free and accessible programming, but it's not the artist’s job to make that happen. That should be the responsibility of the governments running these communities and the large businesses who have the resources to do so. It's so silly to me to keep pressuring teachers to be giving more and giving more, and you hear these stories about teachers buying school supplies, and clothes for kids out of their own pocket. That's not healthy. If I told you the amount of work I have done for free, in the last 10 years, you would be shocked. People deserve to be paid well for the service that they are giving because art, and education are of value to everyone. I would argue that without art, life is not worth living. I want to be joyful and messy and to bring in lots of perspectives from other people. And art is exactly that.
You have kind of answered this, but just for posterity. Do you consider yourself a working artist?
Oh, yes. Honestly, I would find it hard to find a person who is not a working artist. Maybe their source of income isn’t art, but I think every human has the capacity to be an artist, and in some way in their lives already are an artist. This especially includes teachers; teaching is such an art form. So yes, absolutely.
Again, you kind of also answered this, but in terms of putting a finer point on it, what would you say is the best and worst part of being a working artist? I would say the whole rant about money and expectations is the worst.
The best is getting to create and connect with people. And I have a career that I can fully make my own now. There's literally no one telling me what to do right now. It’s the first time in my life that I think I can say that there is absolutely nobody telling me what to do, other than the IRS. Beyond that, I’m free. The independence, and simultaneously the connection that I'm able to foster with my students is the best. And the worst is pushing back against how much society historically thinks I should or should not be paid, and all of the administrative BS that comes with that.
Do you have any other creative practices? Basically, I'm just asking what is your own creative practice outside of like what you're doing for income?
Definitely. I take a voice class with a small group. It's fabulous. I've been in there for about a year and we do little three-month seasonal terms. We sing together and we also have solos. It's a really lovely community. That’s the environment I want to achieve with my own group classes when I have them up and running. I also take voice lessons privately with the same teacher. She's one of my very dear friends and colleagues and she's in a similar situation to me. Her name is Susan Davies and her studio is Susan Davies Voice. And she has changed my life. I would not have taken the leap that I did over the last year with starting my own business were it not for having her in my life. Growing up, I was a dancer, I was really not confident about my abilities to perform as a solo singer. Singing was a place where I had to heal a lot. Now, I love singing and performing. That’s the biggest place I've been feeding my creativity. But I also take dance classes myself. I paint and knit sometimes; I love to try new things and do a little bit of everything. I would also consider my witchcraft practice to be very creative. That's also something that I have been actively incorporating into my new business as well, bringing in all of me into my work, and how the spiritual feeds the creative.
What do you do to enhance your skills or in terms of like your own continuing education? You kind of mentioned this in the beginning, where you're like, I have to teach this waltz, I guess we're teaching this waltz! But do you have any regular practice around that?
I am in an adults-only tap monthly membership. And those classes are on Zoom and some of them are prerecorded, so I can go use them whenever I want. I like the accountability of doing it live with the group, too. So I'm super thrilled that I've started doing that. And that's directly feeding my teaching, because I'm gaining more experience with tap through that. I try to listen and support art in many forms whenever I can because I think there is never too much art and too many artists in the world. Every bit of it is special in its own way and adds something even if I don't personally like it. I try to be supportive of others’ stuff, go see shows, listen to music, go to art museums. Because just being around art and seeing what other people are doing is good for me. And it makes me feel less alone, too. Which is important when you need the drive to keep going.
You can answer this however you'd like. But what was the most helpful resource to you as you were deciding to embark on this career?
I think the teacher that I met, Mrs. Bishop, was the most helpful. My ballet training was intense and there was some really toxic body image and competition stuff there. But there were some things that were really good about it. It was a resource in itself every time I saw what not to do. Sometimes that's necessary, looking at other people's art, right? And it doesn't mean they're doing it wrong, but it's good to know what is ‘their’ way versus ‘my’ way. Every no is an opportunity to learn whether the no is coming from me, or is the no coming from somebody else.
Is there anything that you would have wanted to know before embarking on a career as a choreographer?
That you can make money doing it! And you don't have to follow somebody else's rules. I also would encourage people to find community, even if it’s not someone who is in the same discipline as you. But as I said, my friend who is a voice teacher and music teacher, has been so supportive. Even when you're young, having a mentor who can just be there with you and talk through things and be a safe person to give you feedback is crucial. Also, just make stuff. Don't worry about if it's going to be bad or not, just keep making things, just keep doing it. And every time you will learn a little bit more.
Where can people find you?
My website is amaclauryarts.com and my Instagram is amaclauryarts. Please send me a message if you’d like to work with me for private lessons or creativity coaching! I teach online, so I can work with people all over the world!
Is there anything else you wanted to say? Or anything else that I didn't ask you that you wanted to say?
Another pivotal moment in my life was reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic. I went to her book tour, and I actually asked her a pretty similar question to what you asked me. It was, “How can I push back on the starving artist narrative and show my students it's safe to pursue a career in the arts?” And she had a long, lovely answer. What stuck with me was her saying: “What you do is going to be so much more impactful than what you say.” So being authentic and showing what's working for you and what's not, and that you're thriving is enough. I think the reason the book was so huge for me is the way that she talks about creativity and inspiration. I would highly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves a creative because it's a much healthier outlook to say, “This is outside of me, and I'm never going to be like dried up from ideas, there's always something else out there for me.” It's never just my “opus project” and then I'm poor, right? So that's a great place for people to turn to if they want to know more.