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“I could use instruments outside of myself for expression.”
From Battements to Buildings Merica May Jensen, Mgt 08, M Arch 11
An architecture career began at the barre. When people ask me why I stopped
dancing, my answer is easy: I wasn’t that good. Not good enough to make myself happy, at least. After dedicating more than 20 years of my life to ballet, I was good enough to be pro—but not good enough to be the princess. And who wants to be a tree in the background for the rest of their life? I didn’t. Ballet is, and always will be, the most beautiful thing to me—to see and to feel. It is spiritual. But the automaton 1 0 6
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performative aspect was my least favorite. I felt disposable—any other body placed in the right position on the right note could fulfill what was expected of me. I wanted more. I wanted to be part of the thinking and making side of creation. Architecture and design filled those desires. I had two semesters left at Tech when I finished dancing with Atlanta Ballet. Part out of circumstance, and part out of genuine curiosity about profit structures in the arts, I chose to finish a
degree in management while taking a few design classes. In those courses, something in me clicked. For the first time in my life, the work I put in yielded incredible rewards. I finally had an outlet where I could communicate ideas. Unlike ballet, where I had to use my body to communicate a story, an emotion or to entertain, I could use instruments outside of myself for expression. It was liberating. I finished my degree in management and moved into the master’s of architecture program. I’m now a junior designer at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an architecture firm in New York City. Despite feeling freed from dancing’s creative limitations, I attribute the majority of my success in architecture to my dance background. Both disciplines explore similar themes: line, balance, proportion, procession, presentation, technique, style, space/time, etc. The nuanced beauty I learned in ballet translates directly to what is often desired in architecture. Yet what makes architecture so much richer and challenging is how it extends beyond the problem of creating beauty. Architecture operates across many disciplines, digging deep into culture. It uses the practice of building and making things as a way to question how humans operate in the world. Often, one of the partners of my office asks us to “pervert” our design, to make something that reveals what people would usually expect and hopefully expose an unappreciated truth in a new way. Still, architecture isn’t completely satisfying. In some ways my frustrations with ballet continue: As a designer for a “starchitect,” I am still executing someone else’s vision. Staring into a computer for 12-plus hours a day is exhausting. If dance was too physical, architecture is too intellectual. What interests me now is how I might fuse what I value most in each discipline: What would it mean to create movement that exposes culture or unexpected truths? How could I make space that makes people feel—on an emotional/spiritual level? Luckily, I have some time to figure that out. Merica May Jensen lives in New York City.
Joe Ciardiello
8/13/13 12:17 AM