INTERVIEW WITH CHOREOGRAPHER JENNIFER TRIGO

 

Jennifer Trigo is a graduate of the ACC Dance Department. She decided to take choreography again with Roxy because of how great the learning experience can be and how fun the process of creating a dance film can be.  Jenny was born and raised in Alice, Tx and she moved to Austin in 2010. She ended up moving back to Alice for a few years but came back to Austin in 2016. 

Some fun facts about Jenny are that her favorite color is black. She currently loves watching Demon Slayer and her favorite book would have to be The Art of Asking by the great Amanda Palmer. Her favorite music genre would have to be metal and anything chill. One of her favorite songs would have to be Call Me Star by All Them Witches, and her favorite artists include Molly Crabapple, Opeth, Amon Amarth, Tortuga, and Tiger Army. 

For Jenny, covid has changed a lot of her plans and has her assessing the best steps to take through all of it. She has recently been asking herself a lot of questions about why she dances and for what reasons. She wants to be able to find her purpose with dance again. Some dance styles that have strongly influenced Jenny have been fusion Bellydance and Raqs sharqi dance for quite some time. Recently she has been more interested in exploring and diving into others forms of dance. 

Jenny’s piece in the choreographers’ showcase is titled Of The Earth. She wanted to find grounding and ritual elements with the earth. Her original plan wasn’t to make her piece a more fantasy-based concept, but she does enjoy elven lore and character concepts of the forest and wood inhabitants. These things have also helped Jenny look forward to the costume and character aspects of her piece. Jenny loves learning about ritual concepts and felt she could tie in all of these things together. 

The process of creating a solo during Covid has been a challenge for Jenny, but not as much of a challenge had we not been in a pandemic. There are and have been successful and respectful ways around the issue when filming. One thing that Jenny hopes that the audience will feel after watching her piece is that she hopes more people would want to care or continue caring for the earth.

Interview by Taylor King