Stop Creating FOR Your Art. Start Creating FOR People. | Bill Wade

Bill Wade has spent 40 years using dance to transform lives — from inner city kids in Cleveland, Ohio to stages across America, including the White House. As the founder and executive artistic director of Inlet Dance Theatre, Bill has built something rare: a professional contemporary dance company whose entire philosophy is built around one idea — using art to serve people, not the other way around.

In this episode of The Creative Odyssey Podcast, host Sheran Ranasinghe sits down with Bill for a conversation that will challenge how you think about your creativity, your calling, and what your work is actually for.

Bill shares how growing up rough and finding dance changed the entire direction of his life. How working with inner city youth at Cleveland School of the Arts — watching kids quit gangs, go from D's and F's to earning scholarships, and get accepted to Juilliard — taught him that creativity is the most powerful tool for human transformation. And how the moment he stopped creating for his art form and started creating for the people in front of him, everything changed.

This is a conversation about ego, about what it means to truly serve your audience, about using human-centered design thinking as a creative framework, and about why the business of art is just another form of choreography.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: — Why ego is the single biggest block to creative impact — How to "asset map" your life to understand your creative calling — Why the best art is built with the audience, not just for them — How Bill thinks about the business of running a dance company as an act of artistry — What to do when you feel completely stuck creatively

ABOUT BILL WADE: Bill Wade is the founder and executive artistic director of Inlet Dance Theatre, a professional contemporary dance company based in Cleveland, Ohio. Celebrating its 25th anniversary season, Inlet is nationally recognized for its work in dance education, community engagement, and touring productions. Bill's show "What Do You Do With an Idea?" — based on the book by Kobi Yamada — has completed an 8-year national tour. He is currently developing the second production in the series, "What Do You Do With the Problem?"

Connect with Bill: Instagram: @billwade Inlet Dance Theatre: @inletdance Website: www.inletdancetheatre.org

ABOUT THE CREATIVE ODYSSEY PODCAST: The Creative Odyssey is a podcast about the journey every creative person goes through — what it looks like, why it matters, and why you should create too. Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe and filmed at Future Ink Graphics in Cleveland, Ohio.

Follow the show: @thecreativeodysseypodcast Filmed at Future Ink Graphics: @futurinkgraphics Sponsored by FIG / Future Ink Graphics Produced by Odyssey House Media: @odysseyhousemedia

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Instead of using people to further dance, I'm using dance to further people. And I have been for a really long time. And it's it's landed me at the White House, it's landed me in some other awkward situations like that.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Yeah, that was weird. How do you use dance as a way to express? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 0:19

The stage is a three-dimensional canvas. The paint are the dancers moving in the space. Ego is the word. I'm very clear about that in the studio. Ego just blocks flow, it blocks communication, it blocks the love for each other.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

So people who feel stuck, people who feel like literally no way out. What is your wisdom?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

It was through creativity and listening to the wiring that I've been wired with. And just believing that I was given that for a reason and get curious. Get curious.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Hi, welcome to the Creative Artists Podcast. My name is Geran. This is a podcast about talking about the creative artists, the journey creative people go through, understanding what that looks like, and why, most importantly, why you should create too. I'm connected with uh Future in Graphics here in Cayman, Ohio. And I have a very uh special guest that I didn't know that I was gonna have. I'm super grateful for Bill. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. This is hilarious. Um, so I'm just learning about who you are. So tell us who you are and why you call yourself a creative.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Well, I'm definitely a creative. Um, my name is Bill Wade. I'm the founder and executive artistic director of a professional contemporary dance company called Inlet Dance Theater across the hall from Future Inc. Graphics. And um I've been doing dance professionally for over 40 years in Cleveland. Um I've had a really good run when I was young. When I was my dancer's age in my company, I was trained by and danced for a lot of very now, you know, famous world-class people. Um and the whole time I was like back in the 80s when I was at that age, um these people were passionate, they were brilliant, and a lot of them were not um warm fuzzy people. Um everything was very transactional. Um I watched and I, you know, became the poster child for one of the dance companies that I danced for. And I I found the environment to be people who uh were being used to further the dance agenda, whether that was the ego of a choreographer or the namesake of a company or to land a grant or you know. Um and I learned so much from these people. And I I now that I'm you know much older, I think that um we need to flip it a little bit. When I was in the 90s, I was hired as an artist in residence at Cleveland School of the Arts. Okay. And I was gonna do two weeks of master classes, and I fell in love with the kids and ended up there for 11 years.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

