Meet Ignacio Jara

We recently connected with Ignacio Jara and have shared our conversation below.

Ignacio, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?

My name is Ignacio.
Since my childhood I constantly participated in school and community events, either dancing or creating choreographies for different contexts. Although everything was always very instinctive and informal, I never trained as a dancer, teacher or choreographer until my university education, but somehow I was always doing those 3 things without knowing that at some point I would see myself making a living out of it.
When I had to say what career I was going to study, almost at the last moment I decided that it had to be Dance, although all the years before that decision, my life goal was always mathematics.
My university period was beautiful, but also very challenging. I was the student with no previous training and I did not have even the minimum of experience compared to my classmates. On the one hand, I was a sponge that absorbed all the new information that my professors gave me, and on the other hand, I clashed with the standards that already existed about what it meant to “dance” or “create” in dance. And that was my biggest motivation. I never had a rigid training before college, so I wanted to dance everything and create with all kinds of languages. In my mind I just saw myself dancing and flowing, although outwardly society demanded me to label and define “what I was being” and somehow I also put pressure on myself with that: did my creativity come from modern dance? Or contemporary? Or was it urban dance that moved my insides?

I started to have a lot of conflicts in my last years of college. I was supposed to capitalize on my studies, and I was still very confused and lost about “what I was doing”? How should I name it? Or how should I sell it?

So somewhere in that storm I experienced a creative peak where I didn’t question so much what I was doing and just flowed with my dance making. But when I had my graduation exam, one of my tutors at the university gave me such impersonal, anti-pedagogical and violent feedback about my entire academic path, that I sank into my internal processes for years without being able to teach or create without suffering or feeling anxious about what I was going to show of myself. I was offered opportunities, jobs, events or spaces to teach or create, but I could not heal all the damage that the university and my own mentality generated in me, that I even invented excuses to say NO to everything that came into my life to make me grow.
And it was there that my personal process to unblock my creative flow began.
Many hours of therapy, books, podcasts, conversations with friends, investment of money with recognized teachers or professors to know “how” they did what they did and an infinite large etcetera.

I didn’t realize it, but the process to understand my creative processes had started before I studied at the University, and I think it took me 12 years to feel good about what I was doing and creating.

Along my path I have come across different diamonds that have allowed me to polish my own diamond in the rough. It has helped me to write down in my cell phone all the tips or phrases that could help me or empower me with my creative flow. I write messages on the walls of my house so I don’t forget what is important, and that although I have many tools that I had 12 years ago, the mind is fragile and sometimes I forget the journey I have lived to get here.

I have also allowed myself experiences that have generated a reality shock. Working for television, where the creative rhythm is subject to a very commercial and “disposable” issue, was very important to overcome my creative processes, because I literally had 1 or 2 hours to create 8 or 10 songs of 4 minutes each, where there was a team of dancers who waited attentively for my creative direction. I was forced to overcome my blocks with that experience hahaha
Traveling to another country (USA), with another culture and ways of doing things, was also very relevant in my process to overcome my creative blocks. It allowed me to recognize my powers and tools. Many people put their trust in me and that infinitely boosted my own self-confidence.

Being able to talk to older people or people who were in the places where I wanted or want to be has also served me well. I have seen several interviews of people who are creative or outstanding in their fields, who share many things in common, among them, the courage to be able to directly ask your referents “how” they do what they do. I have never received a No in this regard. I have come across kind people who have had the time and love to tell me about their experiences and that has been extremely inspiring and has helped me to materialize more tools that have helped me to connect with my creative flow.
[4:21 a. m., 19/8/2024] .: Collaborations with other people have also been very relevant. Getting together to create with others without putting any pressure or prior expectations has also been a beautiful discovery. Talking with friends about creativity and watching them create or solve in the here and now has also been incredible.

All these small and big information I have in audios or notes on my cell phone, some I write them on the wall of my house to make it more accessible to remember, and I have notebooks with different tips that help me to concretize when I have to create, assemble something or materialize some creative proposal.

