.: Interview with Kevin Ormsby

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Interview with Kevin Ormsby

Epiphany: So Kevin thanks for coming on tonight... I’ve gotten allot of positive response to the photographs we created last weekend, How long have you been dancing?

Kevin: 20 yrs since the age of 10 but in the performing arts since I was 3yrs old.

Epiphany: Did you always want to be a Dancer?

Kevin: I was in musical theatre until dance became the forefront at about 16.

Epiphany: What caught your interest in Dance?

Kevin: A scholarship to Jamaica School of Dance at Edna Manley College of the Performing Arts, lol.

Epiphany: So you got a scholarship and just went for it?

Kevin: Yeap!, was on scholarship until immigrated here in 92.

Epiphany: So what about dancing makes you the happiest? The creativity, the travel, the performance?

Kevin: All of the above the life it's a process that like life has its ups and downs, but the joy of performing makes the hours of rehearsal meaningful and the experience of new cities and countries makes you realize how special it is to communicate with your body.

Epiphany: Was there one performance so far or place where you just said wow this is why I love doing this?

Kevin: in Lyon France where while performing with Garth Fagan Dance we did 5 encores to numerous shouts, foot stomping and Bravo!! The life of a dancer is not easy but those sentiments alone makes you realize that destiny would have it that you, a dancer can elicit such emotions in someone else.

Epiphany: That’s such a great thing to recognize. Ok you recently moved back from the states, who were you dancing for there?

Kevin: Garth Fagan Dance (Garth Fagan is the choreographer of the LION KING but he has his own company in Rochester, NY...its now in its 35th Anniversary.) I was with the company for 5 and a half years

Epiphany: What brought you back to Toronto?

Kevin: I turned 30 wanted a little bit more stability in my life, I had a secured salary, traveling in a great company but got tired of the intensity in the life...I wanted to teach, share what I learnt and to one day run a company. Coming here I was offered a job with my old company as Assistant to the Artistic Director?

Epiphany: What is the name of the company here?

Kevin: It is the Ballet Creole?

Epiphany: Great, will you be dancing as well?

Kevin: Yes in major shows but my working capacity will be in the artistic directorship and Pre professional school

Epiphany: What’s the hardest part of dancing as a profession?

Kevin: Not having people think that you can actually have it be a profession like traditional professions (doctor lawyer etc) that and making an income comparable to that of a lawyer etc. Plus the body can be unforgiving

Epiphany: Is there a dance company you wish you could dance with or a particular dancer you would like to have performed with?

Kevin: Yes my dream was to dance with Garth Fagan's company that came through but I also love the work of Ron K. Brown / EVIDENCE Dance Company

Epiphany: Wow!.... What advice would you give someone just starting out?

Kevin: If you wanna be good at what you do then you have to be disciplined put in the time and don’t look for quick rewards... Debbie Allen says it best in the series FAME..."you have big dreams, you want fame well fame costs and right here is where you start paying in sweat" Also take a much dance class as you can from ballet, modern to hip-hop, jazz etc.. It will only make you better at what you do.... and go to school, no such thing as a stupid dancer.

Epiphany: Wow, great advice!

Epiphany: OK a little Proust questionnaire, ala Vanity Fair…. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Kevin: Living without regrets

Epiphany: What is your greatest fear?

Kevin: People not seeing me for the true person that I am.

Epiphany: Which living person do you most admire?

Kevin: My parents and family (unconditional love)

Epiphany: What trait do you most deplore about yourself?

Kevin: Being so upfront, passionate and forward in my responses

Epiphany: What trait do you most deplore in others?

Kevin: Not being honest and to the point

Epiphany: What is your greatest extravagance?

Kevin: Books.

Epiphany: Hey thats one of mine as well! Well again thanks for a great photo shoot, and coming on tonight! Can’t wait to do it again!

Kevin: It was a pleasure to allow you to see a mere part of the being that I am.

All images and written word are copyrighted by Christopher Cushman 2006

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Great interview! As one of those "lawyers" (smile) it's good to see a dream achieved transform into another dream to be fulfilled.

Miracles and Blessings Kevin and thank you for sharing with us.

As always Chris, Keep Up the great work.

Lou; 12:58 PM

The Dance Through Life Project

Photograph project dedicated to capture the Art of Dance within the parameters of everyday life. The project hopes to capture the innate relationships between dance and everyday life. Images of dance performed in non-traditional locales hopefully demystifying dance as being inaccessible and drawing the obvious metaphor that while all can not express life with such movement and physicality, we all love with our own signature grace. Therefore we all dance.

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Through New Eyes: The Photography of Christopher Cushman by Rinaldo Walcott

The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

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"What Chris has done with this important collection of images, Fierce: Being Black, Being Gay in America, A Photographic Essay, is to seek, lift, and affirm the identity and visibility of men-who love-men and express it in many ways. His photographs display Midwest American men from the outlandish and flamboyant, to the subdued and subtle. You’d think these were “ladies who lunch;” muscular men dressed for the “Park” in lace, and floppy hats to give effect for all to see. Brothers connecting in places we know are safe, such as our nightclubs, the discos, and special events targeting our interests.

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Curtis A. Lipscomb
Executive Director Kick – The Agency for L-G-B-T African-Americans
Detroit Michigan / 2005
www.e-kick.com