And I had an after-school program that became a modern all-male modern dance company that went on tour. These are like junior high and high school kids. Wow. But really, the kids taught me very, very quickly that obviously things are not a level playing field in America, such as that is. And without getting into politics at all, it's just the way, you know, it's just what we've inhi inherited, and and but now that we've inherited this thing, we have choices we can make. Yes. So I realized that the the training that I got from the people that I worked for on the top shelf, it really changed my life. I was a rough and tumble kid who had it hard growing up. And um I this dance pulled me away from all of that stuff and and put me on my own feet where I could create. Now, I I did grow up drawing and painting and doing music and instrumental and vocal, and um so my whole life has been creative. And when I got to college in undergrad, I saw my American Modern Dance for the first time, and I had a very weird experience of recognizing the thing that I was supposed to be doing. And I realized that's a very rare thing that happens to people, but it was like it was like something snapped over my head, and I was like, I'm supposed to be doing this. Three years later, after two years of university and a year at Milwaukee Ballet, um, I ended up in Ohio in Cleveland dancing for a modern dance company. Uh, Alice Rubinstein's Footpath Dance Company, she was from New York. Brilliant woman, brilliant woman, not a worm fuzzy at that time in her life. Um, and then I ended up with these kids at Cleveland School of the Arts. And I just started watching kids quit the gangs they were in and go from straight D's and F's to getting A's and B's and then getting scholarships for university. Wow. Send kids to Juilliard and you know, the whole thing. Yeah, it was just like I was like, oh, I think I stumbled onto something with these kids. So I started my company. We're actually in our 25th anniversary season right now. Congratulations. So um it's landed me in some really other awkward situations like that. Yeah, that was weird. Um, but it's going really, really well. And like today I spent the whole day with my dancers in the studio creating because we've landed a commission from seven performing arts centers around the country to work on a project. And so we spent our day, you know, working on creating, working, working on that. It's um eight years ago, Playhouse Square commissioned me to create um a show. You know, when they bust all the little kids into the theater.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

So I've been involved in conversations uh globally with people from all over the world about like how do we raise the bar of the quality of work that kids are busting to look at. This has been a passion of mine for over 20 years, um, because of working with the kids at Cleveland School of the Arts, right? And um, I'm like, well, they they deserve to see the best stuff. I don't care what neighborhood they come from. Yeah, every human being on this planet dances, it doesn't matter where you're from. Yes, everybody dances. And it's gonna look different depending on the flavor of where you grew up, right? So um we got a commission. I found the book What Do You Do with an Idea by Kobe Yamata, illustrations by Mae Beesome. They're incredible. Um, that show's been doing a national tour for eight years, and it was just like that magic, everything came together.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

And all of the performing arts centers where we were touring the show, yeah, we're talking to other performing art centers, and that turned into this commission to do the second book in Kobe's series. So now we're working on what do you do with the problem. Friday night here at the Pivot Center, we just had 60 people here watching a section that we're prototyping from the book. We read everybody the book. We had them do an art activity over at Cleveland Museum of Arts. Very cool. Community arts, because I wanted them to like tactile experience, bring those creations over, and we showed them what we're creating to this book that you know, we read it on the on the large screen and um got a whole lot of feedback, had posted notes all over the mirrors, and um I'm sitting in the office just now gathering all of the data. Yeah. Um, I really like human-centered design thinking because you start a new project with the end user in mind. It comes from like corporate America and people making widgets or whatever. But I when I learned this process in an executive program that I was scholarshipped into, um, I kind of realized this is really the creative process that the business world is finally like. So of course they've I didn't think they've wrapped they've wrapped like fancy language around around. Oh, yeah. I'm like, I'm not an idiot. I'm gonna use their language. Yeah, no, it seems to be working. And now I got a commission from seven performing arts centers. And we we snagged the top-tier booking agency in America, Holden and Arts Associates, and they're selling the show, and we leave for a national tour with this brand new show that I have not even finished creating in September. Wow. So yeah, creating for a living is that's my jam.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

That totally is your jam. Mine too. I love it. Wow. So gosh, you said so much. I could just like sit here listening to you talk forever. I don't talk at all. I'm boring. But you mentioned something very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Hi, I hate to interrupt, and I hope you're enjoying this conversation, but we had something really exciting to share with you. We have recently started a new company called Odyssey House Media.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

It's essentially a production company to help people tell their stories in a way that actually highlights their story so that people can actually believe in what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

So after traveling around Sri Lanka and coming back to the States, we noticed that there's a lot of incredible people doing some really great, meaningful work, but they don't quite always know how to tell their story or have the confidence in doing so. So after working with some other organizations and partnering with them to share their stories, we realized we need to help people share their stories.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