I don’t question as many things as I used to. My filters have changed. I don’t worry about whether I like it or not. Nor do I feel the need to create “masterpieces” or choreographic material that “hits” a particular audience. I have, and continue to learn, to connect with my intuition and instinct. I believe more in myself and my ways of translating the world through my body. I don’t seek approval from others, but rather the approval I give myself when I know that what I’m doing makes me feel something or provokes something. And when that doesn’t happen, I change what I am doing, I transform it or I let go and do something else, but I am constantly searching for that connection.

Connecting with life has been my greatest learning experience. Connecting with people in my neighborhood, connecting with friends, co-workers, with new spaces, consuming art from different disciplines. Expanding my awareness of my latent creativity every day, every time I’m having a conversation with someone or every time I’m solving something without having all the resources, has been a super power that I have seen active the last 2 years of my life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a lover of movement in general. I love to dance, create and teach. I believe the power of my artistic endeavors is in empowering the abilities of others to find their own artistic voice or path, whether it be in dance or another discipline.
I motivate others to flow creatively. To connect with their emotions and personal perspectives to translate the world around them, being able to materialize through movement whatever they want to say/do/move.

And when it comes to my personal work, whether it is something creative or choreographic, I give a specific structure (depending on the context) to my creative idea, and in the process of materializing that vision, I take different tools or methodologies that I know will allow me to better realize in reality what I want.
In that sense, I allow myself to believe in myself as if I were a magician who, from nothing and with the help of my imagination, can create universes that connect others with their own realities in order to generate some emotion, reflection or questioning. My main objective is to generate or move something in others.

And from a pedagogical perspective, lately I am focusing on generating bodily challenges that push my students to uncomfortable places to enhance the dance background that each one has. I love the music – movement relationship and my main goal is that my dance class is a space to connect with the joy of moving, allowing the individuality and personality of each person in the class.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

For this question I will say one of everything. Here they go:

One of the main skills that has empowered and impacted me in my personal journey is my ability to connect with others through conversation and active listening. Being genuinely interested in another and being able to show myself to be transparent and approachable has been a quality that has empowered my work and creative connections in many ways.

One quality that I consider important is curiosity. Keeping the flame of curiosity alive in all kinds of things connects you with life and surprise, feeding the creative capacity because you are able to perceive or identify greater and greater sources of inspiration, reflection, emotional outbursts or importance. This quality has pushed me to meet people I never thought I would share, or to read books and listen to interviews that could give me more information about the things I wanted to know or understand.

And an area of knowledge that has marked me, is related to the study of human psychology. Also many advances in Neuroscience have guided me in a more effective and productive way in my creative practices. Everything related to the understanding of human psychology and my own personal complexity, has led me to read different books about creativity, creative blocks, impostor syndrome, soft skills development or techniques to avoid sinking every time I am in a deep introspection and need help to resume my creative flow.

My advice to people who are starting their own personal journeys would be to follow each of those strong and intense genuine interests that each person has. That even if you don’t know where the sum of the steps you take will lead you, you should at least be at peace with yourself that you have loved every step and decision you are making because you have decided to do so. And if you don’t feel that way, you can always retract, redo, adjust or refine. The important thing is not to give up and persist. Keep digging deep!

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

I will say 2 books that have had a deep impact on me: The “Kybalion” and “Free Play”.

I think the Kybalion helped me a lot to define more precisely a lot of philosophical ideas that had me in conflict years ago. It allowed me to generate relationships and strategies to better hack my brain and my creative process in general. The Kybalion is a book that states that mind and thought are the supreme powers of the universe, and that humans can beneficially harness primal forces such as thought, rhythm and polarities.

And in “Free Play” there is a lot of information that empowered and continues to empower my creative practice. It talks about error, the importance of collaborative practice with other artists, the nurturing that exists when crossing disciplines or different techniques, the ability we all have to enter a state of flow and concentration to manifest our ideas in the material world, etc. In general, this book is a guide to be able to improvise in art and in life.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ignaciojarax/
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

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