In between our Community Ambassador shifts at The Dance Complex, I caught up with Kaila Thomas, one of the many vibrant faces bringing light to this community. Amidst the hustle and bustle of freelance life, Kaila graciously shares her insights, weaving together her experiences as a dancer, teaching artist, and advocate for social justice. In this conversation, we delve into her journey from discovering The Dance Complex during her college years to her current role as a Community Ambassador, while exploring the intersection of language and movement in her artistic endeavors. Against the backdrop of her reflections on the Boston dance community and the transformative power of art, Kaila shares her hopes for the future of The Dance Complex and its pivotal role in fostering unity and inclusivity within the arts. Read on to delve into the depths of creativity and community with Kaila Thomas.
CJ Donohoe: When did you first learn about The Dance Complex?
Kaila Thomas: I first learned about The Dance Complex my sophomore year of college. I performed here with the dance company I was a part of in college and we performed in Studio 7 before it was even a proper Studio and just getting renovated. I’m from Maine, so I’m not even that far from Boston and I’ve been dancing practically my whole life. So it was shocking to me that was the first time I’d ever seen a performance or anything in that space.
CD: Did you major in dance in college?
KT: I didn’t major in dance. However, the Middlebury dance community is really big. I was a French major and Russian minor. I was trying to find a way that I could do a language and dance make-your- own major because I can see a huge connection between language and dance and how dance is communicating something to an audience. All the dance I make is, you could say, political dance or dance that’s trying to give a message to somebody through movement, but also through spoken word. Since I went abroad my entire junior year, it was hard to start from scratch with a major, but I did dance classes and was a part of dance pieces every semester. I didn’t take the necessary classes to be a major but wanted to be a part of the community.
CD: Is there a piece that you’re currently working on or that you did in college that you can speak more to about connection between language and movement?
KT: My senior year, I got really involved in social justice and activism. The summer before that, summer 2020, was when conversations around race were ramping up. I was in quarantine in my own community in Maine. I’ve always been one of the only Black people in my community, and so I’d always seen it as my role to kind of be an educator in that way. I know a lot of people of color, in particular, Black people don’t see themselves as needing to educate those around them, but I do feel like it’s a role that I take in pride. I really love educating, that’s the career path I’m going down now.
I started my own social justice programming in my town. I led four sessions and in them, there was a personal component, either my own research or something that was related to my experience in living in Kennebunk, the town I am from. In the last session, I wrote a spoken word style poem and it was really powerful. The poem, which is on my YouTube channel, started when the sun was going down and ended when it was completely dark out. It almost felt like a mic drop moment and that piece stuck with me. So then my senior year, the last dance piece I created was to that spoken word, which was about my experience being Black in a white community, what that felt like, being biracial, and how that makes me fit in or not to a lot of narratives of Black people. That really fueled my choreography at that moment. For that piece, it was completely dark out, I stood in front of my car and just put on my headlights, which felt very powerful in terms of protest imagery, being outside, very real, not super staged or anything. If people were in the background, they were in the background. It was public art almost, so I’d be interested to see what people witnessing that on my college campus were thinking.
CD: That imagery is really vivid, I can almost make it out in my head as you are describing it. What brought you to Boston?
KT: I did an internship here the summer after my sophomore year before going abroad and I enjoyed it. Boston is the largest city closest to where I’m from, being close to home is important to me. I do appreciate experiences of traveling to different places, but I am a very family-centered person and being only an hour and a half from home feels important to me right now. When I graduated, I was originally going to move cross country to California, that didn’t end up working out. So then I decided, I’m just going to go to Boston. I know Boston, I’m close to home if I ever need anything during my first year out of college, so that brought me back. I started being a Community Ambassador once I settled in Boston, and I’ve been in this role for over two years now. I started February of 2022.
CD: What made you want to start?
KT: Going back to the performance I did at The Dance Complex during my sophomore year of college, my mom attended that performance and then signed up for the newsletters from The Dance Complex. Eventually, when I was living in Boston, I felt super lonely. It was really hard for me to make friends as an adult right out of College. I had no idea how to do that, especially on the tail end of a pandemic. My mom kept getting emails from The Dance Complex and she said to me, “Kaila, you need to make friends. There’s a Community Ambassador position open at The Dance Complex, you should apply.” So I applied and Sam [former Community Ambassador coordinator] interviewed me, and it all stemmed from my mom thinking I needed friends, which she was right.
My entire life, dance has been the biggest bringer of community for me, and The Dance Complex is where I’m making a lot of really important connections in my life right now. Hannah [Diamond] is one of my best friends that I’ve ever met or made, I am so happy that I met her. She’s been really important to me within the last half year since I’ve met her. She’s a force. I admire her and respect her so much.
I also just think in general The Dance Complex has given me the opportunity to make connections with people of different ages. I was, for a very brief minute, part of Isaura Oliveira’s Power of Skirts and there are people of various ages in that group. It’s been really enlightening to make friends and build community with people with different experiences, different racial backgrounds, but also just different ages. I think that’s something that’s overlooked a lot in communities and when you think about diversity, diversity of age is really important, too.
CD: How do you take advantage of the Community Ambassador program?
