Today we’d like to introduce you to Alejandro Abarca.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Born and raised in Houston, Texas, it was clear from an early age that I definitely marched to the beat of my own drum. Growing up in a Mexican-American family meant that most of my free time was spent at my grandmother’s house at family gatherings. This is it all began.
My earliest memory was dancing myself to exhaustion in my grandmother’s living room. I was not the kind of kid that gathered everyone together to perform an elaborate performance. Instead, I was the kid that was completely spellbound by the music and my family just happened to find it entertaining. It was then that I felt the most alive, and the most embodied. However, it never occurred to me that I would one day become a dancer.
It wasn’t until I landed the lead in the school play that I realized that I wanted to be a performer. I knew I wanted to live a life that was not your typical nine to five, and soon had dreams of leaving Texas for the lights of Broadway in New York City. Soon I would learn that the life an artist was a life of learning how to persevere through rejection, and the road to NYC was not a direct trajectory.
After many failed attempts, I was finally admitted–and eventually graduated from–the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, TX. I was accepted to a school in Manhattan to for musical theatre but was unable to attend due to financial reasons. This led me to the University of Houston where I started to question if I still wanted to pursue acting. I enrolled in a some dance classes to fulfill general education requirements and this is where I rediscovered my love of dancing. I had taken a few dance classes before at a local community center, but always with the idea that it was to be in musicals. This was a new experience.
From there my life began to change. My professors took notice and encouraged me to minor in dance. Over time that minor switched to a major, and within a year of studying I was being employed as a professional dancer. It was also during this time that I was a scholarship recipient at the American Dancer Festival held at Duke University in Durham, NC. I spent six weeks taking class with renowned dance professionals and with dancers from all over the world. This was just a taste of where the “dance-life” would take me.
By the time I graduated from undergrad in 2007, I was already dancing with two companies, various local choreographers in Houston. Shortly after graduation, a friend asked if I would be interested in working Core Performance Company that was visiting from Atlanta, GA. They were looking for a male dancer for a project at a local arts festival. I agreed. After one full day of rehearsal, I performed the next two days with the company. Two weeks later the Artistic Director, Sue Schroeder, flew to Houston and offered me a job. This was a dream come true for a recent college graduate with a dance degree.
I left Houston and relocated to Atlanta to be a full-time dance-artist. While with Core, I had the opportunity to tour the US and abroad to perform. It also introduced me to the up-and-coming dance scene in Atlanta. Another wonderful part of this adventure was that my BFF and long-time collaborator, Corian Ellisor, was also hired as a company member. Soon we started making our own work together, in addition to dancing for other choreographers and being roommates.
After a few years of living the “artist lifestyle,” and with my thirties slowly approaching, I knew I needed more stability in my life. I started entertaining the idea of going back to school. Around the same time, I heard that an audition was taking place for a project with a NYC based choreographer, Sean Curran, that was going to be in residency at Georgia Tech. The posting said he was only looking for two dancers. So there I was auditioning with about 30-40 of Atlanta’s best dancers. He ended up hiring three dancers in the end, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. While working with Sean, I told him about my thoughts about grad school. This was when he informed me that he was on faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and told me that he would put in a “good word” for me should I need it.
Within a year, I was accepted to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and I had finally achieved my dream of making it to the “Big City.” Those two years were the most challenging and rewarding years of my life so far. One thing people don’t tell you about living your dream is that even though it is magical, there is a reality to it. Upon graduation, I realized that I would not be able to afford living in New York once all my financial aid money was gone. So I had to make a serious decision about my life and my career.
I decided that instead struggling in New York that I should move to a more affordable city and try to find a job in my field that utilized my degree. I thought it would be easier to move back to Atlanta since I was so far removed from the Houston dance scene, and thought I would just pick back up where I left off. After about a month of not knowing what would be the next step in my journey, I got a call from another local dancer informing me that she was leaving her full-time job at Oxford College of Emory and that she was looking to help find her replacement. I eagerly jumped at the opportunity and have been working as a full-time dance instructor for the past three years.
