Today we’d like to introduce you to Derick McKoy, Jr..
Hi Derick, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Miami, Florida. I was always put in sports when I was younger. My first dance experience was watching my mother take belly dancing classes. I would sit in the back of the room mimicking the steps. I first got to experience a dance class on my own when I was in second and third grade. My elementary school class took salsa and merengue. When I was younger I wanted to be a television actor and didn’t know that dance was a career. I just knew it was something I loved to do. I would choreograph for my siblings and cousins all the time.
If you asked anyone, I was always dancing and twirling around the house. In my last year of middle school, I remember hearing the morning announcements say that my school was starting a dance team. I don’t know what about that announcement that called to me, but I turned to my friend and said “I’m going to do that.” I tried out for the team, made it, became dance captain, and choreographed the majority of the routines. At this time, I was also the Student Council President and I started an annual talent show, called “You Got Talent!”
A few weeks after the show, the security guard at my school, Phyllis Lampkin, approached me and told me that she had someone I should meet. It was my now dance mother, Luctricia “Lu” Welters, a former dancer with Ailey II, Philadanco, and others. After a year of being self-taught, I finally started my official training under Lu. After a year of ballet classes, I was invited to join her second company at Jubilee Dance Theatre.
Three years of training later, I moved to New York City to study dance at the Ailey School and pursue my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance. I was awarded the highest scholarship at the school, as a Glorya Kaufman scholarship recipient. Currently, I dance full-time at Dallas Black Dance Theatre, run my own dance company called McKoy Dance Project || MDP, and recently received my Masters in Performing Arts Administration from New York University.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I would not say the road has been easy. I always tell people I did not choose to dance. Dance chose me. The level of investment and commitment one must have to be successful in this career is grueling. I don’t always love being a practitioner of the art form (career-wise), but I absolutely cannot move myself to do anything else.
My junior year of my undergraduate studies was probably the hardest year I faced on this journey. I questioned everything. I had experienced a lot of loss in my family, in my love life, and in my self-esteem that year. I hit a wall and dance wasn’t feeding me in the ways it had before. Yes, I had earlier challenges like having to struggle to find my own ways to dance and drama club through my middle school and high school years, but art called to me.
My purpose was calling to me. Giving yourself to this beautiful and enormous thing often comes with the sacrifice of security, rest, relationships, and a bit of sanity. Dancers still show up every day because of the calling, and the resilience we have to have. Dance chose me.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
McKoy Dance Project || MDP is a nonprofit contemporary dance company based in Brooklyn, NY. Led by Founder and Executive Artistic Director Derick McKoy, Jr, the company employs a diverse group of arts leaders and innovators who are passionate about telling realistic stories of our experiences. MDP’s first performance in 2019 involved a collaboration with the Opus 87 Piano Quartet on an evening-length ballet called “Looking Out: A Stonewall Memorial.”
Since then, the company has produced and premiered a feature film and performed around various venues in the NYC metropolitan area. During the summer of 2021, the company received a special invitation to perform on Juneteenth, now the eleventh federally recognized holiday and the first in 38 years. MDP seeks to be a trustworthy and equitable platform geared towards providing opportunities for people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
Our Mission: To mirror the experiences we live through today, MDP’s mission is to empower people of all backgrounds, especially those who have been historically marginalized, through arts programming and accessible events that highlight authentic stories and strengthen community relationships and support systems. It is important to us that we foster connection and healing by diving head-first into works that are sensitive and conscious of the inequities and trauma built into our society.
I am always in awe of what McKoy Dance Project || MDP has grown into before my eyes. In such a short time, the company has changed my life and has allowed me to continue my desire to mentor and connect with the communities around me. McKoy Dance Project || MDP stands for community, it stands for resilience, growth, and understanding. It has taught me so much and continues to teach and humble me daily in my interactions with the people around me. It is a company that shares, as well as listens.
We do it for the intimate moments of inspiration in the studio. We do this work for the personal exchanges we treasure with one another and the acknowledgment of change in ourselves. We do it for the widespread need for a safe platform and environment that allows us to be vulnerable with one another so that we may see the beauty in what we have to offer.
MDP is a way to honor those before us and to encourage those who will come after us. I am blessed to foster and fortify an organization that seeks to put the human part back into the elitist traditions of dance and art. McKoy Dance Project looks at the field and training of dance and asks where can we improve in our work as well as in the community outside of the art. MDP is about accountability and holding ourselves to the standard of “people first.”
We are more than just a presenting organization of dance. We are crafting our programs from the ground up with the mission of getting to know one another as more than just dancers and dance lovers. We desire connection with our community in a new and healthy way that is lacking in the world today. We do this while centering our work and opportunities in equity and diversity. There’s so much we can teach each other.
MDP is not afraid to ask the hard questions and invite conversations. This company is not about lightly touching on subjects and sweeping the depth under rugs. We dig deep and we stay curiously open to learn more about ourselves every day. As I continue to examine what it means to be a Black male artist who is also queer, MDP supports my explorations into who I’ve always meant to be. I want that for us all.
It is time to highlight and uplift marginalized communities and their voices in a meaningful and authentic way. We have learned too much to stop now. McKoy Dance Project || MDP is an opportunity for a collective of bodies and ideas to create meaningful magic together and I invite everyone to be a part of this story, a story that can become a tradition if we write it together.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I always tell younger dancers and professionals to figure out your REAL reason why. That reason will be the driving force that keeps you going and striving for more. Along my journey, I learned to stop saying that dance is my passion. Dance is not my passion. Mentorship is my passion and dance is the vehicle that allows me to do that.
I can mentor dancers, choreographers, leaders, and audience members in the community through my dancing, choreography, and leadership. That’s what’s really important to me. I love holding space for others to figure out who they are on the inside and for us to share that experience together. I seek to be a figure of support for others. I see in you all that you haven’t seen in yourself yet, how do we get you to the point that you see it there as well?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mckoydanceproject.org
- Instagram: @dmckoyy and @mckoydanceproject
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mckoydanceproject/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derick-mckoy-jr/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mckoydanceproject7801
- Other: linktr.ee/mckoydanceproject
Image Credits
Nir Arieli, Michelle Mor, and Mariah Gravelin
