Renaldo Maurice

Renaldo Maurice, born and raised in Gary, Indiana; began his dance training with Tony Simpson and is a graduate of Talent Unlimited High School. He attended the Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts and studied with Larry Brewer and Michael Davis. Renaldo was a scholarship student at The Ailey School, has trained on scholarship at Ballet Chicago and Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, and had an internship at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. In 2008, he received second place in modern dance from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and received the Dizzy Feet Foundation Scholarship in 2009. In February 2012, Renaldo was honored with the key to the city of Gary, Indiana, his hometown and also named a state representative. Renaldo has incorporated his passion for dance with the need for social responsibility by working as the Co-Artistic Director of the South Shore Dance Alliance back home in Indiana. He was a member of Ailey II for 3 years and has been a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Company since 2011.

Transcript

My name is Renaldo Maurice and I'm based out of New York, New Jersey. Well, being a professional dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater movement is very big in my life, I think it started very young. I was like six, played football and basketball, always moving. I saw Alvin Ailey, they came to my hometown, and I was like... Wow! These are people who look like me, they were like on stage, you know, doing that thing and I was like okay this is what I want to do, that's what I want to be.
Movement is around us. Every day, we wake up, we have to get out bed, we brush our teeth, you know, so I think movement is everywhere.

I can do everything. Not to gloat or anything but I've worked hard and I'm trying very hard, and I've educated myself also. So, my style is unique. It's versatile. It's Renaldo Maurice.

For me, I'm very guided and led by spirit and energy. So that's very important to me, as an artist, as a creative, as a black man. My family is my foundation, and that's where I always go for any source of inspiration and motivation.

So for me as a professional, it also evolves in the way I interact with people. So I think it's totally different now than before, why was the discipline, and that's what's important. You know with anything that you do you have to be disciplined, you have to perfect your craft so I just believe in perfecting my craft.

It was just like yeah the pandemic leaders are closing. So, we were all like "okay, cool" so they wanted to send us home to our families to just make sure everything was ok. You know when times are rough like that, and you express yourself, you know dancing for me was the only outlet, and I didn't have that so that was that. And then, you know things gradually started to shift and change there then also, everything else that we was going through in terms of spiritually, mentally and in a world with the killings of black men and black women, you know, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd that all happened in like one year, like it was so it was a little overwhelming. You know, so that time in the pandemic, and having a moment not to do what I love to do... It's a fire under me now, energy,

Blackness... it's a feeling. It's also the color of my skin. It's where I come from, so it's everything to me. It's who I am as an artist is who I am as a man, I think spirit, I think energy.
I think I think community, I think unity. I think culture. So that's what that's what I think about when I hear blackness.

Blackness is around us 24/7. You know we can act like it's not okay that's you, that's you all and that's okay. You know it's not for me to go back and forth and agree to disagree with you or try to make you see what I see, but I'm clear on what I see. I'm clear on blackness. I'm clear on my interpretation of what it is.

That would be nice. I would love to live in a world that is all about peace, and like Unity. So that's why I'm creating that work for myself. So I'm done talking about what I want, I have to create it from my own life, I have to create it in my own practices, especially if I see that it's not around me, and we all know you know what's happening right now. It's not really that so I'm kind of sick of faking like living in a world all we're all about peace and love and like not everybody's not about that, and that's okay, but I choose not to indulge my energy in that I choose to live a life about peace, love, unity, respect, that's what I choose. So that's the life that I'm creating for myself.