The Auditor House Media has been the one that's been sponsoring this podcast, our student kids.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

So if you've ever wondered, you have a story and you're not sure how to share it, we'd love to talk to you, have a conversation. Uh, you can check out more about uh us and our work that we've done in the past in the link below. All right, let's get back to that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah. So you did say that dance pulled you away from the streets. Yeah, yeah, right. However, you did grow up creating. Yes. So this is a story that I haven't really heard. Usually it's like somebody growing up with either really good childhood with a lot of creative, you know, uh support to be creative, uh or you have the kid went through none of that, right? Right. Just survival mentality, go through all of that. Yeah. So tell me about yours.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

How yeah, I mean, I um I grew up moving all over America, continental US, um, everywhere from outside of Philly to Southern Cali, which was my favorite, um, uh down by Laguna Beach in Mission Viejo. That was awesome. Um, and um, you know, typical American dysfunctional family. Um, I found out later in my later years, in my 20s, um, um, that my dad was not my biological father, which made a lot of sense considering his in my, you know, um later, 20 years later after that, I find out that who my biological father is, and that his his dad wrote and arranged music with the Gershwins. The music is really strong in my in my veins, right? And I was like, Oh, so I've inherited the Gershwins.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I did the classical musician.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Classical and jazz, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Gershwins, yeah. So um so that was a weird thing to kind of take in. And I'm like, because I used in my 20s, in my journals, it was like in therapy and everything. I was always like, why when I go to modern art exhibitions, do I like, I just get it? Why what is that? Like, who most people don't understand it at an intuitive level. Yeah, that and I started recognizing my intuitive level for movement, my intuitive level for art and music is a little higher than your average pedestrian. Um, and and instead of seeing that as a liability, I I started realizing that whole like thing you hear about being fearfully and wonderfully made. And I realized, like, I am wired for this stuff. Like my mom's side of the family, so I've never met my biological father. I just found out who he was, um, spoke to him on the phone, um, and got stories. And but my my biological, my mother's side of the family is full of musical savants. People who could listen to music, sit down. My my nana, my grandmother, sit down at the piano and play like Liberace, couldn't read a note of music. Wow. So that like, so I kind of grew up in that, right? And my and my grandfather This is your nana, right? This is my nana. Uh-huh. So my papa was uh in the Air Force, World War II D-Day, the whole thing. Okay. Um, but they were swing dancers on the weekends with big bands and stuff. So I was hot, and he was a gymnast. So I was a gymnast when I was young. So yeah, so I just that physicality thing and the music thing and the dancing thing was always there. But not until I was exposed to, you know, I went to college, and I college afforded me the opportunity to see things I I never saw before. And when I saw modern dance, I was like, I I have to, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. So I just pounded the bricks and here I am doing making dances now, making dancers who do dances and we tour. Um wow, yeah. So for me, it was like creativity, was I I just knew I was I can't not do this creative. But as I got older, I started figuring out why, and that I inherited a lot from the family line. And most people who you find are really, really creative, if if if they do their homework, asset map your family line, and you'll find it. Explain to me what that means. So that's a kind of urban planning terminology, really. But but it's like you go into what you so you go in a neighborhood, everybody's like, oh, that's a bad neighborhood. I mean, that's so encoded that that's go into the neighborhood. What are the assets in that neighborhood? That bodega is like dope on the corner, you know, these people and that and that little restaurant, those people can cook. You know, so you walk through an area and you like you you realize the assets that are here and you map those. So I decided when I was in my 20s, um I need to asset map my upbringing because it's not a surprise to me now that I run a dance company that tours all over the country. I lived all over the country. Right. So I was kind of like set up for what I do, but I didn't recognize it for the longest time. So if you kind of look back at like your family, yeah, and you'll you'll find it. You'll find it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

That that that thing that you can't not do. It's almost like uh this is an interesting concept. But I I've been doing this with my life, like experiences to understand like why I'm the way I am and what like you know, how what my brain works, because like I'm like, because if you look at it, my life now shows that I'm a creative. But if you ask me, depending on the day, I might tell you what one or the other. But because of like this, this this dedication to creativity and highlighting people and thinking about it so excessively done. Yeah, yeah, to process it. Yeah, I understand, you know. This other part of yourself, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

