Today we’d like to introduce you to Lina Lux.
Hi Lina, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hi, I am Lina! I live in North Hollywood and manage, write music for, and perform with my girl group, Moxxy. I have been singing, dancing Cali girl my whole life! I started performing in Elementary school in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I wore poodle skirts in Grease (“Summer LIGHTS,” “Summer Nights,” and the “PG” version;), donned aprons for Oklahoma and was a Broadway-bound baby. Growing up with queer dads and ally moms, there was zero “machismo” in our house-dressing up in costumes and doing daddy-daughter renditions of “All That Jazz” was commonplace.
Life was fabulous, but also lonely and confusing; I was a weirdo, that never accepted anything society told me and did not fit in with what others my age wanted. On stage I felt free; there were valuable rules I could understand, and also at times NO rules, and both of those things comforted me in their own way.
In high school, my jazz dance studio offered a belly dance class, and one day I decided to try it! In cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, dances stand for something ancient and expansive.
You don’t just “Broadway smile”, you show the audience heartbreak, joy, flirtation, and meditation… suddenly me being a “Weirdo”, and felt like…” I was just a human going through normal changes in life”. Belly dance taught me how to become a woman. It taught me how to unfold into my body as a sensuous young lady without becoming overly sexualized by a misogynist society.
In college, I worked on a dance and music degree. At 8 am, I would be in black leggings taking pilates classes, and at 1 am that same night I would be belly dancing in rhinestones to Arabic pop hits in a hookah bar in downtown San Francisco. Sometimes on the same night, I would be playing trumpet with an Afro-Cuban band.
This was where I learned how to hold my own, be a businesswoman, and create a brand in an oversaturated market. Most importantly, I learned how to take initiative and not play the victim in life; that no one was going to come and fix everything for you and pave the way in gold, so you better get creative, roll your sleeves up, and quit whining if you want to manifest your dreams.
Sometimes you have to duct tape a costume together backstage… but the show is starting in 5 min- so figure it out and make it look good!
One day I got a call to join a belly dance company being created for America’s Got Talent: Portland. I moved to Portland! There were fewer hookah clubs, but more of an underground alternative scene, so I started dancing in burlesque and circus shows. I combined my skills in dance with my experience in theater and music to create fabulous larger-than-life character acts.
I headlined burlesque and dance festivals all over the world, touring from Germany to Canada, Ireland to the Czech Republic. I toured with larger and larger acts, from the world-renowned band Beats Antique, to March Fourth Marching Band, a touring circus review. I picked up more circus skills and eventually was touring doing belly dance, burlesque, and acrobatics acts with stilt walkers, sometimes all in one night. I performed for 10,000’s people at huge festivals around the world.
It was amazing and I was grateful, but I still knew this was not my final destination. I wanted to create something truly my own. I started my first LLC band with 2 DJs/music producers in Portland, called Sepiatonic. From our first tiny show in a freezing bar for 20 people to performing for thousands in major music festivals, we grew a great fan base. We had an agent with a huge EDM agency, and I was touring and paying bills full time off my music. I was singing, dancing, writing music, and traveling the world.
Due to divergent artistic paths, this project phased out, and I moved to LA to pursue what I knew to be my ultimate goal: GIRL GROUP! Making it with my own aesthetic, my own choreographies, and my own music, in the largest possible market, was something I always had wanted but never thought I was worth.
After learning so much about the industry and who I wanted to be as a woman, I felt finally ready. I got a small room with only 2 walls in a warehouse in DTLA with 6 other artists. I trained constantly, sometimes in dance class 8 hrs a day, and working out, singing, and writing music afterward til 4 am.
I kept my eyes open for the right girls to manifest this dream. Finally, a found them: CJ and Bri, and our girl group Moxxy were formed! We put together a demo and got signed immediately. That year was one of the hardest years of my life. We made an album and got exploited in more ways than I knew you could be, but I learned more than I had in 5 years.
I took over managing Moxxy myself, and with all three of our hard work, we put out another album that next year and got a deal with a new label. This one was an independent Latin pop (J Balvin etc.) label based in Colombia. We knew they were family right away. We wrote the third album, got over 15K followers on TikTok in 3 months, and had a blast. It felt like home!
Throughout this process, we are constantly learning about the music industry, how to be a band with racial diversity without being a “cheesy token crew”, how to truly celebrate each others’ dance styles and cultures without culturally appropriating each other, and how to work together to meet our goals and inspire as many women as we can.
The future looks bright for Moxxy, and our next adventure is an upcoming trip to Medellín, Colombia, to create 3 music videos for our newest album!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road has definitely not been flat. It has been a wild roller coaster of highs and lows. Some days, I am deeply in touch with my dream and my value, and I know I can manifest anything. I write 2 songs in 5 minutes, I win competitions, and we make auditions!
Some days, I feel that it’s so bleak and so disheartening that I cannot navigate the challenges. I have been on the suicide crisis line so many nights, trying to calm down so I can breathe, and have quit at least 1oo time. Every time I think it is over, I give myself a day to breathe, meditate, and see my best friend Frankie… and I always make it back on track again.