KT: I book studio space more frequently than take class. I find it’s easier for me to carve out time to be alone in a studio and to just explore with myself rather than to take a class, which I do love, but recently I’ve been more within myself and thinking about what kinds of practices I am willing to share with others, and what kind of practices I want to keep to myself right now. Dance has been one of those that I’ve been wanting to keep to myself more right now.
CD: How are you spending your studio time?
KT: I tap into what I’m feeling. If any strong emotions are coming up, I’ll usually journal about it and then I will try and put that journal into dance. If I hear a song that really sparks emotion in me. I want to get it out of my body and into dance and see what this looks like in a space. I use spoken word and lyrics a lot to drive my choreography.
Dance is a way that I process and get things out of my system. When something is off in my life, the first question I have to ask myself is “have I been dancing enough?”. Dance has been a huge part of my whole life and so if something feels off-kilter, I know I should probably be booking more studio space.
CD: How do you envision the future of dance and arts in Boston and what role do you see The Dance Complex playing in that future?
KT: The arts in Boston is a huge space. I feel like I’m discovering new things constantly. I always forget Berklee is here and is a huge music hub. I think there’s a lot of great street art around here also, especially in some of the primarily Black and Latinx communities. Dorchester, where I live, and Roxbury, there’s so much street art. I would love to see that celebrated more and see some dance pieces around that. I would love to see more combining efforts of the arts, which The Dance Complex could be involved with, especially with bringing different artists together. While there is naturally a focus on dance, there are a lot of artists coming through this space, live drummers, costume designers, set designers. I would love to see large-scale pieces put together that bring people across the art sectors to do something big and amazing. That could be cool in future Februaries to do a Black History Month collective initiative of Black artists, bringing together different artists.
The arts community is so diverse, we can see this through the teaching artist roster here at The Dance Complex. Explicitly, featuring Black artists one month, or other artists because it is their heritage month, and celebrating them. I think many businesses, especially nonprofits, and I’ve worked for several nonprofits at this point, are afraid to do this, to specifically highlight a particular race during a month. Many of them may feel performative in their approach. However, from the perspective of being a Black person, I love when people from my community are featured during the month that we’re trying to be celebrated in. I think that is so powerful and beautiful. I mean, do it all the time, but especially in February.
I really do think that The Dance Complex, as a prominent dance space in Boston, especially with their connections and resources, could pull off large-scale cultural celebrations.
CD: Have you seen any performances you’ve resonated with at The Dance Complex?
KT: I saw ‘Belonging and Othering’ by beheard.world last summer. It was about parsing through identity and what people’s experiences in their identities have been, and the injustices that they have felt and gone through. There were solos, duets, and then they all came together for a huge piece at the end. It was one of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever seen. It was a turning point for me because I was losing faith in the dance community. I was feeling that nobody around here does dance the way that I know it to be, or creating in a way that means something. Some people dance to create a fun piece, which is a part of dance. But a big part of dance for me is creating a lasting impact or leaving the audience with more questions than answers, making them go home, reflect, and talk with other people about what they saw in the dance. Provocative work is what I look to create and I think this was what that piece was.
CD: Within your reflections on the Boston dance community, The Dance Complex’s role, and ‘Belonging and Othering’ resparking your investment in dance, what are you hoping in the future for the dance community as a whole?
KT: I’m hoping for there to be more unity. When there is tension, I think that people can get lost in the fact that dance is for everyone and everybody has a space in dance, but I think that is making people lose sight of why we’re in the space to begin with, to build community through dance. I know from other people who are a part of The Dance Complex and the Boston dance community that there are spaces more centered toward people of color throughout Boston for dance. Within the Black community in particular, there’s the question of “Does The Dance Complex support Black people or is there somewhere else where we feel more supported?”. Boston is a very segregated city, I’m not even going to pretend that it’s not, but I do hope for the dance community and arts in general that people can find unity and community. That sounds so hippy-dippy but there’s so much healing in the arts that people need to tap into rather than focusing on an us against them mentality. There should be a lot more collaboration. Dance can offer a sense of communication across misunderstandings and differences, dance is a shared language.
The Dance Complex has the potential to be a really healing and powerful space for so much and I really hope that they can continue to be that and not get bogged down by leadership issues or indecision or all that comes with being a nonprofit. I hope that they can fight through rough patches, and make some really tough decisions to get past the business obstacles and be able to focus on more of the fun aspects of what being a dance space and community is. In that, I hope that they can find DEI work that works for them. I think that needs to be part of every single business and I think that it is beyond time for them to implement that work in both strategic and just normal everyday ways to be able to build and strengthen the community. I think that DEI is the missing piece and if The Dance Complex were to center that, it would start to bridge gaps and start conversations about how to be in community with others and how to work through differences in ways that aren’t just “here’s our policy”. They are on to something and I just think they need to keep going. I appreciate this opportunity to be able to speak with you and shed a little bit of light on the growth areas of The Dance Complex that I see, but also, speak about some of the great things that they’re hosting and doing and where the community can blossom and grow. These conversations are a part of creating a point for change.
You can catch more of Kaila’s work on her YouTube channel, and stay connected to them here.