That's not probably not a small part, it's a huge part. Yeah, I mean, I have two dancers in my company who are engineers, one's an aerom aeronautical engineer, and the other one's getting his doctorate right now in plastics engineering. Yeah. So, you know, artists were not creatives, we're not dumb people. No. And then when when you kind of like work on both sides, yeah, left hemisphere and right hemisphere, um, they inform each other. They inform each other. And it's weird because the more like the business stuff I learned, and the more um, because I thought I I thought business was my anti-gifting when I was younger and I was like this starving artist. Um, and but then I started realizing that I actually have an aptitude for it. I mean, the company is 25 years old, so clearly I'm not an idiot. Um, and I'm surrounded by really good people. Yeah. Um, and that and that's part of it. If you if you're kind and you see what you've been given as something that you're supposed to share with others, yeah, serve other people, serve people. These theaters that commissioned me, they desperately need something of quality to put their children in front of. And it's that's their job is to bust these kids into the theater. Right. And they've realized that we have a responsibility of what is the content and the quality of what that is that we're showing. And if I could be honest, the high quality and content stuff is down south down in Australia, it's in Scotland, it's in the it's in the dance theater and theater. And dance and theater. Okay. And um it's it's it's everywhere else because in you know, America, we like our shiny packages and we like our sugar, sugar, sugar stuff. And um, but it's like it's about consuming rather than thinking for yourself and and learning how to think critically and and learning how to see other people with empathy and all of those things that the arts give us all the time, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

So, so kind of paying attention to the landscape and and like I I've been given all of this stuff so that I can give it to somebody. I'm not gonna keep it from myself. We store grain too long in a in a thing, it's gonna rot exactly and bring on the rats, you know. Right, you're supposed to give that forward, you pay it forward.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

So even though I'm a creative dance, interpretive dancing, especially, like I discovered it like much later in my life, and and I think I had a moment where like I get it, yeah. How do how can one like okay? I mean, let me, I'm trying to get into your word and understand how you think and your creativity. So good luck with that, yeah. But how do you like use dance as a way to express? Like, how does that from what you're feeling inside to then outward expression, how does that work? Well, a lot of that has to do with like just good old fashioned learn your technique.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Okay, learn your history, learn your technique. I I know a lot of well-meaning young people who were like rebellion, rebelling from the people that they worked for when they were younger. And I'm like, how about you honor those folks and stand on their shoulders and push the art form forward? Yeah, you know, I and I think so, I think that's part of it. Like, really, like when I was young, and because I also because I'm a dude and I started at 18 and I was like dancing with girls who've been dancing since they were two, and I was like, my butt is behind, I need to bone up on my skills, right? Um, but that became a thing, and I realized that I can I have the natural capacity to learn that stuff far quicker than my peers, a lot of my peers. And then you go to the next place, you go to the next place, and you get surrounded by people like you, right? And then and then you're like, okay, all right, all right. Um so for me, it was absolutely technique theory, all of you know, because then when you know the rules, you know how to bend them, bend them notes, make that run. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? That's here, and and I I think that like how you see your body as a tool for expression, and how how can I move my body in such a way that they feel yeah, X, Y, or Z?

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Yeah, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

And so now, like, because I used to paint all the time, so now the can't the stage is a three-dimensional canvas. So the paint are the dancers moving in the space. And now, like with this current project, it's you know, a lot of my stuff is very abstract, but like this is like it's narrative driven. Why I'm putting the book on the stage, and I figured out how to do that with the last book.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

And um, how do we move in? Like, there's this storm that brews in this in this book, this current book, what do you do with the problem? And what we what we showed people Friday night in their space that came here to the pivot center was we have these big pieces of dark fabric, and how we're winding them, and and the you know, one person now it's two, now it's three, and everybody understood that storm is getting bigger, and that child seems smaller and smaller and smaller because the storm is getting so big. So you you just scale, proportion, color, yeah, all of that stuff is you know, you kind of those are your tools, right? Yeah, you have to learn how to use your tools. I'm a visual person.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

So the moment you said three-dimensional, I saw the whole picture though. Yeah, right? I saw it. That's a three-dimensional canvas. We make sense, yeah, yeah. Because I'm I also do woodworking, like I made this thing, like, you know, out of wood. Dude, you made this, yeah. So I I like sculpt and stuff out of wood. Um, that was out of a like this need to inspire me to create because this was at a time where I went through a divorce or whatever, and like I was around people who didn't understand me, right? So I'm like so good. Yeah, so I made this to like inspire me to create, and I want it to be, you know, imperfect. I've dropped it a couple of times, yeah, you know, all of that stuff. But what I realized is like even this idea came when I sat down to just write. I was like, every time I sit down to create, I think like I'm wasting my time because that's how I was brought up with, or like, or my society told me to. Right. So now I'm on this journey to break that thing apart. So what do I do? I create something to break it for me.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can relate to that. I grew up with my dad, it was a straight, white business man in a box and Brooks Brother suits and the whole thing. And I was like, Look at me, that ain't happening.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

No, no, yeah. And so as a as a choreographer, then you talked about abstract dancing versus the showing the real thing. Do you find only people who understand that stuff comes to your things?

