Today we’d like to introduce you to Maya Billig.
Hi Maya, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Born in Coconut Grove and raised by Miami, I began dancing 24 years ago. After some time dabbling around the Miami arts scene and not feeling too fulfilled from college classes, I began traveling and came back to my art. I pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts at New World School of the Arts, but it was in the summers in between studying where I found myself traveling with a renewed sense of purpose. I researched and attended intensives and training all over the world in pursuit of the type of dance practice I felt was right for me, which directly feeds into my professional practice today. I’ve taken ingredients from the 25+ countries I’ve visited and discovered how I want to move. I view my crafts as a never-ending study and means of connection. So although technique is impressive and ought to be applauded, I am more interested in what is beyond it, inside it, and all around it. I also felt a significant spark the first time I watched a dance film at Screendance Miami film festival in 2017. Within the year, I directed my first short film that went on to show in the same festival the year after. Consequently, my film and photography career took on a life of its own. Once done with school, the momentum picked up, particularly within the world of choreography and film. It’s with immense gratitude that I can say the momentum has not stopped. I’ve been blessed to be supported by the Knight Foundation, the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami Light Project, Locust Projects, the Miami-Dade County Cultural Arts and Affairs, the Deering Estate, and soon Jacob’s Pillow. Miami has proved to be a city teeming with opportunity and my art is nothing without its ridiculous, ironic, palpable, beautiful energy.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In actuality, it has been smoother than I could have hoped. However, my view is that the struggles and trying times are something necessary. Our inward disasters are just as significant as outwardly ones and the majority of my challenges can’t be seen because I tend to be quite private about my mental health. But the best decision I made in my life was choosing an artistic path because I am regularly in spaces where it is accepted and encouraged to be vulnerable. There has been a movement within the dance world to speak up about where you’re at that day, whether it be good or bad. Dance is a discipline that involves every single part of you: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. So what I’m learning now is that I can only work with what I have that day and there is little use in faking it. It is a constant dedication to being honest.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in the worlds of contemporary dance and film. I have a profound interest in creating surreal experiences that can suspend an audience’s relationship to reality in order to reevaluate our ideas and beliefs. I have an obsessive interest in discovering nuance and subtlety and am always working out how to say more with less. The artists I admire most make me feel as though they’ve taken me by the hand and led me somewhere. I work heavily with improvisation as a practice and means of choreographing since my interest is really in the human. It’s both my most selfish and selfless desire: I want to connect with everyone.
My most recent live work, A Lot, is an outdoor multidisciplinary experience involving contemporary dance, street styles, and live music blended with traditional electronic house beats. It is inspired by disco and house culture throughout the last 40 years and works to encapsulate the healing that takes place on the dance floor, as well as the transient and static qualities of the parking lot where it is performed. A Lot is a call to joy, celebration, and regaining momentum. This work has been graciously supported by the Knight Foundation and Miami Light Project.
My latest commissioned piece is a dance film titled No Exit, created in the culmination of my artist residency at the Deering Estate. It references a timeless tale of internal purgatory and isolation originally introduced by French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential work of the same title. The film is charged with our complex human relationship to questions of eternity, the randomness we’re subjected to, and “why.” The rich information is navigated between the architecture of the Deering Estate and the architecture of one’s own physical and mental place.
There are many things brewing on the horizon, and I am particularly excited about becoming a Jacob’s Pillow choreographic fellow in August of this year. Amidst a time when I have been so focused on producing work, I am incredibly grateful to be given an opportunity to be in the choreographic lab of one of America’s most notable dance hubs and research further what it is I want to accomplish and say as an artist. I look forward to a period of deepening my relationship to movement and message.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Both networking and mentors have arrived in my life from an organic, genuine interest towards craft. I began networking before I knew I was networking. I believe both of these things come from a combined effort of being “ballsy” and being a fan. When I see something I like, I go up and tell someone. This has been one of the most major contributing factors to my network as an artist. You can’t be an artist without being a diehard fan and patron of the arts. I suppose if I have any advice, it is to always tell someone how much their work touched/changed/inspired/invigorated you. What I’ve come to learn about the majority of artists I admire: they are incredibly kind.
Contact Info:
- Email: mayanadine12@gmail.com
- Website: mayanadinedance.com
- Instagram: @mayabillig
Image Credits
Enrique Villacrese, Mateo Serna Zapata, Luis Salas, Karli Evans, Ralphie Ruiz
