Meet SIMEON Den

We were lucky to catch up with SIMEON Den recently and have shared our conversation below.

SIMEON, 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 attribute my resilience to being raised by my 1st & 2nd generation Filipino immigrant parents, who by example taught my siblings and I to always bring honor to our humble family legacy. At thirteen years old, my Dad was recruited from Ilocos Norte in the Phillipines expressly to work 12-hours-a-day shifts harvesting sugar cane in Hawaii. This was during the hard-working post-colonial Hawaii years into the years of WWII of my parents’ generation and although my dad was illiterate he was nevertheless;ess known and respected in the Filipino community as a proud, honorable, and resilient man. In the decade prior to Statehood in 1959, the dominant sugar cane and pineapple industry was re-directed in service to the selling and marketing the “Aloha Spirit.” Employment opportunities for my generation as well as for my parents’ were almost completely in service to Tourism–hotel workers, airlines personnel , restaurant & food service, Hawaiian exports, outdoor sports and day-touring activities, My mom learned to become a cocktail waitress and for 20 years my dad was a dishwasher at the famed Royal Hawaiian Hotel. At the very ripe old age of 8, my parents taught me & my siblings how to place a formal dinner party setting and more importantly, the proper delivery and the exit choreography of used dinner plates, glassware, and flatware.
This obscure recollection is my story of “Where I Get My Resilience From…”

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?

In me effort to be expeditious ( it’s 2am) I am attaching my website and the website of a mentor/mentee service for aspiring professional dancers .
Both bespeak brief-enough professional biographical info and I will continue tomorrow to write and fill-in-the-blanks of this Interview GPS :

1). my current passions as I approach my 75th year as a Transcendental fine artist and as a certified Sound Energy practitioner/healer

www.SimeonDenWellness.com

2) Derek Sakakura and I are about to launch a mentor/mente app service with six other accomplished professional dancers.

www.creativegenerations-dance.com

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Below, find: Quote from a “testimonial” from one of my life-long “Alaka’i” (Hawaiian for #1 student) on the www.creativegenerations-dance.com.site
When I returned from NYC in 1983 and started teaching he was 19years old and became one my first dancers in my new company. He is celebrated today for his own international dance company, Tau Dance Theater, and studies yoga & meditates with me from Hawaii two mornings -a-week on Zoom and wherever in the world he is traveling & whenever he needs spiritual & personal guidance.

Simeon Den is a veteran of dance, stage, theater and television turned producer and author. CEO of Simeon Den Wellness, his current work bridges the intersection of spiritual consciousness, meditation, mindful gratitude, energy work and sound bath techniques together with his original journey to the creation of his own hybrid modality combining all of his life’s learnings into Yoga Qi. He continues to be a mentor to me and my work and gifts me the balance I need to not let the stress of my work allow for negativity or fear. Simeon was instrumental in my early training as a dancer, encouraging me to found my own dance company which spans decades and now success as an established choreographer, dramaturge, teacher and director globally. His intuitive nurturing and inspirational support together with his energy work is good medicine for any aspiring, mid or late career artistic.
 
Peter Rockford Espiritu – Interdisciplinary Arts Creator
Executive & Artistic Director – Tau Dance Theater

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

Throughout my youth in Hawaii, growing up on the other-side-of-the-tracks Kalihi Kai neighborhood (our school yard was situated across the street from Oahu Prison, about 400ft from the prisoners’ day yard whose perimeter wall towered threateningly with light-sensitive barbed wire) I recall one day when my 5th grade elementary school teacher speaking to us about the difference between Fiction and Non-Fiction and something about ” the Great American Novel” and then as though he was not thinking about what he was talking about, as though in a reverie he scratched on the chalk board, ” The Great American Novel, everyone , you kids too, all of you have at least one Great American Novel in you!”
To that end in 2005, at the end of my self-proclaimed retirement from professional dancing in New York, I fancied returning to UCLA to finish my BA in Art to qualify teach at the college level, which is exactly what unfolded , including (in my estimation) I vomitted out my own first and only Great American Novel; a biographical essayist tome entitled, “8 Meditations on Urban Life” by Simeon Den, Paradise Find Publications , 2005.. Cover art is black & white photo of me standing barefooted wearing a white linen suit standing in the middle of Broadway and Times Square. THAT was /is the book that “has played an important role in (my) development wherein I remark on the valuable impactful nuggets of wisdom!”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.SimeonDenWellness.com
• Instagram: https://simeon.den
• Facebook: Simeon Den
• Youtube: Simeon Den Simeon Den 8 Meditations on Urban Life Simeon Den dance
• Other: https://www.creativecreations-dance.com

Image Credits

Peter Palladino