Member Spotlight: Liz Borromeo

Member Spotlight

LIZ BORROMEO

by Chara Huckins, daCi USA Member Liaison

daCi member Liz Borromeo began creating performances when she was very young. She says, with a laugh, “I began dancing in my front yard performing shows for the neighbors with my record player. ” Her mom always had music playing in the house which facilitated her love for music and dance.

Liz began her formal dance training at age 10 with ballet classes in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Her father was in the navy, so her family moved a lot. When she was young, she grew up along the east coast in Virginia and North Carolina and then lived internationally during her teen years in Spain and Sicily. When she was considering college, she remembered going on field trips to William and Mary College in Virginia. Liz attended college there and graduated with a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Dance. “Over the years it has been nice to meld these areas of study together. ” College is where Liz started taking modern dance classes. She found that modern dance was her “happy place. ” She enjoyed modern dance because she could push through the lines and rigidity of ballet. In college, Liz was either in the biology lab, playing piano or in the dance studio. After college,

“I wanted to continue with movement and not lose the science that I had learned, ” so upon graduation, Liz started working in the physical therapy field. She moved to Yakima, Washington, and took a position as a “Medical Exercise Specialist. ” She began to teach at various studios and perform with local dance groups. Liz and her husband moved across the country to Washington D.C. and then to Montana before moving to the Vancouver, Washington/Portland, Oregon area in 2002. There Liz began working in a physical therapy clinic. This was where her boss introduced her to the artistic director for a pre-professional school, Columbia Dance. At that time, they were looking to start a modern program along with needing a director for their children’s program. Upon being hired, “I was given Anne Green Gilbert’s book and Eric Chapelle’s CDs as a recipe book for creating a children’s program. ” Liz spent 13 years at Columbia Dance, building and developing the two programs.

In 2008, Liz had the opportunity to study in Seattle with Anne Green Gilbert, founder of the Creative Dance Center and developer of BrainDance. She worked with

the amazing faculty at the CDC where she participated in the Summer Dance Institute for Teachers. There she directly experienced the teaching philosophy, a nationally and internationally recognized methodology called Brain-Compatible Dance Education. “This experience flipped my brain over in how to bring dance to kids and adults. ”

In her last few years teaching at Columbia Dance, Liz realized that there was a niche for a dance studio that wasn’t represented in Vancouver’s private sector. “There are kids who don’t want to be at a competition studio or conservatory for preprofessional training, but these kids want to excel, they want to have technique, they want to explore, and they want to choreograph. ” Liz found her mission: to start her own studio that was processbased.

In 2015 Liz found a space where this dream could become a reality. The following year she started the MOTUS Dance Company and was encouraged by colleagues to join daCi USA. She attended her first daCi USA conference in 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah and brought four of her students with her. Her students performed and “soaked in an amazing time. ” They are looking forward to attending the daCi USA conference in Michigan in July 2023. Liz’s dance company MOTUS is a nonaudition-based group for ages 8-17 years old. “MOTUS” has two meanings: it is Latin for movement, as well as an acronym for Movement Outreach Teaching Unity and Spirit. The dance philosophy of her school is “learning through exploration, building community with dance, and developing strong bodies and minds. ” Prior to the Covid pandemic, there were 19 students in the dance company. Like many other dance companies, Liz had to get creative with how she was going to continue offering dance classes. She moved classes to Zoom and then during the summer of 2020 she moved dance camps outside where students could socially distance themselves. Liz’s studio offers classes in creative dance, ballet, modern, jazz, and tap. There are currently 65 students, and the studio is located in a historic building that is shared with a local children’s theater company. There are 14 students in her MOTUS dance company. “A large part of our company mission is to benefit our surrounding community through sharing the art of dance. We hope to reach populations of people who may not get to experience a dance performance otherwise. Along with performing for people in the community, our company will also share the learning process and invite audience participation, truly reaching out and becoming arts ambassadors. ” Liz is optimistic for the future of her organization and feels that “students are still getting their groove back. ” She is hopeful for the future of the arts in the Vancouver area where there is encouraging discussion about more support for the arts. She is glad to part of that discussion.