Kai’s Story
I have been living in Los Angeles for about 12 years, but I am originally from San Francisco. That was where I first got into dance, when my mother enrolled me in a pre-ballet school at the age of four. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to train in some of the best ballet institutes in the world, including those in San Francisco, New York, and St. Petersburg.
When I entered the professional scene, there were very few black dancers. Neither was there space for the nearly six-foot-tall woman I had become. I realized that if I wanted to find a place in the dance world, I would have to forge my own path. This led me to work as a choreographer, dancer, producer, and art administrator, which I have been doing ever since.
One of my projects is Good Trouble Makers, which I founded completely by accident. I had no aspirations of heading an arts collaborative, but I had been working for several years with the same collection of performers, and I realized we had organically begun to form a group. I knew it was time to acknowledge this, so I formalized it with a name and mission.
Good Trouble Makers is a genre-expanding, practice-driven collaborative of 8-11 artists engaged in a lifelong commitment to queer and anti-racist art-making, knowledge-sharing, and performing. We are primarily people of color; almost everyone is queer, but all performers are welcome. As part of our activism, we don't adhere to traditional gender roles in performance but approach dance as the expression of energy.
We also deliberately avoid the standard model of hiring performers just for specific performances and instead commit to building a lasting relationship with our members. We work to ensure our members benefit from the opportunities we receive, and we try to work with dancers who are typically underrepresented in the dance world and make sure we pay them fairly. Our goal is to become an established, financially independent organization that mentors others while maintaining our integrity and furthering our mission.
After all, art is something we should all have access to.
Artist Notes
“Kai is depicted here as a young girl in a ballet dress to represent her first steps in the dance world. The illustration shows many stick figures in different costumes performing different types of dance, which signifies Good Trouble Makers. The background is dominated by shades of orange because it symbolizes creativity and passion.”
Published Sep 30, 2020
Updated Sep 1, 2023
Published in Issue VIII: Art