I think it is very important to talk about the realities of mental health in the entertainment industry. On stage, I am a PopStar covered in sequins, singing for a cheering crowd. But some nights, I am just alone and so lost, hitting dead ends, crying, and feeling hopeless. Sometimes I can’t figure out the next step, sometimes the haters get to me, and I can’t remember what the value is of my art. Sometimes, people, I trust betray me, and I want to scream “Well, fine, Universe!
If this is what you are giving me-then I am out!” But in the end, I have come to trust that the Universe truly is closing a smaller door, to guide me to a bigger one. So many dancers in LA get discouraged, quit, and move away. There is no shame in this-it is a truly exhausting road, but if more of us shared our stories, I think we could help give each other the support we need to find a creative path to our dreams.
Some of the biggest struggles for Moxxy, my girl group, are racial/appropriation issues (as a multiracial band), navigating the COMPLETELY CONFUSING and ever-changing music industry, and finding the balance between being “marketable” and also true to ourselves. We three girls are all of the different races and have very diverse life stories. What a lot of people forget is that race is only the beginning of how cultural backgrounds can be different.
We have had to learn about each other’s traumas, family history, and anxieties to stay strong. We also struggle at times to celebrate each others’ cultural dance styles without seeming like we are “culturally appropriating” them. Apps like TikTok are useful promotional tools, but also are not always the most full of integrity to roots of cultures. We always are learning to balance this.
In the music business, when we sign a contract, we have to do hours and hours of research first, watching YouTube tutorials on our legal rights as composers, etc. Sometimes, even with all the work we do, we get abused. We have to cry, take a day off, then find a way to learn from the past, and try again. We also have to learn how to sell our product so we can grow, while being true to our personal values.
Some days people tell me “You’re so weird no one will ever like your freak show act” and then some days I have people telling me “You are a sell-out basic b*tch”. You can’t please everyone, and some days you can’t please anyone. So you just have to have a good support network, and good systems for praying or meditating, stretching, journaling, rolling with the changes, growing, and constantly re-focusing the approach.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
In my career on stage, I have been through a few phases, from Broadway to belly dance. For my current project Moxxy, I am known for being a great songwriter and artistic director. I also sing and dance, but recently, I have been putting a lot of hours into directing our music videos, which is always a blast.
I love that you have to envision the synchronicity of so many moving parts-costumes, lights, videography, shots, choreography, and more. It is a chance to create a whole world, and really share our brand and vision with the world. I love how these videos can inspire our audience to get creative and manifest their own unique worlds in their lives. I work with a number of people that have done multiple projects with us, so every time it gets easier, as you grow with your team.
For our music video to our track “Sensuous” we had to drive 5 hrs out to the desert near Las Vegas to film in the sand dunes. We had to carry gear for a long way in the dunes and set up a small camp so the crew could work. The result looked incredible. I like the aspect of problem-solving creative solutions to meet the vision.
I also edit a lot of our videos, so it is fun to watch it all come together, even though each video can take up to 80 hours of work to edit. I outsource to a different person to do color-correcting since that is not my specialty, but I design and sew a lot of our costumes.
In Moxxy, we all have different dance styles we have trained in. CJ is an amazing krumper and popper (street dance styles). Bri is an incredible ballerina and contemporary dancer, as well as her street/club dance styles like house dance. I specialize in belly dance and also whacking which is a club dance style that formed in LA in the 1970s in queer POC clubs.
We have a lot of styles to share, and love to teach each other. We always share the history of the dance, and cipher (like a “jam” for dancers) together to keep growing!
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I am just so excited to see Moxxy grow. It really feels like the ultimate destination of all my years of different skills and paths in the entertainment industry. I am sure any mothers of actual human babies out there will roll their eyes at this (“you have no idea, girl!”) but I do think of this project as my child.
I wake up in the night panicking about it, I work on it constantly, while I am at the grocery store, at a party, or showering, I am brainstorming how to make it better. In traffic on the 170 goings home to The Valley, I write music in the car. I nurture it with everything in my heart, weaving in all the stories that have made me who I am.
I see the vision every day – how we can inspire others, how we can create new cultural paradigms in a society that is so toxic for women, and how we can do it by lifting each other up. I believe truly that, although society pits women against each other, we are stronger together; that is what Moxxy is about.
This career is tough and life is hard. I could not have survived the music industry alone, to this point where I am making my first international pop album, without these other girls. They are not my competition, they are my team, my co-business owners, my brainstorm crew, my dance teachers, and my family!
If you want to be in the Moxxy fam, please find us on TikTok – @wearemoxxy, IG @we.are.moxxy, or www.wearemoxxy.com. Thanks, everyone, and have a peaceful day!
Pricing:
- Hire Moxxy – $400-$1000 (depending length of show)
- Private hour long dance class with Lina- $100
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.karolinalux.com
- Instagram: @itslinalux
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glN10GSZHYI
- TikTok: Lina Lux: @itslinalux/Moxxy and @wearemoxxy
Image Credits
Seila Tep @Kazafstone.photography and Tim Salaz @randmvisionhd
