Interview: Anna Hershinow

Our first interview is with Anna Hershinow. Anna is a 2020 graduate from Ohio State and my former student. I’ve known Anna since she was in 7th grade and have been lucky enough to literally watch her grow into the artist that she is today. I wanted to talk to Anna to understand how it feels to enter the “professional” dancing world in the middle of the pandemic. How do you start a career or find your place in an industry that is on pause?

--Alyssa Gregory

March 9, 2021

Alyssa G.: Your visual art now is your creative practice. That must be feeding you mentally and emotionally, I'm imagining.

Anna H.: I have my creative practice going which is making me feel better about not dancing so much. And yeah, I've kind of been realizing everybody dances for different reasons. And some people just, even though it's pandemic, as long as they can keep moving, that's all that they need. That's cool. For others it's making stuff. So, I don't know, even if that transfers digitally, if you can still make stuff that's cool too. I was just struggling to figure out, why didn't I want to be dancing right now? I kind of was really okay with not moving my body.

It's been basically a year of not really dancing. And this is the first year and I'm not kidding, in my entire life that I haven't thought about pain in my body in the ways that I used to. I mean, I had kidney stones and that was horrific, the worst pain I've ever felt. But literally for 20 something years straight I was, life's good, but my knee hurts or, life's good but my hip hurts or I'm injured or this and that. And it was always just kind of a side effect of life that I was, yeah, it's fine. You know, I’m just injured. That's just my life. And this is the year that that’s just not on my mind and it's so nice to not wake up and not be (makes creaking sound). And, sure, my body's gotten softer. I'm not toned or whatever, but that's good. There's some cushioning, you know?

Alyssa G.: Does the word community hit differently now? You’re connecting with a different arts community, not so much a dance community right now.

Anna H.: Yeah, well, I was so inside the dance community that I forgot that the dance community is inside the art community or even that they're all the same. I was so immersed into the dance community, especially the collegiate dance community in Ohio. When that was over, it was like, I had left a cult a little bit, in a good way. Haha. Nobody thinks like me and it's very weird to come back to “normal society” where nobody's talking about their fucking fascia. I just felt very out of it and out of my body and out of everything. Now I feel very much, oh wait, I'm not just a dancer. I'm also a person. And that that person has other interests.

I'm trying to think about my time in college like it was my residency. Studying to be a dancer and I'm just in my art chapter. I've talked to a lot of friends who either are dancing now, which is good for you, or they're not and they're dying. And a lot of them have said, “You're really lucky that you're good at something else because you can kind of pivot.” I don't know, they feel kind of stuck almost in that they went to school for dance and that's kind of all they know. I know some of my friends feel, not that they feel trapped, but they kind of wish there was something else, especially how closely dancing is also connected to mental health.

Alyssa G.: What's the lesson that you think you can learn for yourself in this moment, but also that artists in general can learn in this moment?

Anna H.: For me, I've learned to be a little bit more patient with myself in the arts and but also just in general in my life. The pandemic has made me just scale back and pare down so much of my life that I'm really living by the bare necessities, but it feels righteous rather than I don't know, I'm struggling, you know what I mean?

I don't feel I need to be a consumer. I don't feel that I need to be going out and doing things or buying things or being, I don't know...surplus is just not what's needed for me in my life right now. And unfortunately that kind of extended to dance. For me, dancing was such a self-indulgent pleasure. I did that for myself to feel good when I felt comfy and safe and secure in my life. That's just in my soul. These aren't the times to be self-indulgent and your body will always be there and you can get back into dancing later. But now how can you be a productive and a conscious human?

And I know you can be those things while dancing too, but just for me, it’s almost frivolous and I didn't need to focus my time and energy on it. These times are for going into yourself and living a small life. So that's something that I've learned. I'm not mad or upset at myself. That's how I kind of had to choose to live because I feel it's so easy to feel and think that since I studied this and I just got out of school I'm supposed to be doing this thing.

I don't feel even in my body or my soul, that I can produce something that's going to be restorative to me or anybody. It would feel like I'm forcing it, but I found that much easier with painting, you know? Painting is a bit more tactile and I can actually produce something and then here it is, please hang it on your wall. Haha.

Alyssa G.: You have to add on to that, that you just graduated and then came into a field that is in shambles.

Anna H.: It was during those nine months of me accepting, this is what's going to be my life for a while. I was in this in-between battle of just trying to make it work and look on the bright side but also feeling, all these efforts that I'm trying to do just don't even feel right and it's not even making me happy and I can’t turn to other people who are in the dance community. All you could kind of do was commiserate. I just was like, you know what, let me just listen to my gut in this scenario. A weight was almost lifted off my chest when I stopped trying. That sounds horrible, but yeah, it was just freeing, you know?

Alyssa G.: I don't think it sounds horrible. I think it just sounds like you were like, this is what's going to work for me to get through this. Right? Anyone's path is valid. I mean, I even felt like not a dancer or even a dance teacher for a really long time. It's an identity crisis.

What do you want to do your first art experience to be in our new normal?

Anna H.: Honestly I just want to go to a concert or a club. Maybe that's not an art event, but I just want to go clubbing. I just want to go dance!

Alyssa G.: I think that's still art. That's art for us. I deeply deeply missed the dance floor. I miss performing, but I miss the dance floor so much.

Anna H.: Otherwise I would just love to go see a show in a theater and get cute. Put on some red lips that people could see, you know, and just do that. I would just love to be a patron and just go out and enjoy and consume something that feels good to me without feeling guilty about going out and putting myself in danger.

Anna Hershinow is dancer, aerialist, and painter from Chicago, Illinois. She recently graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and a minor in Studio Arts in May of 2020. In 2019, Anna had the opportunity to live and learn abroad, studying Israeli contemporary dance at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, Israel. Through her education, Anna has had the opportunity to study under and perform works by Ohad Naharin, Noa Tzuk, Roni Chadash, Crystal Michelle Perkins, Ann Sofie Clemmensen, and Momar Ndiaye. Anna has had the opportunity to perform works at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater, at the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD), and across varying performance spaces in Chicago, Ohio, Philadelphia, and New York.