When I was seven years old, I was so envious of my neighborhood friends who wore pretty ballet clothes and took ballet lessons. I asked my mother to let me learn ballet because I also wanted to dance in pretty clothes. I didn’t know it at the time, but it seems that my life of dancing started from that day.
I first started learning dance through ballet, but just before I entered art high school, I saw a performance by a famous modern dancer, and it made me realize how beautiful natural human movement itself is. I became fascinated by the free movement of modern dance and changed my focus to modern dance.
Any movement we make can be a dance, and we can express our thoughts without speaking. What a cool thing this is! That’s why it’s so important to get artistic inspiration to dance. In that respect, I think New York is the perfect city for me.
When I first moved to New York, I was afraid to live in a foreign country with a different language. Of course, there are still many difficulties, but once I got used to it, I was able to see the arts in New York that I did not know before. Fast and dynamic steps, rotations that can express busy cities and busy people, and the smooth, endless, cyclical movement associated with the feeling of nature in the park. New York City is full of movement everywhere.
I don’t know when it will be, but I look forward to the day when I can choreograph a dance with the feelings and thoughts I experience in New York.
Erica Chang, age thirty-two, is from Seoul, South Korea. She writes, “When I was in Korea, I was a professional modern dancer and teacher at the same time. I am not dancing right now, but I enjoy working out most of my free time because I like to move my body.” Erica Chang moved to New York in July 2021. She is a student at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Her teacher is Michele Persaud and the hub manager is Sherin Hamad.