My idea for this costume started with the glove cuffs. Dripping in crystals and feathers. Beauty. Elegance. For no other reason than it needs to exist.

Over the course of this process, I realized this costume was about much more than wanting something new to wear onstage. It represents something I’ve been coming back to for the last few years: myself.

After a whole year and a half of performing regularly every week, with other types of shows in the mix, I was getting sick of my costumes and wanted something new, fresh, opulent and just more. Like every artist, I drew on what was occurring in my personal life.

To understand why this particular collection of feathers, crystals, pink and movement could carry so much meaning for me, I have to give a little background.

I’ve not been public or spoken much about it, but my childhood and young adult life were brutal, to say the least. Everything took an even worse turn when my father died when I was 21. Not only was I then coping with rough dynamics within my immediate family, but I was dealing with every single member of my extended family essentially clapping their hands together and going, “Great, what can we steal?”

I never got the opportunity to properly mourn my father’s passing because of that.

You truly see who people really are in those instances.

Especially when there is a family business involved with zero death clauses sorted out because your grandparents couldn’t tolerate any discussion of mortality.

I spent the bulk of my 20s in legal trenches with two of my uncles, one after the other. At long, long last, right before the pandemic, and in large part due to the efforts of the attorney I now have the privilege of working for, I won the war.

Relieving, yes, but also devastating. Because now, not only was I mourning my father, I was mourning the loss of a family I thought I had. A group of people who are supposed to support you. Look out for you. Not kick you when you’re down by silently taking away a college kid’s health insurance (one example).

The cruelty, greed, manipulation, hunger for power, and verbal abuse still stun me. And I’m glad it all does. I’m glad I have no concept of what it takes to treat the youngest member of one’s family like that.

I have done classical ballet since I was 3 years old. Even before that, my mother took me to Gymboree classes. (I don’t know if these still exist, but they are basically baby sensory development classes.)

As I grew older, I would spend 3+ hours every day training in classical ballet (mostly) and then 6+ hours on the weekends. The ballet studio was the place I felt safest. I could turn my brain off. Because how could I think about what was happening at home or worry about parenting my parents when there was physical perfection to be achieved? I threw everything I had into it.

I accomplished everything you would expect a young woman growing up in the Victorian era to accomplish: piano lessons, flute lessons, singing, classical ballet, maintaining a 4.0 GPA at all times, learning French—I was even presented to society as a formal debutante.

… Just don’t ask me to draw you anything. That one is not in my wheelhouse.

I did hate people making assumptions about who I was, though. Being put into a box. I rebelled against the color pink for obvious reasons. I thought I was Avril Lavigne when I was in high school. Learned to skateboard because of this.

Coming out of the mist of the pandemic, when our jobs as live performing artists were made illegal in NYC, I was grateful for my work ethic and my diverse set of skills which allowed me to dive into a few different things. Somewhere during my college years, I instinctively decided that the way I was going to be able to achieve success was to diversify my skillset as much as possible. That was why I jumped into the aerial arts at age 19.

Yet, I never stopped doing classical ballet. I learned the hard way that after doing something so strenuous for decades, if I don’t keep it up, my body screams at me until I go back. Literally—no amount of stretching relieves the muscle cramping that happens.

Ballet is and always will be home. Where I know who I am in my body and mind. While I know so many of us have our own complex relationships with the art form and our own journeys with it, at my absolute core, I will always be a ballerina.

Coming full circle and coming home to myself over the last few years, I’ve been quietly healing, revamping my artistic journey and working through a full rebrand of who I am as an artist and a person. I’m happier, healthier and more in tune with myself than I’ve ever been.

Part of the reason I wanted the costume to be this specific color and to have the amount of feathers and movement it does is to reclaim what I felt like I had to reject for so long. And to evoke a swan.

Swans are my favorite animal for numerous reasons. I always performed the Black Swan variation from Swan Lake. Swans fly, mirroring my aerial work, and they are inherently stoic, elegant creatures who will be ferocious if they need to be. They are beautiful and wonderful… if you don’t mess with them.

Why a burlesque costume for this, though?

This may be a subject for another blog post, but suffice it to say that burlesque saved me during a dark time when I was finding my footing in NYC. Burlesque was such a novelty for a repertory dancer who, for years, had been trained to learn choreography and regurgitate it onstage. I couldn’t believe people just… created choreographed pieces of their own and got hired to perform them? All over? It blew my mind at the time.

Another sage piece of advice, though, is when you do that as a business, identify what you’re good at and what you aren’t good at. Then, find someone to do what you aren’t good at.

(Remember the drawing incident? Yes, same thing goes with making costumes for me.)

I’m grateful that the wonderful Gustavo Casanovas was able to turn this idea into a work of art for me.

Sharing all of this because it’s finally ready to be said.

I feel as though I’m finally living in the light at the end of the tunnel. And this beautiful work of art represents that. The softness, the lightness, the joy and the peace are choices I’m so lucky to be able to make.

The acts I create with it will have several renditions, I’m sure. There are so many pieces and so many possibilities to this collection.

I just had my birthday this month, and I could not be more genuinely excited for this coming turn around the sun, the work I want to create, and the opportunities coming up.

And for whatever comes next.

From the plume 🦢🪶

“This life for you has been less than kind,
So take a number, stand in line,
We’ve all been sorry, we’ve all been hurt
But how we survive, is what makes us who we are”
- Rise Against, “Survive”

Introducing Le Cygne Rose