Essential Question: How can I explain the importance of personal style in an eco-friendly manner while simultaneously experimenting with my own?

For the wellness and community cohort, we had Sandra, a dancer come speak to us. I listened to her talk about her performance-based art and interviewed her. I wrote the write-up write after the interview. I used observations and quotes. Interestingly, when I started writing articles for Nightly News last year, I had a harder time writing up my interviews. This time, I didn’t use voice memos, rather only jotted quotes down. Right after the call I jot down observations. This made the writing process a lot easier. I then sent it to Sandra. She wrote back to me and said: “Cassie, this is really great! Love the way you piece your thoughts and observations together.”

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The following is my interview write-up.

Question: Who are you performing for? 

Answer: Its a bit more complicated than most people think. 

Sandra L. Portal-Andreu is a performance-based artist, choregrapher, and educator in Miami. Her performances mix dance and theatre and often have a feminist lens. Her relationship to her work is very similar to what Wikipedia describes as passion: “a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something.” Sandra explains that her motivation to do this type of job is simply because it “just needs to be done.”

However, Sandra doesn’t perform for herself. Instead, it is almost like a conversation she has with her community. Sandra explains that she is much like any artist, as artists are creating “because they need to express something” to people. In fact, if she doesn’t perform, it will “bother” and nag at her.

While performance-based art is often preformed for one’s community, it comes from the soul and life of the artist. Because it comes from the soul, she stated: “making the work is so hard, period… I need to sweat [it] out on my own.” In addition, as Sandra’s life has evolved, so does her art. She explains “it’s always evolving, it’s always changing, and that’s fine.”

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How does this answer my essential question: Part of my essay is going to be on how fashion is an art form, just like other performance-based (when you were an outfit, think of it as playing dress-up when we were a kid) art forms. This helps explain why “fashionista’s” like fashion: it’s not to seem cool, it’s self-expression that acts as a conversation with the world.