Alumni Testimonials
Dance alumni share their experiences
Click here for more Performing Arts alumni stories.
Click here for more Performing Arts alumni stories.
After graduating from Saint Mary's in 2014, I traded the ballet barre for the bar exam and went to law school. I recently accepted a job with the Colorado Public Defender and am hoping eventually to do postconviction and capital defense work. In a practical sense, dancing at Saint Mary's taught me to work in a collaborative environment, instilled the importance of a strong work ethic and time management skills, and gave me a home and a family when I was far from my own. Dancing taught me that you can be both strong and vulnerable, gave me the courage to take up space both in and out of the studio, made me feel powerful and beautiful, and taught me to be creative, bold, fearless, to engage with the world around me, and to move through that world with purpose and strength. In a courtroom, like on the stage, you tell stories, and the lessons Saint Mary's taught me about being expressive with my body helped me to find my voice.
From 2008-2012, I was the stage manager for the Saint Mary’s College Dance Company in addition to being a recreational dancer. I was always considered a member of the company and I proudly wore my SMCDC sash when I walked at graduation. I went on to earn a Master’s in stage management from the Yale School of Drama and have since stage managed on Broadway in addition to other credits in New York City. Stage managing the dance concerts at SMC were always my gift for surviving the semester. I loved how valued I felt and how much I learned in such a short amount of time. I will always be thankful to SMCDC for what it gave me.
Over the course of my studies at Saint Mary's College, I found that I craved movement – not a calm course of existence. Dance is the only thing that fuels my soul. I currently have a full-time position at the non-profit Dancers' Group, I'm still taking technique dance classes, and performing in people's work, I'm living my life to the highest of my potential, and it’s here when I'm reminded that the blessings always outweigh the challenges.
As a part of the Saint Mary’s Dance Company I have learned to trust myself in many situations as well as attain a broader look on the world. Now that I have graduated from Saint Mary’s, I take the confidence and leadership qualities I have learned from being in the dance company into my everyday life. I am very lucky to be a part of the dance family at Saint Mary’s because they have helped shape me into the strong woman I am today.
I graduated in 2008 with a B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies with a minor in Dance. What I loved so much about my programs of study was the intersectionality of identity with that of self-expression and creativity. SMCDC taught me I could do anything. But more importantly it taught me that the language of movement doesn't have a gender. It doesn't have a physical size. It doesn't have boundaries. It's all something that can draw us together. I currently work at Facebook and work intensely with our diversity and inclusion teams, I am the founder of our LGBT employee resource group at Facebook Seattle. I deeply believe in our mission of making the world more open and connected.
The experiences that I had following my plunge into modern dance at SMC in 2001 truly shaped me as a person. Each performance I danced in, each teacher, each mentor all challenged me in ways that not only grew my technique and strength as a dancer but gave me new lenses through which to view myself and the world around me. My political beliefs, my relationships, my knowledge of self, were constantly being thrown into question, reformed, and created again. Dance gave me the tools to find the grace and the balance through all of the changes in life.