We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Morgan Griffin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Morgan below.
Morgan, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I contribute a lot of my resilience to my family and childhood. I didn’t grow up with a lot, and yet I thought that I had everything in the world. My parents were amazing in making everything out of nothing. My sister had an incredible imagination and the worlds we created were endless. I think part of being resilient is not being aware of your limitations, of constantly dreaming beyond what others think is possible or probable. I started figure skating as a young child. That taught me a lot about dedication, determination, and failure. I loved figure skating so much and yet I continued to fall over and over again no matter how hard I trained. It was really hard for me mentally, and after a while I ended up giving it up, but it was definitely a great lesson in resilience. You have to just keep getting up and skating on.
From there I moved to focus on dancing, which soon came to be my true love. I believe that being a dancer is being resilient. You are never fully satisfied, always left wanting more, often undervalued, constantly rejected…it is a love that will never love you back. But the hard work, process, community and art form are all worth it. (But please people, give dancers more money, opportunities, and appreciation.)
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a freelance dancer, choreographer, performer, teacher and producer…..which means something different based on the day, month, year, and means that I do a real hodgepodge of things. I consistently teach dance at an organization called Figure Skating in Harlem, I am a producer for an art amusement park currently in LA called Luna Luna, and I am a co-producer of Beach Sessions Dance Series. I have been so fortunate to have performed in some incredible dance projects, including Madeline Hollander’s “Hyroparade” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a new arrangement of Merce Cunningham’s “Beach Birds” on Rockaway Beach, and a reconstruction of Robert Whitman’s “American Moon” at Pace Gallery. I also choreograph and perform my own work, and am working on presenting a new evening length work this year. Life as a freelancer is often unpredictable with some periods of time feeling full of opportunities, and others feeling entirely barren. But I do feel that I have a purpose in the dance world. I want to bring dance to more people, to more places, bring opportunities to myself and others, bring people together, create more space and funding for dance. I want to collaborate with others and be a part of ongoing processes of making dance. I know what I want, but I am still figuring out exactly how to do it all. I want a big life and a small life all at once, and I believe that is possible.
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?
Hard work, optimism, self sufficiency
You really have to put in the hard work to be a dancer. There is no getting around it. It never ends. In fact it somehow only gets harder.
You have to be constantly optimistic because your whole life people will only continue to tell you that you can’t.
You have to be self-sufficient because no one is really looking out for you other than you.
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
This is a question that I personally struggle with, and certainly do not know the answer to. On one hand I have always kept a part of my life separate from dance. Some of my work, some of my social life. In some ways I think there is a benefit to that. Having an alternate perspective, skillset, and circle. I think it can lend to growth. And yet I also have friends who are only fully immersed in dance….in their work, their life, their friend groups. They really live and breath it, whereas I sometimes compartmentalize it. I find myself jealous of them at times, but also wonder if it is a “grass is greener on the other side” kind of situation. At the end of the day (and speaking solely on my own behalf), I likely strive more on having a variety of skillsets that I continue to hone, hoping that at some point they converge and all lead towards the life of a dancer. At this point in my life I have a desire to be a kind of a “one woman show”, and able to do everything all on my own, so I feel I need to have all those various skills. That may come to change, but it is what I am pursuing at the moment.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @baddgalmomo
Image Credits
Images by Megan Christiansen, Corydon Wagner, Alex Munro, Jonathan Hökklo, and Styles.
