Interview with Choreographer Elisabeth Joy

Elisabeth Joy is a dancer, actress, and model currently studying dance at Austin Community College. She’s originally from Pennsylvania but has spent her childhood growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio. She started gymnastics at the age of three and then later started ice skating at the age of four. Her whole life, dance has always been a love of hers and the feeling she gets when she moves her body and the feeling of connecting so well to the sound of music raises goosebumps for her. She started her formal dance training at 37 and has found ballet to be one of her favorite styles and Misty Copeland as her personal favorite dancer. Misty Copeland had to overcome a lot of obstacles and Elisabeth feels inspired by her talent, strength, and grace. Elisabeth is a disabled veteran and has found dance to be the most effective form of therapy and healing for her as it helps restore her structural integrity. After ACC, she's looking to develop a program with dance to help veterans with PTSD alike heal. She also hopes to develop her craft as an actress as she’s focused on STEM for a lot of her life but now she hopes to go after her dreams of being an actress. She says that being in the moment is vital to that and dance is what keeps her present. In her spare time, Elisabeth often goes on adventures with her young son, as well as writes when she feels inspired and cooking with her boyfriend together in the kitchen. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, many changes had to be made to Elisabeth’s piece for this semester. For Elisabeth’s piece this semester, she had a concept in mind for the entire class to do for this showcase. However, due to stay-at-home orders, Elisabeth has to find a way to make a solo piece as well as being restricted to her immediate residence. The lockdown has been an experience for Elisabeth to reflect deep into her personal wounds. In the piece, the concept stems from her childhood when she used to love to roller skate as a kid. She wants to use that idea and go with the flow from there and see what happens. Elisabeth was unfortunately hit by a car when she was five--thankfully no bones were broken but the experience had an impact on her and she hopes to revisit that underlying trauma through movement in this piece.