Jenn Doan - Producer/Dancer
Ok… so it sounds kinda cheezeballz at first but let me explain why I need dance in my life.
Movement and performance creation has always been with me since a young age. I was really expressive with my creativity and always quite kinesthetic and physical. In Grade 6 I remember being inspired by a movie on tv so i decided to write up a whole play on my own time and performed it with a friend for the whole class. I would also always go the extra mile when we were asked to write book reports in Language arts class. I would create a whole performance instead of write a “report.” I also remember creating every kind of club possible like a cooking club, a sewing club, an animal club, a Fear Street club… My friend and I would organize field trips and events for all our clubs.
I did not start dance classes until Grade 12 but what really planted the seed for dance was discovering underground rave parties in gr. 10. I started going to them a lot and mostly sober but I would dance so long and so hard that people would approach and ask me what kind of “E” I dropped. They wouldn’t believe when I told them I was sober. The rave environment really nurtured me to move freely and creatively. Dancing until 8 in the morning was just such a cathartic experience. Sometime I would wake up with black bruising under my toes nails from the way I was dancing “shrug.* Being physically active was essential for me and still is. I come from a very aggressive family (being Vietnamese) which meant that I also have a lot of fire and aggression inside of me. The need to move and expend high amounts of energy is a way for me to diffuse that fire. If I don’t that energy eats me up inside. I was a Muay Thai Kickboxer for 5 years and even trained to go into the ring for a few full on competitive fights… crazy kicks, punches, elbows, knees, all of it. I loved it and I really kicked some ass.
I entered into university to study Business because I was hella ambitious and wanted to make a lot of money. A lot. I would drive and dream of becoming a CEO. I wanted to bathe in money! In the first year I also decided to take a drama class which was new territory. I was really artistic in elementary school but after that I become very academic taking all my maths, sciences, and all of that. I actually didn’t take any arts courses at all until dance in grade 12. After year one I got accepted into Business school early because of a really high GPA. Then in the second year, first semester, I failed all my classes except an intro ballet dance class that I was taking. I failed everything because my parents were going through an incredibly intense and chaotic divorce that summer while I was also running my own full on College Pro Painting business with 8 employees. I was only 18 and the emotional stress was too great for me to even understand. My system shut down and I became so depressed for half a year. All I did was stay out until 6am getting high with my friends. Everyday. I was a total bum and was filled with anger and resentment. After that I took a few more dance classes and it was the only thing that i wanted to do. It gave me some kind of hope and motivation. I kept taking more classes and slowly I came out of depression. I started taking courses to get into Kinesiology and also my first intro contemporary dance class. BAM! That was it. Screw business, screw kinesiology. I found it. It was contemporary dance. My fire came back and I was determined to move to the top again. I was always ambitious and driven so dance fueled this but it also gave me a chance to nurture and challenge the creativity that I always had but forgot about when I was more concerned about all the nice things money could buy me.
Why contemporary dance? It allows me to be exactly who I am and what I need to express. It allows me to define my own unique style. Not to say that technical training is not necessary.
I did not have crazy technical training since I was young so my body was different from a “trained”dancer but I was still very connected to my body and choreography and improvisation came natural to me. It made sense and I loved it so much right away. Didn’t need anytime to get comfortable. I didn’t have to conform to a very specific form or style. I knew immediately that I would be a creator. I didn’t care as much about being someone else’s dancer. I wanted and needed to create.
Jenn Doan - Dancer
SOOO… I was reaffirmed once again just recently that dance was necessary for me. After I fractured my fifth metatarsal during our Duck Wife dance rock opera tour in the summer of 2010, I took a year break from any kind of creating / dancing. I was very low and felt like smelly nasty crap about myself. I felt really lost about my life. I was going through an identity crises like Melina and also struggling financially because I was traveling to much to have any kind of job at home and no longer had any projects ahead to pay me. I felt like such a failure and was so full of self-pity and worthlessness. It was a ROUGH year. Then just last October, my friend Ian Ferrier asked me to perform at a poets festival in Montreal. I went into the studio for 5 weeks with my boyfriend / artistic partner to create a new sci-fi dance rock opera. We performed it again at a huge artists’ expo before I headed to Calgary to produce inlayers. People from all walks of life responded overwhelmingly positive to the work. I remember sitting in a cab filled with euphoria. I was sooo high from the performance. For 2 days, I was so happy and joyful and calm and carefree. I told my boyfriend that this is it. This is what feeds my soul. This is what I was put here to do. To inspire people with my passion for dance and music. From over a year of feeling so dull and lifeless, I finally felt life inside me again.
