As the song plays loudly on the speakers, she sways her body back and forth. Sweat drips down her face with every move she makes but she never misses a step.
Lesley Washington, choreographer and dance major, has been drawn to music and the stage ever since her first ballet class. Her passion inspired her to put aside her professional accounting and finance career and decided to pursue her dance dream.
“There is a stage in Erickson’s theory that states if you don’t pursue your own path, you often go back to it at some point,” Washington said. “I guess I’m at that point.”
She’s traveled internationally from Hong Kong to Barcelona teaching and performing New York Style salsa dancing.
She’s also performed the last three semesters of LoTech/NoTech with choreography by EC’s staff of instructors such as Kim Bogaro, Pam Santelman, Daniel Berney and Jamie Hammonds.
Washington has been choreographing for approximately six years.
“I utilize the art of dance to express personal emotion, opinions and a love for movement by stepping outside the numeric cadence to dance, and continually challenge not only our bodies, but our minds, rhythmically in choreography and social dancing,” Washington said.
With the experience and passion she has for dance, Washington said she plans to open a school that incorporates dance therapy into an educational curriculum that combines the theories of psychoanalysis and early child development to foster positive psychological and emotional growth for young children.
“Through the movement of dance you are not only able to express emotions and feelings, she said.
A few of the genres incorporated into the dance therapy program she said would include improvisation, ballet, modern, and Afro Cuban.
The hardest part for Washington is the music selection because she said there are so many infinite possibilities.
“I think finding music is the most difficult task and takes hours upon hours and days upon days to come across that one song that not only inspires me, but captures my attention in the introduction of the song,” she said.
Michelle Funderburk, dance instructor, sees a lot of passion in Washington’s choreography.
“She is very efficient and developed,” Funderburk said. “Her choreography has a lot of in-depth meaning.”
Patricia Bonner, 26, administrative justice major and dancer, also thinks Washington is an excellent choreographer.
“She’s well rounded in all fields of dance,” Bonner said.
Washington said this is something she was meant to do all her life and couldn’t be any happier with her decision to pursue dancing.
“Dancing is ‘selfless’, Washington said. There’s no wrong or right to dancing because life is like an improvisation.”