Not only did I land an amazing job with a fantastic institution, but I still get to do the thing that makes me feel the most alive. I am also fortunate to have benefits like health insurance, retirement, and long summers off. This job also offers me the availability (time-wise) to pursue my own artistic adventures. Some days I wake up and wonder if this was all a dream. The road to where I am now had many unexpected detours, but it has shown me that the universe always conspires to give us exactly what we need. It may not be how we envision things playing out. It may not be in the timeframe we desire. I have learned, however, that if you simply do the work and trust in the process, things have a way of working themselves out.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Hahaha, I can attest that the road has never been smooth.
I feel that growing up as a first-generation, queer, person of color in the South is never an easy thing. My father always used to tell me that the odds are already stacked against me, but that I had the choice to either give in to those stereotypes or to prove the world wrong. Trying to prove the world wrong is not a simple feat.
Growing up the youngest of four kids with two working-class parents meant that I understood the concept that money did not grow on trees. I grew up in the inner-city of Houston in a neighborhood that is only now becoming popular due to gentrification but was close in proximity to more affluent neighborhoods. My parents knew that the schools around us were not the best because they too had attended those schools. They sought out ways to get us (my siblings and myself) into schools in other areas of town with more resources to give us better opportunities.
Our financial situation also made it difficult for my parents to afford any formal arts training. Luckily, through a friend, I found MECA (the Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts), a local community center that offered a plethora of affordable, high-quality arts training. If I had not found that place, I don’t know if I would be who I am today. It was there that I met my first dance teacher. He was a former Michael Jackson back-up dancer and a man of color. He was my first role model because up until then I felt somewhat discouraged by the lack of diversity in the arts community.
Then there is the inherent challenge of being an artist. The constant rejection can wear on your soul. During my teenage years, I was far more insecure about myself. I let my fear hinder me. I was rejected numerous times from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. I wasn’t accepted until my senior year of high school. A member of the Theatre faculty told me that one of the reasons that I was accepted was because I didn’t give up.
Not only are there the challenges of rejection, but there are times where you are within reach of your goal only to have life dictate that things won’t go as planned. When I wasn’t able to go to New York right out of high school, I thought my world was over. Little did I know that the detour was still taking me to the Big Apple, just with a different time frame.
The life of a dancer may seem glamorous, and it can be. It is also fleeting and has a price. While at the American Dance Festival, I had to live off of twenty dollars a week. Then there are long hours in rehearsal and in performance. You demand a lot of your body and it takes a toll. Even though I was dancing full time and getting paid, I still had to do various other things to pay the bills. When I moved to NYC to go to Tisch, I had to couch-surf for almost two months and had to survive on a very limited budget for months before my financial aid was released to me. In addition to that, I had to move away from my family–with whom I am very close to. During that time, I have had to grapple with certain harsh realities of life. I have had to come to terms with losing loved ones (like my father) without having the chance to say any final goodbyes.
I have also had to learn that even though my profession is driven by my physical appearance, that my physical appearance does not dictate my worth. Because I came to dance later in life, I did not have the typical “dancer’s body.” I have had to learn to love myself and my body for what it is capable of and not what it looks like.
Please tell us about Alejandro Abarca.
I like to think of myself as an artistic alchemist. I find ways to transform all of my various interests into magic through movement.
I will be performing an excerpt of My People as part of the Modern Atlanta Dance Festival May 10 & 11 at the Balzer Theater in Atlanta and at Dixon Place in NYC May 19 & 20. Later in the summer I will continue physical research for a new work with various artists in San Diego at UCSD
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would do nothing differently. A diamond is forged over time from heat and pressure and then delivered up to the Earth through volcanic eruptions. They are considered beautiful and valuable. I would like to think that is a metaphor for how I try to view my life.
There is a quote from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. It states, “the more sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” I also like to think that sometimes life is just preparing me to contain more joy.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aabarca3/
Image Credit:
Jamie Hopper and Jon Dean
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