SPEAKER_02 21:06

I find that with a lot of abstract dance, yes. When I worked with all the kids in the 90s at Cleveland School of the Arts, I realized that as a choreographer, maybe I actually also have a responsibility to build my work in such a way that includes people and pulls them in. And there's an there's an art and a craft to doing that. And you have to really gotta which is why, like when I found human-centered design thinking, I'm like, oh, this is perfect. Because on day one, you get you the people that are gonna be your audience at the end, they're in my studio Friday night giving us feedback. Their feedback helps shape the product, which a lot of artists hate that word product. But I'm like, look, you're gonna monetize your work, you wanna pay your rent. It is a product at the end of the day. It's a product at the end of the day. Well, you gotta wrap your head around that and your heart around that. And like, and if it's a product that's actually

SPEAKER_01 22:00

serving somebody like another thing in my art I won't put on stage what is I put on stage because that's only I put on stage what what could be rather than what we're experiencing you want to show hope yes absolutely absolutely this is we're going on another tangent so I've always I've been fascinated by movies yeah and this this this obsession over the three act um story arc and how there has to be tragedy right and I get it right life is tragedy there's dynamic opposition absolutely and yet for some reason we are willing to go through that bit of like let's say 20 minutes of tragedy just for the payout of a happy ending at the end yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but stuff don't always work out that way it doesn't right and so that that's I guess that's why I've been like thinking a lot about like indie movies and these stories where there are no happy ending it's literally an account of what it was yeah and like some actually do show a bit of hope in that realness. Like it's just like because you get that sense of not yet not yet.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Yeah and that's what life is hello yeah the whole thing we're becoming we're always becoming something yeah you know what I mean and it's not you're not arriving um you're you're becoming you're like evolving growing and you're evolving and you're changing and you're responding and you keep going and that's what should be happening in our artwork.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

It's interesting how like we accept people changing physically outwardly as we get older but we don't accept people changing as they get older just because we don't see it. Yeah yeah and so let me bring it all back to creativity and and especially like bringing people further yeah sounds like you have a huge responsibility I have days where it feels like a lot but I have other days so when you see that little kid's face light up and they have an aha moment right because we do a lot of teaching to a lot of education programming where you you unpack the process you unpack the magic that's inside and and I think that like when people are allowed space and time and you said it earlier where you're not in survival mode and you're just you can just be and and grab something and start drawing or listening to music and let it be transported or um it's so healing because it it combats like I did a little brain science research because I'm I'm that nerd.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

I love it. And um I I did uh kind of a dive on the one of the things that I embedded in what do you do with an idea the stage production of the first book that we are going to we're definitely working on for the second book as well is to give children the sense of awe and wonder and the brain science behind that stuff is astonishing. And art and music and visual and emotion that's that's how you get there. And I think that the more time we we give our young people those opportunities to feel awe and to feel wonder um that's so healing and so healthy. I mean I won't go into the science of it all but I mean it's just you anybody can do just Google it.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Right right just Google it man it's incredible what it does for your wife we used to be a kindergarten teacher oh you know then yeah I know that's yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the awe and wonder thing is it's huge because that's the that's oh my god that connects because as an adult we barely look at think about awe and wonder of life that's why it's so good to teach kids because they'll give it back to you or have your own and relive life through their eyes it's really it's an amazing and my son is 31 now and go figure he's an artist for a living wow so is my wife so there's that was inevitable.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

We were hoping rebellion would look like Wall Street or something but that's not how I don't think you hear like odd children rebelling to become I mean maybe you do but like I haven't heard yeah he went to he went to college in Chicago and um he met his roommate and he said he said to his roommate what is your major and he's like oh I'm gonna be a modern dancer and my son's like oh crap the kid's like what is the matter with that he's like no there's nothing wrong with you doing that my dad runs a modern dance company and this kid's response was nobody's dad runs a modern dance company yep and he was like got on the internet and he's like that's my dad I grew up Circus Soleil is how I grew up wow you know and it's um and it's like it's kind of our joke too because we've actually gone to Cirque du Soleil in several different cities together and he's like that was my childhood. Wow and I'm like yeah but look at you you're really good at art dude right we set you up asset map your life map your life yeah that's brilliant um I didn't come up with that no but you told you told me about it yeah yeah yeah yeah it was when I heard it I was like dang but like you learn it from city planning you said yeah I was talking yeah I was talking to some folks and they were like we got our asset map this neighborhood I'm like what does that mean and they told me and I was like dude I need to asset map my life I don't I don't understand myself you know and that was years ago okay so okay you've you danced to express all of those things but how do you use dance to process life?

