Meet Callie Mae Nichole Lyons of Oakland Ave. Productions

Today we’d like to introduce you to Callie Mae Nichole Lyons.

Callie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I began dancing at the tender age of three in my hometown of Augusta, Ga. I first studied ballet then that morphed into jazz, later tap, then modern dance. Aside from running track and cross country in middle school and my freshman year of high school, I didn’t engage any other extracurricular activity outside of my schooling. As I got older, I moved into the more competitive realm of dance, but I will say on an emotional level I was never and still not a competitive person by nature. I never took a loss or a win to my ego mind.

As I was approaching the time to apply for college, I knew I wanted to continue my dance studies which led me to attending Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles to study dance and business marketing. While there, I was adamant about becoming a commercial dancer hoping to dance for the likes of Janet Jackson or Beyoncé. I went to many commercial auditions, but something wasn’t settling right in my spirit about the path I was going down. I felt as though there was another road to take with my dancing, so I became more entranced by the more esoteric scene of downtown dance in New York City.

Once I graduated from college, I threw away the idea of becoming a commercial dancer all together and set my sights high on moving to New York. At the same time, I was pretty keen on becoming a university dance professor, so I decided to apply to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for my masters in dance. The application and audition process was pretty seamless then lo and behold I was living in Manhattan and attending classes at NYU. It all felt a little surreal. More surreal than moving across the country to go to school in California.

There was something about the atmosphere of New York that sparked a different type of excitement that I had not experienced before. The program was two years so, at year two, I started getting more into the idea of incorporating media into my dance making, particularly the medium of film. Luckily, NYU had a program called Dance and New Media where I was able to explore filmmaking in collaboration with dance.

At the time, I was given the opportunity to create a short film for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign so I called on my friends from the program and collaborated with Tisch Dance and New Media to make the film. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be in the world of filmmaking. So I started to retrograde a bit back to my commercial aspirations and drew inspiration from more commercial filmmakers that had a bit of an abstract leaning like Kahlil Joseph.

Once I graduated from NYU, I completely took advantage of the fact that I could get into any museum and most art spaces for free with my ID even though my student status was over. I would find myself at MoMA Film at least two-three times a week watching the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Films that were not at my local Regal cinema in Augusta, GA. I watched films by filmmakers I had never heard of at the time such as Chantal Akerman, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Naomi Kawase, Julie Dash, Charles Burnett.

I remember sitting in that theater thinking “how have I gone more than two decades of my life never knowing of these people?” I then started exploring Maya Deren and other artists who played with nonlinear notions of filmmaking. And from there I was hooked. Even though my love of filmmaking was blooming, I was still dancing professionally.

I began working with choreographer Jonah Bokaer, a former dancer of the Merce Cunningham Company and traveled around the world with the Brooklyn based company. I spent several more years in New York attempting to make short films, all of which crashed and burned for one reason or another and in hindsight, happy they did. So my education kick amped up one again, and so I decided to take the plunge into film school.

I ended up getting into USC’s School of Cinematic Arts production program and found myself back in Los Angeles. I felt it important to stay in the program for only as long as it would take to learn all I needed to learn to make a film from start to finish. I literally went into my first day of class knowing I would more than likely not graduate the three-year program.

So after three semesters, I decided to leave the program for a variety of reasons, but this decision was made after I made my self produced short film, Edge of Red in my hometown of Augusta, GA. Making this project gave me the confidence to move on and to create on my own terms and in the way that was in alignment with my style of storytelling.

I’m proud of myself for making that decision as everyone thought I was out of my mind for leaving such a prestigious program. But you have to follow your intuition. Your intuition will guide you to where you need to go, not the opinions of others. Follow that. Follow the call, and everything will fall into place. Trust it!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The journey has been filled with many bumps. As I mentioned earlier, I can think of three projects off of the top of my head that did not succeed. They all made it to various stages of the production timeline, one actually got filmed, but nothing ever came of it.

At the time, it tore me to pieces, I brought so many different people into the process, and it pained me that they were not going to be able to exercise their artistic craft. But with time comes growth and with growth comes wisdom, and I can look back to those moments in my life and see that I wasn’t ready and that I wasn’t creating from a place of authenticity, so those failures were actually blessings. I can say right now that I am happy they did not get made.

The universe definitely stepped in to let me know more learning needed to be done before I could step forward into this path. So, I want to encourage people to flip their perspective on roadblocks and see them as messages, and if you look closely, you’ll see the lesson that’s being given to you.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Oakland Ave. Productions – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Oakland Ave. Productions is the production company I started before I made Edge of Red. I don’t really have a title as I have funny feelings about labels and such, but if I had to utilize a word (words) to describe myself, it would be artistic director.

It’s more encompassing of all of the skills I hold. OAP honors and values creativity from the heart so what makes the company unique is that it’s holistically and spiritually driven than it is by numbers or anything predictable. I value creating intuitively over creating haphazardly to fit into a trend or to constantly produce work to stay relevant.

I just don’t believe in that model for my artistic career. I’m interested in sustainability and longevity, of course, but not at the expense of losing sight of my integrity.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Edge of Red is part 1 of a trilogy of shorts, so I’m in the pre-production of creating the second project. Each film is connected to spirituality, memory, family land, oral history, movement and how we integrate within our communities. I’m probably one of the rare few folks who are interested in the short form.

I like small, contained work but I also love extended work, like features, but at the moment I’m being called to create in the short form as I think there are so many possibilities within that frame. You don’t feel stuck in having to stay in line with one idea. You can jump around and let your ideas spill out into different stories and still have them be connected to one another.

I’m also interested in working site specifically and merging media and dance more pointedly and having a traveling exhibition. But right now, I just flow. Staying present and letting ideas come to me as they wish is vital to my creation process!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.oaklandaveproductions.com
• Email: calyons3@gmail.com
• Instagram: @calsyo

Image Credit:
Yannis Faidherbe, Tyler Archie

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