KRISTIN SUDEIKIS

Kristin Sudeikis— Choreographer, heart-led entrepreneur, Artistic Director of Kristin Sudeikis Dance + Founder/ceo/lead instructor of FORWARD__Space based in downtown NYC 

What is about your art/creative career that makes you want to do it? 

Oh so much. Why dance? I do not feel as though I called dance, rather so dance called me. And it has been a profound back and forth via the body and storytelling for as long as I can remember. Why do I do it? It is what I am here to do. Period. I often think of how Dance is analogous to love in that it’s in the act of the dancing, it’s in the action of the loving. As opposed to the photo of the dance or the photo of the love, it is in the experiencing of — there is nothing else I have felt destined to do… All of life is a dance. Awakening or introducing others to this truth is an honor. I feel lucky to have known this early on from my earliest memories. As a kid, I knew I would always do this. It is what I am and it is what I am here to do. To exhale it to as many people as possible. My soul had a mission as I know others have this type of drive or call to a particular art form as well. 

Where do you get your faith from to keep creating? 

From within and also from a source that is ineffable— it is pure electricity that moves me to dance. It almost feels like being moved or being danced. It comes from within and it comes from without. It comes from the same source as the sun, when it is beaming in my eyes – it beams this magnetic force in me that is moving and longing to be expressed and shared. It is unrelenting and I surrender to it with gratitude and a ton of inquisition. 

What’s the drive behind your work? 

Life in and of itself. Storytelling. Stories within me, stories around me. Letting stories move around me. It’s imagination, it’s creating something not yet seen or felt. Music. Drums. Poetry. So to feel it first on a dance floor or in an audience – to feel it and then to create it. (Stammers and laughs) Can you tell I love it? I feel like dancing now. It’s storytelling. It’s tapping into the nonverbal communication, like when we first began when we entered the world. That nonverbal communication is moving and connecting in spaces so we can drop into that ancient, future, now language that is dance  – 

this is where I think the greatest transformations happen…through physicalizing our stories. Stories Of play, of dreams, of heartbreak –. I feel it in my own body but then I share it and realize I am not alone in experiencing these stories. There is a collective dream and vision of the future happening and a collective heartbreak. 

Within FORWARD__Space, our dance Space jn NYC, this is a space where people can tap in and explore and discover their own story via the dance floor and being led through 50-minute classes anchored in dance, conditioning and moving mediation. We have a Virtual Hub as well with members in over 100 countries dancing and moving all over the globe. 

You need both of them, the pain and the joy. 

The pain and the joy. 

What advice would you tell to your younger self?

Breathe. Deep exhales. To continue to hold on. To hold onto that which is deep within you. Find the spaces and places that allow you to hold on just as you are. So for me it was the dance floor and stages and rehearsals and with beautiful souls I feel lucky to have surrounded myself with— it was the different teachers that allowed a space for us to explore ourselves and be ourselves and create ourselves. Release what does not resonate with you. The eight year old within me is living out her wildest dreams. And then also the 88 year old within me is like “go, go off, keep going and stay within.” Tune into the people around you, even the people you don’t agree with  – there are a lot of lessons there, so you can’t ignore that. So for my younger self I would say – stay in the places and spaces, hold onto that within you that you know is true despite what anyone says or anyone is showing you. Dream of the future you know is possible and dance it into existence. 

Why don’t you quit and what would you tell someone who is about to give up? 

The word ‘quit’ doesn't quite resonate with my soul. I am steadfast in continuing to move forward because the future lives in my gut and my heart and my imagination and so it has such a pull on me.. But in those moments when it feels incredibly challenging – I don’t think of it as quitting. I feel I am being redirected. I am being shown to go this way! A new way. Sometimes you just keep hitting a wall, so it’s not quitting, it is deeply listening with my body and allowing it to show me with the inner compass where to go next and I follow that. 

When it gets challenging, I am down for it, I don’t feel I shy away from it. Also, when a challenge arises, the challenge invites me to drop in further and sync up with who I am around and make sure they are also as steadfast in their belief in a dream of future possibility as I am. 

What do you want to create that you hope will repeat? 

Dance floors that transform, expand and renew us— Rooms filled with palpable possibility where people are connecting to themselves, those around them as well as the greater world within and around all of us. Spaces, experiences and performances where people are exploring their own story. Not just looking at how others define them but how they seek to define themselves. Questioning with compassion – with the heartache and the heart opening and the shifts, waves, twists and turns of it all as well as the uncovering of the roots of where it comes from and the next ideation, the next step in discovering that we are not just what you see. performances that give us the chills that allow us to cry with elation and also relief and understanding. The experiences in the theater that change us forever and open up our minds. 

What are you on the verge of? 

I feel like I am consistently on the verge of something. I don’t know if I have ever or will ever consider myself to have arrived— perpetually on the verge. On the verge of who knows. Perpetually on the verge of expanding into more mystery, wonder, beauty, awe…

Anything else you want to say to the people who want to create? 

Art is what is going to drive us to the future. People will know if this is what they are being called to do. You know the feeling of something pulling you somewhere and it is beyond your intellectual understanding. It’s a force. 

It is sort of life or death actually, whether or not they will step into the creation of it or not. My advice would be to not do it for anyone else rather, move from the intention of doing for the sake of creating. Like nature, the sun rises and the sun sets, it’s just doing what it does. So with dancing it is just what I do, not for external validation. We are a creation, we have been created. I think it is also great to do it without anyone seeing it. Write the story, write the poem, dance the dance, sing the song, paint the canvas. Explore why are you not? Who told you no, and why are you replaying that no. If you know why you don’t then maybe that would open the door to why you can. The doing of it reveals so much to us. The doing of it, the being in it, the forever becoming because of it …