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Like walk me through like literally what I do. Okay so so so let me give you a ask in a better way because I know you know what you're telling but for me or like for another creative person right like if I'm going through a stressful time I have to sit down and write or draw or go and sand a piece of wood to get my head wrapped around what's happening to me. That's me with the dancers in the studio.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Okay. That's literally what I so okay this idea of becoming right so I have a solo called Becoming that I created. Okay. Um I was I was looking um at the artwork of uh there's a sculpt an American sculptor named Frederick Hart and a lot of his um oh my god he's a genius genius genius but he would have like a human form but on the edges it's it's coming up out of the rock and up out of the clay and then it's become that's becoming human and he has this whole thing like if you actually do don't just look at the pictures in the big book like read it. What he was thinking about what he was doing and I was like I'm gonna create a solo about that. So I took my dude Josh who's now the assistant artistic director of the company has been with me for 22 years in the company and a couple other dudes we made three solos and um I completely covered their bodies with this stretchy red fabric because I was like it's like the stuff of the blood in your life like just um just just real basic fundamental um the shiny red super stretchy fabric. And then that and and because of my sculpture background playing with form and like and if you look at this in America like the history of sculpture in America like people are returning back to figurative form now right um but but it has this twist to it. So I was like I want to I want to play with these ideas of returning artwork out of something super abstract and and and pulling the figurative like human body out of that as a metaphor for the fact that we are all seeing glimpses. You meet people like we're meeting each other today for the first time this afternoon and we're getting to know just a little facet of each other right but it's just a tiny bit right yeah and then so it's like from abstract to something really specific and then this this whole solo does that throughout and um I put that on stage and um the response to that solo has been incredible because people like they get it they're like holy crap that's when he holds still all of a sudden you're like where did he go? That's this weird like amorphic 1970s red blob kind of sculpture but all of a sudden there's this guy yelling wow and you know what I mean and but it's it's so looking at the art form for the ways that you can express something you see the movement um an image as metaphor and you kind of run with it I mean I am it's working so I understand what inspired you to create that work of art why share it what's the goal because everybody sitting in the audience is becoming and I don't think oftentimes we take that in is that selfish of you is that controlling of you just asking no it it could be if I was self-indulgent ah okay I can't stand self-indulgent work for sure I oh please thanks that's a put that in your diary you know sorry I'm older I can say stuff you can it's a podcast but also but it's it's like you know I'm I'm having this idea right so you you know you you talk to your friends you're I think you're having a beer or whatever you know you're going around you talk to your friends you kind of throw that idea on the table and you watch them kind of chew on it for a second they're like yeah I'm realizing in my life with my kids and then and then and it's pushing me in these ways and that and I'm like everybody I know um is lightweight aware that they're becoming something but if you put a metaphor in front of them they are given permission to actually go there and spend that time kind of like you give your you know your kids or or who were like your students um permission to like express something in a medium that's comfortable for them.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Nobody has ever explained to me that the way you just did really it makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yeah you want to share it because I mean yeah you want to share like hey man we're all having this experience let me show you something and then talk about it afterwards. And we have this thing in the theater we take a big roll of paper yeah lots of markers and some of them smell good um and we always invite people that we call it tag our wave so we create this because it's part of our logo, right this wave. So people write their feelings and their thoughts some people leave these incredible drawings in response to what they just saw in the theater. Now that's when we do a like a a curated evening of like abstract work, right? Which is very different than like this children's book that I'm putting on the stage. You know but we do pre and post activities for the kids to start expressing so now we're working on I'm working on stuff this afternoon in between rehearsal chunks um where I'm working on the study guide for the teachers about how to get the kids to open about what are the problems let's make a piece of let's have an art activity or a sound activity or a movement activity. Mimic some of the things on the stage and and name a problem that you want to address. Wow you know yeah that was the art activity we had people do Friday night. Wow yeah and so you personalizing what the topic is so it's more it's not even control it's more like out of care.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Absolutely it's out of care. Because like if you have a friend who's going through something or you wanted to share with that friend, you do out of care.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yeah that's actually oftentimes why I start creating a piece because I see something going on and I'm like oh man I don't want them to you know or you are you're like passionate about like yes let me let me reinforce that by creating something like that. You know and it could be something as abstract as snowflakes and how cool they are and like there's this world famous photographer whose name I'm not gonna be able to remember right now has all these books out about how he figured out how to keep it frozen and zoom in and take photos of it and the colors and the shapes choreographed a piece called snow. You know what I mean? Because I was so inspired by these images and I'm like this stuff is so gorgeous. And you know everybody's like oh it's snowing outside and I'm like hmm how can we flip that narrative I know you know what I mean like it's gorgeous actually if you really look at this but you gotta really look at it yeah you gotta really listen to it. You gotta look for the metaphors inside of it.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Everything's based on three and six there's like that's the that's deep you know what I mean so I I just there's every time I see snow I remember that I migrated to this country that this it reminds me of my parents the sacrifice and everything it's all like very emotional but like it's I love it. I love snow everything in the world.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Dude I have dancers in my studio during the day moved to Cleveland to study and work with me right wow every once in a while you get a new dancer who's never seen snow before I had one two years ago she was in the studio because it's all glass and she was it was snowing like crazy outside I was like oh this is so cool. I look over her she's crying she was scared she's like what do I do and I'm like just enjoy the beauty you're inside girl I got the heat cranking up we're good you know and then but now she's like I've learned to drive in and I've learned to really like it. So it's like and you don't I don't know I just thought every American kid's like had snow in their life but that's not true.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

