Andrés F Gómez Alvarado

Dance has been a recent but deep interest of mine that has transcended the way I see various aspects of life. As a dancer I want to transmit the joy and satisfaction that I feel when dancing. While this is my first time choreographing, I want to portray movements full of life and with a motivation behing them. I am afraid of not dancing to my fullest, however, I am also concerned about keeping myself safe from harming my body’s integrity when going to the extreme in order to achieve perfection. I yearn for the audience to engage with this narrative.

One of my biggest fascinations as a kid was the art of animation and with this project, I want the audience to experience childlike amazement while watching my animation.

Traditional 2D animation has evolved in a way in which it is accessible for everyone, and it allows beginners to experiment through different mediums the art of giving motion to still pictures. I decided to choose a 2D hand-drawn animation format over 3D because of my fascination for a flipbook animation project that I once had in my childhood. Flipping the pages and seeing the little stickman characters I drew come to life made me want to try to animate something myself, something bigger. I knew animation meant more than just the art of making still drawings look alive and I wanted to showcase what my younger self once visualized.

Furthermore, my goal is for the viewers to feel the joy that I once felt as a kid when watching Pixar and Disney animated movies that made me fall in love with animation.

Animating this dance, this choreography, helped me to see myself and my dance from different angles. When I see myself dance, I tend to focus on only what is seen from the front but with this animation I have seen myself dancing from other angles. In addition, this project helped me to better understand my body and the limits of it when I dance which is one of the reasons why I decided to make this project happen on the first place. I am no longer a stranger to seeing myself struggle, whether it was while choreographing the dance or while working on the details of every single frame of the animation. I am aware of what is to come, what the future may hold and, while I am still afraid, I now understand better why I chose to represent this fear through a dance animation. These, both passions of mine, gave me a way to cope with these thoughts and a way to see myself achieve freedom and be content with myself.