Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Tomaszewski.
Hi Ashley, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started dancing at the age of three-in awe of pink ballet slippers and glitter. As I grew older, those slippers turned to pointe shoes and the glitter to the sweat and rigor of pursuing a career in classical ballet. I graduated from Butler University, one of the top-ranked dance programs in the country, with a BA in Dance Pedagogy in 2018-cum laude with departmental honors. Additionally, I graduated having acquired a professional ballet contract-but that’s when the tables turned. Or, I guess really, I chose to turn the tables.
While I still cherish the art of classical ballet, shortly after graduating Butler, I realized that my interests and passions as a movement artist, leader, and choreographer didn’t align with the ballet world. Looking back, it sounds like a smooth transition. In the moment, it was anything but. Only the discipline and work ethic that the ballet world instilled in me could have given me the courage to color outside the lines of it.
About two months later, I had moved to Milwaukee, WI and began dancing with Water Street Dance Milwaukee. I stayed with this organization for five years-having also served as Outreach Coordinator, Rehearsal Assistant, and Associate Artistic Director. In 2023, I also had the privilege of dancing with Geometry Dance Company in Los Angeles, and now am starting my second season with the company.
Through it all, I was always interested in choreography. I presented work at MashUp’s International Women’s Day Festival, in Los Angeles, in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, I was selected to participate in LA Contemporary Dance Company’s LA Choreo Lab: 04. The piece I created under the LA Choreo Lab program went on to be the Grand Prize Winner of SALT’s SHAPE Choreography Festival. I was lucky enough to fly out to Salt Lake City, Utah in 2023 to create a new work on SALT2.
Most recently, I founded my own professional project in Wisconsin: THREE POINT PROJECT. We are based in trust, curiosity, and humanity. We are founded on three core beliefs, or points: movement should deepen the connection we have with ourselves, it should help us understand others, and it should allow us to become better inhabitants of the world. I am so curious and passionate about creating-both dance spaces and choreography, Having grown up in the classical ballet, world dance spaces often felt sterile and impersonal. As a director, I am passionate about spaces that are not about dancers but about humans. Humans who are also movement artists, not movement artists who are also humans. I believe exploring our humanity not only makes us more mature artists but it better allows us to connect with the individuals we share the experience with: both in the studio and those who watch dance. I am passionate about creating a space where people are able to exist as the fullest, most authentic versions of themselves-both as people and artists.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
In the dance world, it sometimes feels that there isn’t even a road in front of you-let alone a smooth one. It feels like you look up and the road is gone, and you’re left to craft the path yourself. I believe that pursuing dance professionally, especially as a female-identifying artist, is one of the hardest things anyone can do. Not only is it physically demanding, but mentally as well.
It was a weird moment when I decided to take a detour from the classical world-especially after having achieved what I thought I was working my whole life for: a ballet contract. However, it sent the foundation to continue on a path of authenticity and passion: as a movement artist, choreographer, leader, and now director.
Any artist knows that the relationship we hold with our art is often chaotic: one day we are in love with it, the next we are questioning our entire life journey. However, the commitment and curiosity to the craft has always led me back to the love of it. Honestly, I came close to quitting dance so many times. I was a junior at Butler training in one of the best programs in the country, and I almost quit. Don’t get me wrong-the program is incredible. In fact, Professor Susan McGuire was a huge reason I didn’t quit. To have someone that was honest with me, believed in me, but said things how they were was exactly what I needed in that moment. As a teacher now, I feel passionate about combining honesty and love in the way Susan McGuire did for me during that patch of darkness.
Looking back at that time, I think I was overwhelmed because I realized my future didn’t align with a tutu and pink tights. Sure, physically I was capable of that. However, my ambitions and interests kept gnawing at me-and they didn’t sound like Tchaikovsky. Taking leaps has been the path of my career: out of the ballet world, into contemporary, into choreography, into the directorship. Honestly, most of the time I don’t know where I will land. However, I know that if I don’t take the leap I won’t land anywhere other than where I currently am.
Last year, I was flying across the country twice a month from Milwaukee to Los Angeles to dance with the Geometry Dance Company. A lot of times, I was only in LA for 12 hours. I would wake up at 3:00am in Milwaukee and be back by 6:00am the next day. Only to take a power nap and head to teach for 10 hours. It was one of the most rewarding and challenging seasons. However, it also taught me that if you are interested in something, just go for it. Make it happen. People might tell you you’re crazy, but honestly what artist isn’t at least a little bit crazy?
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am working on remaining true to myself in the dance world. Period. I feel that the dance world forces a lot of people to lose themselves-to become a bit robotic and lose their identity in the pursuit of it all. However, I am trying to rework that. To come back to myself through movement-using it as a tool to explore my own humanity.
As a choreographer, I have learned to not pretend to have all of the answers. When I started choreographing, I thought I had to have a plan, to have ideas, to have answers. However, I have learned that my process values the unknown. To come in and explore movement in the process of creation. I don’t know the answers when I walk into a space, and I love the inquiry and collaboration of the process that is allowed with that. It allows the process to be playful and curious. It feels like I’m that little kid again just playing dance-full of wonder and possibility.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Be a kind human always. To yourself and to others. We are all navigating our own paths through this lifetime. There is always space for love and support.
Contact Info:
- Website: threepointprojectwi.com
- Instagram: @ashley.tomaszewski @threepointprojectwi
Image Credits
Andrea Ryerson
