Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan King.
Hi Evan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi VoyageLA and readers! I am Evan King, I am an artist currently based in L.A. I make sculptures, installations, photography, and videos. I am also a ballet dancer, starting at 20, and seriously training at the age of 23.
My parents support my self-guided career, and I feel I am so lucky and hard to find relevant situations around me since I grow up. I started to do painting and drawing when I was 3, picked up the violin when I was 9, and somehow went to one of the best fine art schools – China Central Academy of Fine Art in the country when I was 16.
Where do I belong and who am I? Questions have been raised since I got my “dream university” offer in Australia six years ago. My father once suggested I should study architecture. However, after watching my first ballet performance, I changed my mind.
It is a true leap to freedom in the five years of my life since I moved to Los Angeles from China. I followed my profession – art making and stepped into a ballet studio when I was 20 in 2018. Two ballet classes a week to maybe more than 20 hours of dancing and still taking a full term at ArtCenter College of Design as a fine art student. Meanwhile, unperturbed facing, learning, and adapting to a new culture. Both aesthetically, and ideologically doing ballet has taken me to an unthinkable level of pleasure.
I think what is interesting to compare violin to ballet is, I play an instrument versus I am an instrument. Like George Balanchine said: “Dancing is music made visible” and “See the music, hear the dance”. It is always inspirational and calm in a way for me to walk into a studio, to stand next to a barre anywhere in the world.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I lived in an environment where I personally felt like an outsider and not belonging for twenty years of my life. I have been shaped by my surroundings, sometimes I emerged as a shape, not of my own design. Growing up in a
society of redaction, the everyday political situation created and continues to draw a chaotic and complicated relationship with beings that are close to me physically and now mentally. When the mistrust gets sowed, everyone becomes a villain, yet I remain driven to be transparent. Being vigilant and being self censored all the time and trying to pull myself away from unnecessary free speech has been a lesson since I moved here to the U.S.
Like the cubic structure I make for years, each one reflects my own experience at a specific moment, culture, and stage of life. As well as the reason why I am dancing from zero, it feels like a detoxing process, all the weight that I started ballet with – 220 lbs (100kg) to be specific, was something that mentally brought me closer to a level of self-confidence. Trust me, body shame has always be my “friend”.
Unhappiness co-exists with life, my friend once tried to comfort me after I didn’t get into a ballet summer school in 2020, earlier this year, but I knew that was not for me at the time. Later I broke my 5th metatarsal on a Sunday class in the summer of 2021, it was a displaced fracture on my left foot, and a titanium metal screw stays there permanently. There are lessons that I need to learn and embrace.
Something recently brought my attention is the discrimination on age in Ballet. Most of the open classes, companies or training institutions are promoting how much they love adult dancers no matter who you are, you are always welcome. When I try to get more serious about ballet, 25 years old definitely is something
that is not on the way of being a professional ballet dancer. Rejections from most of the training places, not ballet company because I don’t think I’m there yet.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am grateful for being able to go to Royal Danish Ballet summer school in both 2022 and 23, last year as the first Chinese male student in the summer school in its short history, the first dancer who had no previous ballet performance on stage, as well as who started ballet at an adult program to attend the summer school in the summer school. This year again, I couldn’t imagine the experience on a big stage – it is a dream come true moment for dancers. I accomplished the program including solos, corps, pas de deux, tarantella dance from Napoli, Bournonville Repertoire, Pas de Deux, Symphony in C, Character dance from Seguidilla, Don Quixote, Ballet Etude, and more.
Right following the three-week summer school of 2023, I performed my first ever solo on stage in Santa Monica, California. Nurevey’s Swan Lake Act I solo from Tchaikovsky is a three and half minutes adagio staged by one of my favorite teachers New York City Ballet’s previous principal Nilas Martins. Another monumental moment for me this year that tells me I do love the stage.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I did make a huge change in myself, if I am lucky enough, for others who started ballet late and dreamt to be dancing, whether you have the facility or not, transform a dream into motivation and execute it.
Self-doubt on the level of mentally also physically is normal for everyone. I think being fearless of things that you feel challenged on is defiantly helpful in so called success. Even though the definition of the word success could be explained differently individually. I enjoy the outcome of what failure could bring me – the experience, even everyone probably is saying that but really, do we compare ourselves with “the best” in that career? No, we just do not have to be too hard on ourselves sometimes. I would compare my dancing video to a principal dancer and tell myself I suck, I would also capture moments that I did do it well on my own level, or maybe better than just “well” and be appreciative of what I did. Maybe also being a little rebellion on something you desire. For most of the time, the chance of being success will go away earlier than when we think, so get prepared.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/real_evan_king/
Image Credits
The first pic (my ballet solo profile) Photo Credit to: Tatiana Wills the 2nd and the 3rd. pics Photo Credit to: Tatiana Wills, Partner Dancer: Lily Wills The rest photos credits belong to myself
