Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaime Frugé-Walne.
Jaime, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
My story is about coming full circle and finding my creative voice in an art that I left behind as an early adult. I grew up in Houston dancing at the Houston Ballet Academy and graduated from HSPVA to find myself burned out and fallen out of love with dance. I was injured, tired, and lost my drive for the one thing that mattered most to me. So, I left for college and transitioned to a new creative field.
I graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and became a costume designer/stylist for the music industry in Los Angeles. For 8 years, I worked like the devil, traveled the world, and had some pretty amazing life experiences. But, that wore thin. I dropped everything, quit my team, and moved home. Confused on what to do with my unique skill set in Houston, I landed a job at the Alley Theatre in their costume shop for a season. The world was familiar but not the same. I needed a career change and luckily was offered a position at YES Prep Public Schools to teach theatre.
The theatre position suddenly morphed into a dance position because of my previous experience. I was terrified not only because it was my first-year teaching, but also because it was the first time I would step back into a dance studio in over 10 years. I had to sink or swim. I threw myself into the deep end and my time at YES Prep proved to be one of my life’s defining moments. I stayed for three years teaching and exposing my students to the world of dance and expression through movement. My tenure at YES Prep with my students awoke a spirit and passion that I had lost. I was inspired and hungry for dance again.
I ended up returning to school and received my Masters in Fine Arts in Dance from Sam Houston State University. At SHSU, I developed a unique creative practice and artistic voice. I finally found what I had been searching for almost 15 years when I first left for LA. I wasn’t only meant to be a dancer or performer. I was meant to be a creator and a movement artist, who invites her audience into a curated world for both performers and audiences to interact and co-create together to promote social change.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am a choreographer and designer who specializes in co-creative and interactive performances with the goal of providing audiences and performers a transformational experience rooted in human to human interaction. I fuse choreography and storytelling inside a curated performance environment to challenge audiences and performers through active participation and co-creation. My objective is to go beyond creating a traditional performance experience, and instead, produce a collective experience where everyone plays an equal role.
The foundation of my work is engrained in an individualized and one-on-one experience where no performance will be ever duplicated. It is a thrilling and terrifying position to be as an artist because I am constantly straddling a fine line between absolute liberty and control. To achieve this, my performances are multisensory. I develop a creative paradigm that accesses the verbal, visual, and kinesthetic worlds through the of use the human body. Through movement and dance, I stimulate an instinctive and empathetic response in my audience and motivate change by examining social and political issues inside my performance process.
What responsibility, if any, do you think artists have to use their art to help alleviate problems faced by others? Has your art been affected by issues you’ve concerned about?
I think the role of artists is multi-faceted right now. Meaning, we have a responsibility to use our art either as a statement for what’s happening and/or a way to escape the world right now. People go see art to be forced to think or granted the permission to check out. Personally, I enjoy experiencing both sides, but my artistic voice and work rely on and are heavily affected by the world today. My role is to put audiences and performers in a position to really deal with what’s happening head on and inspire a call to action for change. It’s hard. It’s heavy. It’s uncomfortable. But, it’s unbelievably rewarding for everyone involved. You either experience what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes, or you experience catharsis and a sense of community knowing that you are not alone. My role is really to provide a voice to those affected by social and political injustices and transforms audiences by allowing them to hear the stories of others, watch their bodies react, and physically feel their struggle.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
Currently, I am working on reproducing a production called TWENTY-FIVE: An Interactive Dance Theatre Experience. TWENTY-FIVE is inspired by personal accounts of the effects of mass incarceration in the American prison system. It engages only fifteen audience members in a unique and individualized journey to explore the things left undone and unsaid as life is uprooted by a set of unexpected circumstances.
Originally performed and sold out in Huntsville, TX, in 2017, I restaged and performed the work last year at The Interchange in Houston, TX. It was another successful sold-out weekend with many audience members wanting the show to continue for multiple weekends. Due to budget restrictions, my producer, Adam Castaneda of The Pilot Dance Project, and I decided to hold off and reproduce the work a year later. I wanted the time to regroup and add to the production if I was going to do it a third time.
Right now, we are in the process of grant writing and fundraising to perform TWENTY-FIVE in the end of February/early March 2019. We will be launching a fundraising campaign for the production in the coming months and need all the financial support we can get. If someone is interested in seeing the show or generously donating, they can visit my website or email me directly to be added to my contact list for upcoming news and events.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jaimefruge.com
- Email: info@jaimefruge.com
- Instagram: @jaimefrugewalne
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaimefrugewalne/
Image Credit:
Lynn Lane
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