Asia Pyron makes concert dance for the people

I spoke with choreographer and dancer Asia Pyron, who started her dance company, PYDANCE, while still in college. We talk about how she got her start, how she engages with an audience on tough subjects, and working as a dancer outside of NYC.

Anna: How would you describe your dance company?

Asia: PYDANCE is a fun, uplifting, chaotic dance experience for Nashville. We build choreographic productions that engage the audience in a radical point of view.

PYDANCE makes dance for the people, not for dance sake. There's a phrase nowadays, “dance for dance sake” or “move just to move,” and that's not really what I do. I'm like, “No, we're dancing.” We're speaking a message I feel this community needs to hear, and I think it's very unique to Nashville and we want to honor Nashville.

Tell me about the piece you did for the Centennial Art Center.

POOL is inspired by the story of Kwame Lillard and Matthew Walker and their effect on the Centennial Art Center. (They protested the segregated pool at Centennial Park in 1961, which led to the city closing all of Nashville’s public pools.)

There is an interview of Kwame talking about freedom riding in Nashville and national issues and his and his family's history in Nashville. We wanted to honor him and use it as a jumping off point to telling our own story. So the second half of this show is us.

We are talking about our experiences and we're dancing to our own voices. 

This piece, ZOMBIE, is about us dancing together. But you can see how each of us are affected over time. Me and Joi [Ware] are African American women. We are all doing the same phrase over and over again, but every time we finish it, me and Joi have a harder time getting back up. And Lenin [Fernandez], who's Hispanic, is having a hard time as well. But a little bit different because he doesn't have the same experiences as me and Joi. And then Aurora [Jensen] and Becca [Hoback], who are passing white women. They are up, they're fine. 

Racism itself is very heavy and I didn't want anybody to see this series and walk out feeling heavy. I wanted them to feel like this is just someone's experience. Like, I'm just gonna be listening here. Sharing this experience with somebody and knowing that we are standing on the roots of the literal place that something happened. Living in Nashville, you're never not going to walk on land that is either connected to slavery or the civil rights era, or the Trail of Tears. That's the reality of living in the South in general. 

Before we started making the piece, we had a lot of conversations about how we grew up and what that felt like, and making sure that we're taking all of our experiences into consideration. I'm a black woman, but I'm also a light skinned woman, and in a way, there's light skinned privileges. That's something that I want to share too.

Where are you originally from?

I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, but I was born in Lansing, Michigan. My dad's from Detroit. My mom grew up in Buffalo, but got relocated to Atlanta. After I started pursuing dance, I wasn't really finding a good fit for me to dance intensely while going to school. 

I went to the summer intensive at Interlochen and I loved it. It’s an arts boarding school in northern Michigan, and it's gorgeous. You're surrounded by trees and beautiful music. It's a whole mecca of art. They invite about 3000 kids to the camp, and only about 500 kids to the school. They invited me when I was about to start high school, and I went for all four years. I really loved it.

Then I went to Boston Conservatory for college. I love Boston; that's where I started my company. When I was a senior I had already been choreographing for our yearly or annual choreography student show. 

I got into the Boston Contemporary Dance Festival, which was really cool. That was the first time I had gone outside of the school. Then I did another festival called 360 Dance. After that, I realized I'm more interested in just doing my own thing, instead of being in a company. 

When I got closer to graduating I was trying to figure out where I was gonna go. PYDANCE was going in Boston at that point and people already knew my work. I think people thought I was gonna go to New York or LA or something. And then I was like, you know, let me try Nashville. I think Boston ruined city life for me. I just can't live in a big city. I went to the New Dialect intensive in Nashville and I loved it. It was amazing. I thought the community was very welcoming. There's not much dance here, but whatever is here is great. Even though it's not New York, I don't think that's a problem, I think that's a good thing.

How have you found audiences here?

The audience here is actually perfect for PYDANCE. Nashville is already Music City and obviously has a very big country music scene. It’s a good tourist spot and people really enjoy being here. With concert dance, though, it's totally different. Many people don’t understand classical ballet or postmodern dance. But PYDANCE brings a lot of energy and excitement and wants you to have fun, and wants it to be enjoyable.

Murder of Crows is our latest work. It’s based around a murder mystery and it's much more dance theater so we're acting while we're dancing. This past Halloween, we partnered with Lou Nashville to have a dinner theater night. They had three courses, and we performed the piece between each course. It's small and intimate, but it was perfect, and we made it so people are in it with us. Even my friends who had never really seen dance before got into it. 

What you're seeing is purely what I've been trained to do. It's always trying to make that concert dance commercial. Commercial dance is defined as dance for an audience. Usually commercial dancers are hired for the Country Music Awards or for music videos.  They do it to highlight a product or sell something. My work is inspired by all those people. I've learned from them and now I'm trying to break that barrier. I think my next project will be inspired by the local punk rock scene.

What advice would you give someone that wanted to start their own dance company?

First, start creating. Once you create, whether it's for yourself, or for others, you will be engaged with community.

Ask yourself, Where am I gonna create? How am I gonna create? Why am I creating? How much do I want to create? Then you'll start to form exactly what this company is gonna look like. 

Once you start creating and put yourself out there, tell yourself every idea that you have is completely valid to explore. Then when the puzzle pieces are fitting together and things are forming, keep going with it. And don't ever be scared, or intimidated, because, no one's you. So no one's ever gonna have the kind of artistic intelligence that you have. You really have to own it. And if you don't own it, then it won't come across.

Learn more about PYDANCE at www.pydance.online and follow them on Instagram @_pydance_ and follow Asia @itsasia