We were lucky to catch up with Rachel Repinz recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rachel, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Creativity keeps me alive, rather than the other way around. I find a lot inspiration in the everyday moments, which is what drives my choreography and conceptual work the most. A voicemail from my mom or catching up with a friend over coffee are really inspiring and creative moments for me. Just being with the people I love and reflecting on those moments is so generative. I want my work to feel like a warm hug for audiences, something that they really connect to. That’s what keeps my creativity alive – moments of connection.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Most of my work manifests through RACHEL:dancers, a multi-medium, multi-modal, and multi-sensory dance performance company that I founded while I was pursuing my MFA at Temple University in Philadelphia. As a choreographer, I’m committed to advancing a disability aesthetic in concert dance, and exploring ways to cultivate access for visually impaired audiences and artists through an access-based creative process. Currently, we are working on an immersive performance piece, “If I Could Just Reach Out and Touch It” about girlhood, grief, and what it means to be home, which will premiere in New York City this coming March. It uses audio description, narrative, and scent installations as experimentations in immersive access.
I also work with Enya-Kalia Jordan on a collaborative project, Bashi Arts, which centers three main goals: providing a platform for emerging artists, creating pre-professional opportunities for NYC students, and serving as an incubator for experimental contemporary movement artists. We base this collective work in South Brooklyn, NY.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
It’s hard to narrow it down to three things that we’re impactful, but I think being open to opportunities to try something new is really important. I work in so many spaces now that I never would’ve thought I would when I was first starting this journey at 17. I have to give credit to my teachers and mentors for instilling this in me – I’m really grateful for my dance lineage. My teachers instilled in me the confidence to fail at something without feeling defeated, and to not be afraid of taking my own path. It’s all about showing up as you are and being willing to try.
I also think consistency is really important. It’s not about who’s the most talented person in the room, or who can kick their leg the highest, it’s really about who shows up. I remember hearing my teachers tell me this and thinking “yeah right, it’s about who can dance the ‘best’!” But I’ve learned that it really is about just being in the room, being consistent, and being reliable. ‘Best’ is so subjective anyway.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
I’m a big calendar and to-do list girl! I find that writing a to-do list whenever I start to feel overwhelmed really helps to clear my mind. I don’t feel like I have to remember it all. I try to write a to-do list once per day. I also use my Google Calendar like my personal assistant – haha! I put everything in my calendar, even dinner with friends. For me, it helps to have a visual of how much time things take and how much time I have in a day. It helps me to feel grounded and like I don’t have to remember it all.
Contact Info:
- Website: racheldeforrestrepinz.com
- Instagram: @rachelanddancers
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-repinz/
Image Credits
Nir Arieli, Stewart Villio, and Brian Mengini
