We recently connected with Buffie Mclaskey and have shared our conversation below.
Buffie , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I get my resilience from going through extremely hard, uncomfortable, and inescapable situations that I had no control over or say in.
I have learned from a young age that yes it’s hard and painful to go through challenging and sometimes intense and scary situations but I made it through and I still had my health, my mind, and my will to do and be better, which is a blessing that some do not have.
These times in my life where I felt out of control and helpless but pushed through taught me empathy towards others and made me want to help those who are going through difficult things. These times also taught me perseverance and ultimately resilience
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?
What I focus on personally is always doing my very best by everyone and everything around me. I try to leave things and people better than I found them. I believe the creative community needs each other and needs to support one another because the area that I live in, New England, I feel, has a bit to go in understanding why it’s important to support us and pay us what we deserve for the hard work and time and love that we commit to to make people happy and entertain. This is maybe due to not understanding what it takes to create art and how much work is put in., and what sacrifices have been made to achieve a certain level of performance and ability. Because of this, I try to educate people on the artist community and I network and share connections with other artists as much as possible.
Professionally I am the Co-founder and Creative Director of Rebel PlayGround Dance Company along with my partner Shannon O’Connor Randall. We had already been performing for a few years in our other Dance Company Called The Bentley’s Angels, as well as teaching and performing as solo Dancers for various other projects . However, performing for this company limited us to which styles of Dance we could perform to as we had to adhere to what our sponsor wanted. We felt that we needed to create a Dance Company that allows for freedom of style and creativity. We decided to name our company Rebel PlayGround because it was multiple styles of dance, music, and venue. These styles range in anything from Country to 60’s beach party, to Hip-Hop, to Disco, and anything in between that will gain us paying gigs at places that make us happy to perform in. This is necessary to survive and thrive as a professional Dancer in Maine at this time I believe. The more we can offer, the more opportunities that we have access to and the more we grow as artists and individuals.
At this point we have created over 50 Dance choreography pieces within the past few years within several styles and genres of music and dance.
This leads me to talk about what’s next….
What we are working on currently is putting together our Dance Dinner shows. These shows will be fun and interactive where the audience gets to learn dances as well as watch us perform in a visually immersive environment while they enjoy food and drink. Our first show will be a Disco themed show where we will be the hosts and performers as well as teach fun Disco dances to the audience. Costumes will be encouraged, as with many of our themed shows. Holding our own shows will give us more freedom over how much we can make as performers , we will not be relying on the venue to provide our pay. It will also give us the opportunity to work with other artists in our community and showcase them, as well as spread awareness about creative artists and why we are important and deserve to be able to make a living doing what we love.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I was taught at a young age by the many amazing teachers and leaders that I had the honor of learning from that we must always focus on our foundations first. We must crawl before we walk and then run and in order to do that you have to put work in. Hard work.! You have to be humble and willing to not be the best but still have a good attitude and work as hard as you can to get better every day. It’s also important for me to share my knowledge, to teach others and help others to attain their goals as much as I can. I believe that we need to keep growing and lastly, connecting with others is vital. Our Dance partners and peers, our audience, our students, the general public. Anyone who we have the ability to reach, we should share our art with them because if we do that , I believe we will be making the world a better and happier place.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
My # 1 challenge and obstacle since September is regaining my health and physical abilities after having 3 major surgeries at the end of August, 2024. My body went through intense trauma and it’s been a long physically and emotionally draining road gaining my strength and flexibility back.
What I am doing to overcome these obstacles is getting up every day and giving 110%. I go to the gym every day to build my strength back. I take several classes a week that range from strength building to flexibility. I Dance every day to not only work on my art but to give my soul the release it needs… to feel free and happy. I have also started taking Aerial classes which has been a dream of mine for a while. These classes are grueling and intense but they make me happy. I’ve had days where it hurts to do a back bend which for a professional Dancer is an easy thing to do normally . I’ve had many days where I feel like a failure for not being as strong or as flexible as I was. I pick myself up, take a breath, and sometimes have to wipe tears of failure and frustration away and I keep going. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.
I know that I will be stronger than I ever was before because I have a fire in me to succeed and to lead and a hunger in my soul to create and Dance and be my best self. I was broken to pieces but I am putting myself back together stronger and more determined than ever and I hope to have a positive effect on others along my journey.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @rebel_playground
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1AxZVGsVdA/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Other: TikTok.com@buffrox1
rebelplaygrounddanceco@gmail.com
Image Credits
Celeste Cannafarina
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