No yeah it's not it's hilarious from down south man. Yeah I've lived in like Boston Chicago Colorado all of these places and yeah EDPA um yeah but a lot of a lot of times like the things that we are are negative like listen to it really learn from it you know study it a little bit i resistance is always a sign that more information is needed right so be an adult do the research get more information about the thing that you're feeling a little bit like I don't know about that you know what I mean like well that that that's right you don't know about that maybe that's what you need to do then let's take out that little thing you know and people need to do that with each other way more so all that this stuff is metaphor for like how we relate on the horizontal with each other right yeah it's see I look at another way of looking at creativity and why people create if you really understand it's like this superpower to understand people bro yes because you understand yourself yes like pride goes away when you understand yourself it's it blocks everything it blocks that pride ego and pride is gone out of the window yeah ego is the worst the worst I'm very clear about that in the studio when they come in the audition well I think it's for some like they ain't here right now right I don't I don't give a rip like congratulations you work for them but you're yeah now you're here you're and you're here for a reason that you're not there so shall we say like you came in here for some reason um and it's yeah but ego just it blocks flow it blocks communication it blocks the love for each other and you know so I I uh this this podcast um was started out of me going through something crazy in life really tough then going into woodworking during COVID time because I had nothing else to do built an entire basement workshop I was going through some worse time so some a week I would be completely miserable depressed yeah one day I wake up we have the energy and I would build an entire workbench and like you know get all the table saw in there and everything in there. And how did that feel in that see and I recorded it I recorded that time smart because I I knew like this was the direction I'm supposed to go okay but I had suffered so long around people who didn't let me but something in it just record it. Just record it. Just please for the love of God remember it so that you can always show somebody that this is what you did when you were in the lowest point of your life. And I was very obvious about like there were a week of downtime where I couldn't do anything. I was in bed depressed and then there one day and and so the reason I talk about creativity is this is the one thing all human beings can connect. Yes. Without any division. Yes because religion is great I believe in God and everything but the moment I bring that up becomes divisive so divisive. And so this is the one place we can connect because we can all create and if you create we're gonna be actually connected to ourselves and really have no ego free and real connection can happen. Exactly exactly like did you think that today you'll be hanging out with the Sri Lankan guy and have really amazing conversation and on a car podcast no what I'm so grateful. It's because like you can we can talk that they you have so much expertise and accolades but I don't see an ounce of ego out of you. No it's my responsibilities at this point I gotta stop to do let me tell you this if I had known that if if I was going to record you today I will guarantee you'd have so much like imposter syndrome what am I doing trying to detect but because of your like no way man just doing stuff just making stuff yeah you know and I love the people that I make stuff with and I and everything that we create in my company is collaborative.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Like I'm at the helm I was gonna ask you it's collaborative. I pull everything up out of their bodies I mean because they're all smart they're all talented they all have creativity and and I'm like let's align all of our assets and give something amazing to the audience bring them to their feet bring them to their feet and you know you you know you've landed you know you've created your show right when like when we started a other book right our first stop on the national tour was down in Greenville South Carolina at the Peace Center like oh peace center and thousand kids came in right and the and the lead character starts in the back of the theater with the kids because he's one of the kids right because the child in the book and he and I are sitting back there and I'm bro I was so nervous I was like what if this sucks what if we've worked all this wow you know soon as the show's over 1,000 little kids stood up and the teachers were like and then they stood up that was a lot to take in I was like holy crap I think we hit this but we had worked with hundreds I'm not exaggerating hundreds of the same age asking them questions about the book doing dance stuff with them how would you interpret so human centered design thinking who's gonna look at it at the end get them involved in the process the the buy-in is much greater and oh no dance literacy just went up wow yeah dance audiences dance donors dance board members dancers young dancers are in that audience right and so the CEO of the of the performing arts center came up to me and she said who are you I'm like I'm just a guy named Bill and I'm like think this worked yeah and she said I've been doing this for decades I've never seen the kids at a children's show jump to their feet like that before. Wow who are you and I was like again I'm like this dude named Bill I work in Cleveland and we do we know we make stuff for kids and adults you know and so it's like if you realize if you get yourself out of the way right and you pull the because I'm asset mapping my dancers all of the time dude and I'm pulling up the strand like you're actually come here do this lift you little you know four foot nothing female lift this big dude over your head that's impressive we'll put that on the stage we do that stuff all the time we climb on each other for a living and um but when you pull the creativity and the ideation out of everybody and and then it's not like it's not about is it a good idea or bad idea is like is this idea that we're working is it stage worthy it's gonna move somebody who's sitting there then we'll use it in the show. If something happens improvisationally which we use all the time on and all the other dancers in the room like whoa like the kids are going to do the same thing that's we put it on film teaching to these other two people so everybody can do that thing. And that's how you you you build the work that has impact on people.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

