INTERVIEW WITH DANCER RICKY DASHNER

Ricky Dashner is a Dance Major who was raised in a small central Texas town called Meridian.  He recently moved to Austin and is thriving.  After ACC Ricky plans to transfer to a university to further his education in dance. His ultimate goal is to eventually teach dance in a high school setting. He would LOVE to direct not only the dance activities of the school but also the Colorguard activities with the marching band. 

The process of learning Darla Johnson’s new dance piece has been a lot of fun for Ricky! He said, “Despite starting the semester on zoom, the process of learning choreography, transferring that to a studio, and then finally putting it all on stage has been interesting. Being off-campus and working online for so long made the entire performance idea a blur. I’m so thankful to be back in person as I’m finally able to feed off of everyone’s energy dancing around me.  It was hard to see how the movements that I was doing in my living room would translate to being on a stage for the first time.” 

Ricky expressed that Darla has been amazing throughout this entire process. Her insight on the piece has given him a new personal meaning and connection to the world. Since the pandemic, he has been learning the health of the earth is not the best it could be. He said, “We as the hands of the earth simply pay no mind to those issues. Being from a small town, not many people have open conversations about the earth’s health.”  He has had an eye-opening experience to hear different individuals' views on the topic of earth.  He hopes the audience can leave the performance with an idea of what humans have done to the earth. This in turn may hopefully start conversations about what they/we can do to help. But most importantly, he hopes they remember to look up at the stars tonight.

Interview by Anel Beaza