Life & Work with Taylor Donofrio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Donofrio.

Hi Taylor, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up always wanting to be an artist of some sort. Me and my two sisters would always perform “acts” for our family. (At times, this meant us dancing and lip-syncing in our living room to whatever CDs and records we found in our parent’s collection). This freedom of expression, imagination, and play that I experienced as a child has stuck with me and has made me the artist I am today. I felt lucky as my parents were always encouraging of my artistic pursuits, signing me up for classes that I wanted to take and supporting me as I continued to make steps towards an artistic career. After taking years of Ballet, Drama, Jazz, and Modern dance, I finally found choreography and dance improvisation classes in college, which began my passion for being able to build my own dance works. While becoming a Professional dancer was important to me, underneath I always felt that being told how to move was restrictive for me. I just wanted to dance on my own terms and based on my own instincts. After choreographing a few dance works in Undergrad, I was hooked. I received an award of excellence for my Thesis performance.

During my research, my world was opened up to the great dance pioneers of Modern Dance. I recognized their conviction as artists, their drive, and their ability to push through struggling circumstances to express their stories and feelings through movement. I began my career as a choreographer as soon as I could. I moved to NYC after college, and it was there that I established my own Dance Company, Donofrio Dance Company. I worked many different side hustles; Barista, kids yoga instructor, Customer Service, Retail, and anything I could find that would offer me flexible hours so I could continue to dance, choreograph, and build my own dance company. When we first started, we performed anywhere we could; theaters, benefit events, schools, and festivals, and even though sometimes the audiences at these events were not as receptive to dance, I still felt such a sense of fulfillment and reward. The final product was less important to me, but the creative process and working with a group of artists was what made me keep going back into the studio. I look back at these experiences and notice how much they taught me about being a leader and about, putting yourself out there as an artist and taking risks.

As I continued this path, growing this company with a grassroots approach in Brooklyn, I auditioned Professional dancers, received residencies, dove into site-specific work, as well as learned how to build my own brand. Now, after being a choreographer for 13 years, I have moved to Los Angeles, received my Master of Fine Arts in Choreography, and I am excited for what’s to come. The company is still alive but now has become a collective of different artists, collaborators, and performers that I work with on different projects ranging from film public performances and performance experiences. I have expanded my understanding of what interests me about the form and how to keep evolving my dance work based upon the current culture as well as my own desires to create.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The biggest challenge, as in any niche art form, is the funding and the sustainability as an artist. Often my days are filled with administrative tasks, grant writing, and application writing in order to build performance opportunities and to find funding for these opportunities. So much goes into Live Performance on top of the hours of physical training and dedication; there’s always a constant need for resources and financial stability to make the work happen.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work is deeply personal but also very much about the people I bring into the creative process with me. Dance is a way for me to express my inner landscape and my work often takes on themes of loss, femininity, and intimacy. I always want to build an experience and world for audiences to drop into and I utilize elements of design, architecture, space, and sound to help build that world in conversation with the story I’m telling. These worlds I build within each dance work are often delicate, with a sense that at any moment, they could fall apart. Each artist I bring into a work has their own artistic voice, background, and life experience and I always want to hold space for others in each creative process to find themselves in the work. Building community is important to me as this bond between artists allows for a nurturing and fruitful space for the work to grow. More recently, I have become more excited to see how dance can be within an interdisciplinary process where multiple artists are offering their ideas, and each art form is in conversation with one another.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Even though I’m a city dweller, having lived in NYC and now Los Angeles, I also feel very connected to nature and the quiet. My mind is always busy and active, so the presence of plants, animals, and natural landscapes helps me find clarity and focus. I grew up in a quiet town in New England, and this is still very much a part of me. Meditation has become a part of my everyday practice as well, which I began seven years ago, and it’s changed my life in my ability to understand perspective and how to live more connected to myself and the world around me.

Contact Info:

• Website: donofriodanceco.com
• Instagram: donofriodanceco

Image Credits
Rafael Hernandez Linnea Marik Stephen Sholl M A V E R I C K