But you got you got to have their input with and to what we've said talked about earlier is like in order to do that you got to really listen to people where are they listen to them learn about them where do they come from you have to build trust for them to listen to you of course yeah yeah wow yeah so this is like real hands-on like life life it's life yeah yeah because you're helping them be vulnerable and also asset mapping their lives to find the goodness in there like all of those things so you really are furthering people well and we're all created we we were given stuff yeah you know what I mean it's like it's like if everybody could just calm down inventory what you've been given yeah and kind of realize like wow I've been given this stuff so that I can serve somebody else with it but let me ask you this then if you weren't creating all your life do you think that you would have been able to figure out these things that you have figured out honest answer I think because coming up was rough and the only peace I ever had as a child was when I was by myself drawing and painting and doing stuff that kind of like that that the hardship if I'm honest honest was like a steering mechanism.

SPEAKER_02 43:55

Does it make sense? Yeah because I did I get a lot of like you're gonna be a businessman when you grow up you grow up And I'm like, look at me. Like, it's so not happening. I got pain all over me. You know what I mean? Um, and and and just but being honest about what you have been given. And people say stuff because you know, when you get older, you realize you they had they had your best intentions at heart, yeah, but they weren't paying attention to who you really are, yeah. And honoring that. So I'm like, we can do that in the studio, we can do that in the theater, we can do that in classrooms. We're doing good.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Right? Wow. Um one last question. Sure. So people who feel stuck, people who feel like literally no way out. What is your wisdom?

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Grab a pencil and some paper. Start writing what you're feeling, start drawing about what you're feeling, listen to music, the content of the music or even the sounds you know of the string section connects. Um and and sit in those moments, find a book, a really good book, um, and sit in that moment. Go to it, like you were talking about movies earlier. Like find an inspiring movie. Um, go to the freaking art museum in Cleveland, it's free. Yeah, nature. You know what I mean? Nature bro, yeah. I live out over the river and through the woods. Wow. That's I'm out, I'm out there. Um it's huge, it's so the river, and I've got so many pieces based on water in the river. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um because of what it means to me, right? And then, like, and you show that to other people, and like, oh man, I love rivers too. You and it's it's conversation starting stuff, and then you hear people's stories, and then they open up, and there's the thing. So when people like I've had some um tremendously dark moments in my life that I'm I am now alive to talk, talk about it. And um, it was through creativity and through listening to what's going on in here uh and and listening to the wiring that I've been wired with. Yeah, and and and and just believing that I was given that for a reason and curious to get curious, get curious, you're curious, bro.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

On that note, one of the most pleasurable conversations. Uh let me finish the vlog, guys. But um I we have viewers all over the world, um, and so um all I'm trying to do is inspire you to create. I bring you stories, like these amazing ways to go. Um so I all I ask you to do is keep bringing, keep creating, and keep going on creating artists. Next time, let's do live.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

I was gonna ask you earlier if you were from Sri Lanka. How? I worked with a choreographer from Sri Lanka. Do you know the name? Many yeah. Kapala Palawadna. Um He came here for three months and we we hosted him. Wow!