Modern dancer, ballet dancer, choreographer, dance researcher, model

James Rees is a renowned artist in utah and an advocate for arts in the community and in education. He is a member of the Utah Arts Council, and is an art teacher at Provo High School. He is highly skilled in abstract art and encouraging his students to think past the classroom by pushing them to enter their work into galleries and art exhibits.

 James and I had a lot to talk about in this interview. He really helped me gain some insight on several different matters that I hadn’t thought of. My biggest takeaway was when he said that many people say they support art but never attend any art events. "People vote with their feet," he said. "If you are there you care."

I chose to interview Natalie Desch for my second interview. She is currently my modern dance teacher here at UVU, and is absolutely wonderful. Natalie is also a very talented dancer and experienced choreographer. She Graduated from Julliard with a BFA, and then continued her Master’s degree at University of Washington. She danced with the Jose Limon Dance Company and Doug Varone and Dancers. Her choreography has been performed nationwide.

As I am new to choreography, she helped me be more confident going into rehearsals. One thing she told me that really stuck was to simply keep going and ask questions later. Don't worry about if your choreography will look good to someone else or not. What is important is that YOU like it. This has helped me immensly while choreographing my piece because I usually do tend to overthink what I do. With Natalie's advice I feel that I am able to go into the studio space and just go with what happens. 

I chose Kraig Varner as my third interviewee. Kraig has been a sculptor for over 35 years and has worked with several different clients and organizations. He has dealt with many different circumstances with his commissions as well as his own personal pieces that he has sculpted for profit. This interview really helped me gage what to potentially expect from my audience members and my colleagues. I wasn’t really sure how I would measure my project as a success or not, and Kraig really opened my eyes to that. My goal as the artist is to elicit an emotional response and a dialogue from my colleagues and my audience. Another way to gage my success is how I as the creator feel about it. As an artist we do need to develop thick skins because we are not always sure on how the audience will receive a piece.

I found it interesting that he said every artist at some point will not have a piece accepted for an undefined reason, but it doesn’t mean the project is a failure. It may be accepted the very next year by the same gallery or same venue and win first place. “If the piece gets it’s own legs, moves on and establishes itself, that to me is a successful piece of art.”