We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hsiao-Ning Liao a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hsiao-Ning, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
As a dancer/dance artist/choreographer, I think every thing in my daily life no matter good or bad that can possibly keep my creativity and keep me getting inspiration, but most important for me, my emotions and feelings are the biggest ones that inspire my dancing, especially love. Love is a strong feeling, there are caring, desire, kindness, and passion in love. When I feel love, I feel like water runs through my body, my soul, and my heart, and these feelings can go into motion naturally. Also, I think self-reflecting is important for me too, because when I sit down and try to think about what I did, what’s my thoughts about things or people, and where my mind is going today, I can figure out more about myself, discover more about my inner feelings that sometimes don’t come across my head immediately. The other thing that I think important for me is keep my body healthy. As a dancer, body is the paint brush, if it’s broken, how am I able to paint my art. Body is everything for a dancer, so I want to keep my body healthy, keep my strength, flexibilty, power and endurance, then I can use my body to create.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I’m a freelance dancer/choreographer/dance instructor from Taiwan, currently based in New York City. I love creating freely, and staying in this city now is the best part of my life so far. I dance and perform live in the theater or clubs, I’ve been gogo dancing as well, and I also dance in several music videos. I also choreograph for the singing artist for the event Orchid Nights at New York Botanical Garden. Also, I really love that, in New York City, I have such a blessing that I can collaborate with so many other artist, including photographers, videographers, painters, fashion designers, and musicians. I teach dance as well, from kids to adults. I love performing a lot, at the beginning, I thought that teaching dance was just a side job for me for my financial support. As I teaching for almost 5 years now, I found out that teaching dance is also a good inspiration and keeps me humble and realized there are always things I need to improve and in my life, I’ll always be a student, because knowledge and creativity are endless.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
First, I would say knowing yourself better every day and going for what you really want. I feel it took me a long time to make myself admit that I wanted to be an artist/dancer. My background is from a traditional Asian Culture, I study hard all my childhood and teenage life. The environment around me was all telling me to be a lawyer, doctor, scientist, engineer, or someone with a stable job. I really had a doubt and tried to ignore what really my passion is. It really took me a while to decide to be a professional dancer. So I feel that knowing yourself and your inner desire is very important for making clear your direction. Second, I would say, that sometimes you just need the sudden courage or impulse, and go for it, don’t hesitate, and just do it.
Last and most important, believe in yourself and don’t give up. Everyone’s path and timing are different, you already come a long way, so just keep trying, eventually, you’ll get something no matter what, and the meantime while you trying, you’ll always learn so many things in your life.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always looking for collaboration. I’m interested in dancing and choreographing for singing artists, or musicians, I’m also really want to try making a dance film this year. Besides those, I’m really down for any collaboration, including fashion designers, photographers, videographers, commercials, and so on. If you are interested in collaborating, welcome to contact me at my Instagram is @ninga0908, and my email [email protected]
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.instagram.com/ninga0908/
- Instagram: ninga0908
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/dKEoWA_c-yg?si=UHTaKcylsIwlR_c7
Image Credits
@ryalexanderphoto @_audreychou_ @jpg_jo22 @coreyhayesphotos
