©2015 Omar Z Robles | www.omarrobles.com | All Rights Reserved.
Dear Two-Thousand Fifteen,
Thank you for bringing me the most colorful year yet. With the passing of each year I find myself simultaneously filled with pride and stunned by how many new experiences, friends, perspectives, and questions I gained over the course of twelve months. This year was no exception.
The following ramble is due to part-documentation, gloating, and I-have-a-blog-now-so-I-should-update.
Within 2015: I experienced my first winter living in Brooklyn, NY, exercising the practice of taking off excessive winter gear before entering steamy, sardine-d subways; only to stealthily put it back on again before facing the bitter cold. I nurtured my love for tiny children and taught at Kidville under cute class names such as Big Muscle Builders and Run Wiggle Paint and Giggle - meeting the children of famed actors and models and, normal Manhattan-people. I continued my apprenticeship with Elisa Monte Dance and when the company went on tour I would sub in for Tiffany Rea-Fisher's contemporary classes at The Joffrey Ballet School (involving many prances and X-shapes). I started receiving collaborative proposals by photographers such as the Insta-famous Omar Z. Robles, adventurers Hloni Coleman and Zach Louw from Cape Town, and Kike Calvo of the National Geographics. I auditioned for a fabric commercial where I learned tanglingchoreography using bed-sheets (I didn't get the callback). Made some cool dance videos with videographer Jacob Hiss, and my favorite improv partner, Scott Willits. I volunteered at Mark Morris Dance Group's Dance for PD program where I witnessed the beauty of sometimes fifty seniors with Parkinson's Disease, who trek to Brooklyn every Wednesday afternoon to dance (and they sure can dance.) I made my JOYCE THEATER debut with The Francesca Harper Project, danced in a piece by Margot Gelber at STREB which consisted of me standing on table that raised me 30-feet up in the air, and took part in a pre-production workshop for an immersive dance theater show with Broadway choreographer, Chase Brock.
Through all of this, I still enjoyed simple pleasures like being greeted by sunlight through my windows in the morning; taking in the satisfying smoky smell of blowing my candle out at night; and the making of many kinds of friendships. New, old, spontaneous, predictable, brief, life-long... all being invaluable.
If there is one thing I find myself contemplating at the end of each year, it is how often and unexpectedly things, including myself, change. Like New York winter weather, you can depend on nothing to stay the same. Yet this is also what makes life so extraordinary. I am excited (and terrified) by what unimaginable things the upcoming year will bring, and I hope you will follow me on my next journey!