We recently connected with Emilia Richeson-Valiente and have shared our conversation below.
Emilia, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I have really worked at it, and am still working on it! And sometimes I have just totally faked it, but it turns out that is also a way of working at it!
I’m a pretty fearful person. Throughout my life, and definitely since childhood I have felt trapped by fear, anxiety, and worry. When I was a kid I sought to quell that fear by hiding a lot, which resulted in being very lonely. Later, I used drugs and alcohol, which did help numb my fear, but also made me a pretty destructive individual, and the consequences of that REALLY didn’t help my self-esteem and eventually lead to me to getting clean and sober.
After that, I really saw how my lack of self-esteem impacted my relationships and how my lack of confidence kept me from living the life I wanted to live! And I realized that no one could save me from this particular ailment! I had to save me!
Learning how to not abandon myself, have better boundaries, and just the experience of living through difficulty have increased my self-trust, which gives me greater confidence. Doing esteemable acts, following my senses of curiosity and desire, learning how to listen to my body, taking myself less seriously, AND taking myself more seriously have helped me develop greater self-esteem.
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 started Pony Sweat in 2014, and am celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year! I started it as a “fiercely noncompetitive” dance aerobics class, a term that I coined to describe a specific type of container held for an emotive, and cathartic movement practice. I’ve spent the last 10 years teaching, practicing, and developing that praxis, while cultivating a vast community of “Ponies” that take class in L.A., or “across Space + Time” online. I am ceaselessly inspired by the experience of collective effervescence, which I have most often felt at shows, dance parties, and at Pony Sweat! The “Mixtape Routines” that I curate and choreograph seek to create the container for that experience/ritual.
I think what has always been special about Pony Sweat is the music, and the community of folks that the practice draws. I love music, and I express my love of music through dance. Every song I’ve ever chosen for class was picked because of what feelings or ideas it evoked inside of me that I wanted to express through dance and wanted others to express with me! We dance to songs across genres, including pop jams that you would probably not be surprised to do in an aerobics class, but we also dance to Kleenex/Liliput and Boy Harsher and Deerhoof you know? Gathering to dance to music we love creates connection, and if you have had the experience in your life of finding your people through the subcultures created by music– well you might find that happens at Pony Sweat! It’s a lot of sweet and tender freaks.
What has continued to feel really exciting about Pony Sweat is watching people discover or summon more of themselves, and expand their self-expression. Watching folks get out of their own way, learn the moves or fuck the moves, and become MORE themselves through liberatory movement practice is really powerful to witness.
Currently, I’m teaching a weekly in-person class in L.A., and Michella Rivera (Pony Sweat’s Artistic Producer) and I continue our work on the video subscription “O.O.O.B.N.A.” I also have a monthly radio show on Dublab. This year I reduced my teaching schedule in order to focus on some bigger, future Pony Sweat projects including a book, a big Saturday spectacle show, touring, and working on creating a teacher-training program so that we can have more Pony Sweat here and in other places! Folks can stay informed about that stuff by signing up for our newsletter, or following Pony Sweat on Instagram.
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?
1- Listening to music and bedroom-dancing. I took some beginner ballet and jazz dance classes as a kid, but never stuck with it. I was extremely unathletic and painfully self-conscious of my body as a kid. My love of dance and the way I move was cultivated from dancing on my own, in my room, to songs that I love. That is still how I make Pony Sweat routines today.
2- Tending to my health– mental, physical, spiritual! I have an auto-immune disease, depression, and anxiety. These physical and mental ailments can really take me out if/when I don’t tend to them. And also, I often don’t want to tend to them because it might mean slowing down and not doing everything I want to do, disappointing people or experiencing disappointment!! However, pushing through or ignoring the signals makes things way worse. I don’t have that much control over illness, but when I take small daily actions to improve my mental and physical health, it helps tremendously. Those include; being outside, drinking tea, stretching, petting my dog.
3- Practicing “Fuck the Moves” has changed everything for me. It is a phrase I use at Pony Sweat, because it is the mind-frame I used to start Pony Sweat. Perfectionism kept me from trying to do the things I wanted to do forever. I thought there was a prescribed way to everything, and I didn’t know it, and therefore couldn’t do it. I didn’t know then that the really good stuff comes from the mess we make in the beginning! Now, when I feel afraid to try something new, a voice inside me hollers “Fuck the Moves!” and I try it anyway.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Large Dance Spaces! In the last few years, we lost the Sweat Spot and Live Arts LA, two beloved dance studios in L.A. Both of those places offered large studios (2000 s.f.) that had affordable rent. Don’t get me wrong, there are still amazing studios in LA that I love to teach and dance at– Stomping Ground, Pieter Space, Studio A, and Sibling space where I am teaching now all come to mind. But/And there is a HUGE and varied dance and movement community and not enough large spaces to accommodate teachers and facilitators. If it wasn’t for the space and affordability that Karen and Jenn offered me at Live Arts for all those years, Pony Sweat would not have made it past its first year. Having affordable rent is a must for any teacher/facilitator to hold space consistently, which is how you build your audience. Large studio spaces inspire movement and ideas, AND they also provide opportunities for teachers to grow their class-size, which is important so that teachers can pay themselves AND offer equitable pricing models for students. The lack of large, affordable and available dance space is a challenge we’ve been navigating for almost a whole year.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ponysweataerobics.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ponysweat/
- Other: newsletter link: https://ponysweat.substack.com/ video subscription link: https://www.ponysweataerobics.com/video-subscription Radio show on Dublab: https://www.dublab.com/djs/emilia-richeson-valiente
Image Credits
1: Rachel Angelini 2-5: Video stills by Michella Rivera
