My journey began a long time ago - probably back when I was taking theater arts classes at high school - probably when I had a few minor roles in school plays... It wasn't how things were supposed to happen to me as I remember. I was supposed to go off out west to study archaeology - my other passion at the time. I had already volunteered in high school on an archaeology dig and continued helping out at the Cataraqui Archaeological Research Foundation in Kingston, Ontario once a week on volunteer nights.
I remember the dismay and concern of my father who was very generously paying my entire way through college. We had a lengthy man-to-man talk after I had come back home after my first year of college where told him I had auditioned and been accepted to both the theater program and dance program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Instead of focusing on digs and memorizing timelines of pre-historic human development, I had spent the entire year working on a university play about the Nuremburg trials after the fall of Nazi Germany called The Investigation by Peter Weiss. Ironically the director and guest teacher that year was Peter Elliot Weiss - no relation! I also was enrolled in acting classes each term as an elective class, and was auditing a dance class.
Every time I went to my Archaeology lectures, they seemed dismally like hard science. I wondered how a bunch of science nerds could reconstruct past lifestyles and cultures if they lacked the creativity and cultural understanding of an artist. Perhaps looking back, I was unfairly judgemental, but I suppose I used that to fuel my new found passion. I told my father in no uncertain terms that I wanted to study to be dancer - and so perhaps it was then that my journey truly began with its first big step...
I remember the dismay and concern of my father who was very generously paying my entire way through college. We had a lengthy man-to-man talk after I had come back home after my first year of college where told him I had auditioned and been accepted to both the theater program and dance program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Instead of focusing on digs and memorizing timelines of pre-historic human development, I had spent the entire year working on a university play about the Nuremburg trials after the fall of Nazi Germany called The Investigation by Peter Weiss. Ironically the director and guest teacher that year was Peter Elliot Weiss - no relation! I also was enrolled in acting classes each term as an elective class, and was auditing a dance class.
Every time I went to my Archaeology lectures, they seemed dismally like hard science. I wondered how a bunch of science nerds could reconstruct past lifestyles and cultures if they lacked the creativity and cultural understanding of an artist. Perhaps looking back, I was unfairly judgemental, but I suppose I used that to fuel my new found passion. I told my father in no uncertain terms that I wanted to study to be dancer - and so perhaps it was then that my journey truly began with its first big step...
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| On the left dancing at Simon Fraser University, and on the right some 20 years later. |
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