What Dance Means to Me
A conversation with dancer Jay Asolo
What makes you so passionate about dance?
Dancing just gives me so much freedom but my first love was football. As I was growing up due to a lot of childhood problems, I didn’t want to go out and mingle all the time so I tapped into dancing, dancing saved me mentally. A lot of the things that I do that give me confidence actually comes from dance. It brings so much joy into my life and has given me a worldwide family.
When I got to Ireland I saw kids doing so many things they shouldn’t be doing in the public out of boredom. So I was thinking how can I use dance to help my community…so I got into teaching dance. I’m not the best but the kids love the way I move and they believe I can be their dance teacher. I left football cause I wanted to help the kids and I’ve never looked back.
The kids have taught me a lot, that’s one thing I can always say. When you teach kids you’re teaching yourself. When you teach them the right way they always give you joy. So when I see kids come into my class and leaving my class laughing that gives me joy or when they say things like because of your class I was able to come out of my shell. Teaching kids has for sure made me better as a person.
Who Inspires you in dance?
It’s because of Michael Jackson that I got into dance really but there’s a couple kids on my block in Lagos, Nigeria that I’m friends with - One day I came back from school and saw them dancing, everybody getting into the running man. It was my first move that I learnt. I have a lot of dance inspirations but one of the people that I look up to and that has helped me grow as a dancer is Budda Stretch, this man is just a special human being. When I got to meet him in NY he put me on so much game that my dancing went from strength to strength.
How do you want to use dance in your life?
What I really want to do is community dancing – the community has helped me to be where I am. I was adopted, my parents looked after me and show me love, even though they have their own kids they show me love till present. So what can I do? I’m not rich in money, but I’m rich in health, what I can do to give back is to bring people together.
What have you learnt from the last two years?
Basically since the start of the pandemic till now is to never give up on yourself. It’s easy to give up on yourself, we are all going through it. The whole world. Reach out to close ones and loved ones and friends especially. Me and my friends we talk about regular stuff, what we are watching on Netflix - We talk about those things but of course we have our ups and downs with mental health. Normally I have stuff planned and so sometimes it does feel the same same and feels as if nothing is going to get better. But you let the feelings come and go. I would always try and set myself challenges everyday. I used the pandemic time to go back in to being a student. That’s how I got out of spiralling mentally and to not give up on myself.
