What enthuses you about dance?
I have always danced since I was very, very small; I feel I would be a little bit lost without it. It is part of the way I make sense of the world. It is the way in which I feel quite safe, that I feel present, physically, in the body.
I like the idea of communicating with people non-verbally because I find that means you can transcend languages and cultures, communicating and connecting with people, just through the body. I find that quite beautiful. You are connecting through a physical language and that is what keeps me engaged and interested with my career in dance especially as an independent artist.
It is very hard to make a career in dance, but because of what dance gives me I always come back to it. It’s part of my life.
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How young were you when you started?
I started dancing when I was 4 years old. I lived in a small country town 4 hours south of Perth called Manjimup. It was just for fun in the beginning, a bit of jazz and maybe tap, and then a new teacher came to the dance school when I was 7 and introduced us to ballet and contemporary dance, and I loved it, so I kept training with her until I moved for university.
Did you get support at home or school?
We didn’t really have much art at primary school apart from the normal visual arts, drawing and in high school we had Performing Arts, but only drama and music, dance wasn’t offered.
Where we lived, which was a very small town, there are real limitations to what is available to you; there really wasn’t a lot on offer apart from sports so I was lucky we had a private dance school with a great teacher. I went to train 3 days a week after school and maybe on the weekend as well.
Outside of school my brothers played football, cricket, hockey and basketball, I also enjoyed basketball but mainly focused on dancing. Lots of people would spend their weekends at the footy oval; and by footy I mean Australian Rules or AFL.
They would have training nights, club nights and then the game on the weekend. I think it’s great now that women’s teams are starting to be more prominent in country AFL as well as it wasn’t like that when I was growing up.
I think it is important to have these sorts of hubs where people can connect with each other because you must remember that Australia is a lot different to Europe. Everything is sparse and spread out so you must find ways to connect, and sport, football, cricket, surfing and the arts are part of how community is created.
Did you go on to study dance at college or university?
I got into WAAPA, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, when I was in Year 11, so instead of completing Year 12, which is the final year in Australian school, I left to study an advanced diploma of Dance.
My high school teachers weren’t too happy about that because I had good grades in school and they wanted me to stay on, do my final year at high school so I would have ‘more options’, but this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to dance. I wasn’t happy where I was living because I felt I just didn’t quite fit in.
My parents were great. They just said, “Go for it”. Even now they support me as I travel to Europe and try and navigate my way around here.
To see more of Talitha Maslin’s work go to the link below
www.instagram.com/talitha.maslin/
