A movement-builder in more ways than one, Juan-Pablo has endured a lot to get to where he is today. Like many male dancers that includes ridicule at the hands of his peers. “Growing up…the jokes and jeers at my gender, sexuality, and identity were difficult to filter out as I tried to figure out myself and my artistry,” he reveals.
“I feel as though being persistent and non-conformist made my self confidence grow to a place where I could address the conflicting feelings that I had about being a male dancer. And once I had classes with other male dancers, it was like a personal validation of my experience.”
This ultimately led to his own realizations around gender and performance. “I feel like we get very caught up with labels, and gender is a very hot topic. But the fluidity that is granted with dance as an aesthetic form, the physicality of it, knows no gender…
And unless you’re playing out a character and you’re acting out a gender, that’s entirely different to just figuring out how you move and realizing that you can detach that from a construct that you think in your mind is something that I’ve really come to know about my masculinity and not feel pressured to expect certain things of myself as a male dancer, as a queer person, as an individual in this society.”
There’s more to dance than meets the eye. And Juan-Pablo knows firsthand exactly the ways it defies conventional notions around why male dancers are strong. “The strength that I have as a male dancer to lift my pairs and support them is not just a physical strength, but it also goes deeper…
There’s emotional presence of support and the support system and community.” And it’s exactly this kind of strength that everyone else takes for granted. That teaches us all the value of staying in touch with the best parts of ourselves, in hopes of modeling that for others.