Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Sprague.
Heather, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I started training in gymnastics, ballet, and jazz when I was 5, and I discovered partner dancing in the form of Latin Ballroom at age 17. I fell in love with the passion, sensuality, and connectivity of the Latin dances. Through life, I have had a few very difficult and painful times, and during each one, movement – in the form of dance and yoga – offered itself as a powerful tool for healing. I discovered the inner journey of resiliency, poise, finding peace in the discomfort, grace, confidence through the fear, and how to truly enjoy being in my body and mindful in each and every moment. Partner dancing takes that inward journey and shares it with another person, as we learn to move in harmony, in a synchronized and alive connection of action-reaction, giving-receiving. I teach for these reasons; to enliven the same energies of harmony, connection, strength, confidence, sensuality, passion, and joy in every person who watches me dance, takes my class, or dances with me.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My art is movement, through the vehicles of dance and yoga asana. My movement and my teachings are my message and gift to the world. I want to be a presence of peace, healing, and joy, and over the past 10 years of teaching, I have found that the most powerful way for me to inspire others into feeling stronger, happier, healthier, and more connected is through energy and movement, like dance and yoga. After taking each class with me, I hope that people feel more at home in their bodies, more connected to each other, happier, freer, and way more playful and in a state of joy. When women watch me dance, I hope that it invites them to completely enjoy their femininity and sensuality, without feeling ashamed of their bodies or embarrassed. I wanted to empower women to rise and shine as brightly as they are made to, and I hope to do this by first living it and being an example.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
I suppose the role of the artist has always been, in a raw and unfiltered way, to express a facet of human consciousness and a state of the heart and soul. Each artist is extending an expression of emotions, perceptions, beliefs, hopes, and dreams through their unique modality. What the artist shares and creates can be an inward journey, as well as a method of delivering messages. Through our art, we inspire, open or change perceptions, advocate what we believe in, empower, let go, forgive, release, surrender… Art allows the human spirit to flourish and be seen, and each of us learns about who we are as we both create and observe art.
Local and international are not so far from each other as they used to be. On the dance scene today, I see styles of dances being affected here (in LA) by dancers in Spain and other parts of Europe. The world is far more connected than it used to be, and thus the waves of evolution through our world of dance gain momentum with impressive speed.
In the realm of local and worldly issues, I seek not to be caught up in the streams of fear and uncertainty, and to, myself, offer a place of safety, joy, human connection, and healing. We must be the change we want to see in the world, and we cannot ask anything of the world that we are not willing to be. My dancing and my classes are an expression of joy and peace, and no matter the conditions of the world, we can always come back to peace.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I teach in Orange County, mostly:
Danscene Studio in Costa Mesa
VIP Studio in Santa Ana
Avant Garde Ballroom in Santa Ana
QD Studio in Westminster
All of my classes can be found on my website, and our most updated videos and pictures are on Facebook and Instagram!
Contact Info:
- Address: Danscene Studio
2980 McClintock Way
Costa Mesa, CA 92626 - Website: www.ecstasydance.com
- Phone: 714-785-4999
- Email: sprague.heather@gmail.com
- Instagram: ecsdancenspirit
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ecsdance
Image Credit:
Photography: Jay Nguyen and Denny Limmer
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