Dancing Beyond the Binary: A Conversation with Ashton Edwards

Dancing Beyond the Binary: A Conversation with Ashton Edwards

Ashton Edwards, originally from Flint, Michigan, has studied dance since the age of four years old at the Flint School of Performing Arts. Ashton has attended summer ballet intensives on full scholarships at The Joffrey Academy of Dance in Chicago, Houston Ballet School, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. In 2018, Ashton represented Flint in the NAACP’s National Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) competition in San Antonio, Texas, against over 250 students of all high school grades all over the country. In the Performing Arts, Ballet dance category, Ashton came in 3rd place, winning a bronze medal. Ashton is currently a Professional Division student at Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Why do you love to dance?

I love to dance because I can’t survive without it. I love to dance, because I make people happy, and that makes me happier than I could ever be. I like to dance, because it feels natural. The uncomfortable feels right. It’s indescribable the feeling I have when I’m dancing. 

It’s a connection to the depths of our soul. I grew up religious, and in church we talked about our soul and how it’s connected to heaven… but I didn’t really understand until I started dancing and getting lost in the movement. What you are as a being, and not just as skin and bones--that’s why I like to dance, because I feel the most myself. It’s a gift I give to myself. 

Why do you think dance is necessary? For yourself, but also for our community and our culture? 

Because, not everything can be said with words. I can tell you I’m sad, but I think there’s deeper communication, just as humans as we connect soul to soul. Dance is one of the few languages that we all do, with natural body language. 

That is dance, that is movement, that is art, and it’s so necessary, because we take our natural humanity and we put it on the stage, to observe, and reflect, and take a moment and connect as humans again. And I think that’s really special. We need to take time and reflect and look back and experience humanity on the stage as REALness, and like real people, real time. 

We all can make a face, and frown, and you know, release our shoulders and just sit there--but, we never take time to appreciate it or declare “this art”, declare “this” as art. But we put it on the stage, and we take time, and we appreciate it, and I think that’s why dance is necessary--because we take the time to reflect on life and natural human processes and emotions… on a deeper level. Because we take this natural slouch and frown and we take it deeper. That’s why I think it’s necessary for us as humans. 

What do you think is missing from the dance world as a whole right now? 

Oh, *laughing* we’re so far behind. I talk about how it’s reflecting humanity, but especially specifically in ballet we’re so far behind in how equal we all are. I think specifically in ballet companies there is this fantasy of perfection. Everything is binary, everything looks a certain way--but that’s not real, that’s not realistic. That’s not art or humanity. That’s a constructed idea of what “perfect” is. 

I think ballet could go so much deeper than that. It could explore gender roles, and race and so much more. Like the Agon pas de deux traditionally is always cast with a black man and a white woman… and I’m just like “No! There’s so much more that could happen there!” We need to stop making it about tradition. Art isn’t controlled. We need to take the control off of art and dance, and make it human. 

Ballet is like a fantasy! We have Sugar Plum and Dew Drop, and they’re magical beings. Why isn’t a magical being also a man sometimes? Or why isn’t she black? Who’s fantasy is it? Why is it this one white man’s fantasy; that Sugar Plum is this beautiful white lady the only version being represented? That’s not humanity’s fantasy. 

When I was growing up and I saw a black Clara, I wanted to be the black Clara. That was my fantasy. For all the Latinx girls in the audience, all the Trans women in the audience--when is their fantasy represented on the stage? I think that’s what it’s missing. Everyone’s life, everyone’s representation.

What are you hoping to bring into the dance world as you are stepping into the professional world?

Hopefully some representation for someone--for people like me, who don’t really know where they fit in - who just exist as a human. Hopefully I can be the representation that I didn’t see, that I fantasized about. The guy who did the work just as good as the girls, and who had the opportunity to perform it. 

I wish I saw an incredible man en pointe, doing a [traditionally female] role, and it feels normal. Hopefully I can teach people and tell people and show people that it should be--and it is. 

Hopefully, I’m not just helping younger kids and audiences, but also the directors. [I want] directors to see me, and see what’s possible. I hope it opens their mind for the next person. Hopefully it’s not just the young minds, but ballet’s current audience. Hopefully we can change those minds too. 

How has your queer identity influenced your dancing/training? 

I was 4 years old when my mom told me not to be gay. I realized, “oh wait, everyone thinks this. Everyone around me homophobic.” Especially in my small town. 

Who are these people to just steal someone’s innocence and someone’s joy in life? I feel like that’s the deepest evil, to take someone’s happiness, someone’s innocence, someone’s carelessness. I feel like someone stole a chunk of my life from me, and now I just can’t waste any more time, and I need to make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else. 

And that’s what I hope I can do with dancing. Hopefully I can show all the little girls and boys and little people that anything is possible and you don’t have to limit yourself. Because why? For who? Why am I not happy--for what person? I think not. 

It’s hard--training en pointe, taking extra classes at the end of my day. I’m doing more than everyone else. It’s really tough--but who else is going to do it? Who else is going to make it easier for someone else? 

Human expression on the most natural level is non-binary. It’s just life, and people are different. My Agon shouldn’t look like anyone else’s because we are different humans with different experiences and different lives. Why am I so crazy to want to do those roles? I’m good at them *laughing* I’m not going to lie! I can do the work. So it’s a little different, a little more masculine, I look a little “new” and unfamiliar--but so does everyone else! We’re all different humans. Not only do we need to accept the work, we need to accept the body and the person.