Today we’d like to introduce you to Carly Topazio.
Carly, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Everyone knows the term “starving artists.” As ballerinas, we don’t make livable wages. It’s a harsh reality, but true. The bare minimum is what we’re used to. Unfortunate as it is, we pursue this art, not out of greed, or the thought of success, but for the passion. We love what we do. We cannot live without what we do. We are ballerinas, and we would like to continue to share and communicate the art of dance as it is a necessary component to that which we call life, not just for us, but for everyone.
I came to San Diego to dance with the City Ballet of San Diego as a company dancer in 2015. I also am a photographer for City Ballet and own my own photography business, Carly Topazio Photography. Being an artist, I always want to create, so naturally, I came up with the idea to fill the four-month layoff we have each summer from the Ballet with a huge new idea; The Rosin Box project.
The Rosin Box Project was created following the close of the City Ballet of San Diego’s 2017- 2018 season. In May of 2018, myself, along with several of City Ballet’s Company members came together to create an innovative project in an attempt to do something that hadn’t done before here in San Diego; choreograph and curate a full length, dancer directed, performance in September of 2018. We called it The Rosin Box Project.
The idea behind the title came about at dinner following our last production of the season with City Ballet. I (Carly Topazio) was explaining to my boyfriend and fellow dancer, Liz Fittro, my idea to put on our own show. I had stressed that I wanted it to be something very personal and real – directly from the mouths (and bodies) of the dancers themselves, unlike anything that would ever be performed with the company. Toying with different names, my boyfriend, Ryan, suggested we call the show The Rosin Box. It was perfect! A rosin box is something most dancers only know about, we have them in the studios and backstage at the theater. Rosin is like a chalk when it is crushed up, and it is what we step into and put on our pointe shoes to create more friction so we don’t slip and fall (satin on pointe shoes can get very slick) much like how gymnasts chalk their hands before grabbing the bars. I thought it was perfect because we really wanted it to be an intimate show, straight from the dancers and unfiltered, almost like stepping into our world and seeing and feeling the collective heartbeats that make up the pulse of the company.
Stepping into the rosin box is like stepping into our home – our personal thoughts and ideas, and perceptions of our fellow dancers that might not ever be seen on stage as part of a larger company.
From beginning to end, I wanted to carry out the entire project on our own. We ran everything from the artistic to the executive side of putting on a production – choreographing, fundraising, marketing, directing, and everything in between. We were all artists familiar with one another and accustomed to working with one another under City Ballet, but now, we were are united by an overwhelming drive to continue to create and share an art form that is so deeply rooted in each of us. For the sake of art and nothing more.
Presented in the intimate black box theater of The Geoffrey Off-Broadway, The Rosin Box performances are straight from the dancers, genuinely unfiltered, permitting the audience a rare chance to step into the dancers’ world to see and feel the collective heartbeat that makes up the pulse of the company. With a hosted bar, and the romantic charm The Geoffrey offers, complete with house lighting solely from Edison bulbs, The Rosin Box performances made for the perfect summer date night!
While we do not have 2019 performance dates yet set, all updates regarding The Rosin Box dancers and shows can be found at www.therosinboxproject.com as well as information about TRB project, photo galleries, and videos of our previous shows!
2018 ballets
Crackerjack, a calculated journey with fanciful music by Michael Nyman ranging from whimsical to epic, and choreography by Carly Topazio, skirts on the outer edges of classical dance playing with architecture and each dancers’ boundaries.
Jessie Olson’s, Wicked Games, is a very personal tell-all expression of past relationships; the good and the bad. It doesn’t so much tell a story as convey a deeply rooted emotional experience of love and the anguish that follows its loss.
Finally, Epiphany, If You Will by Bethany Green, is a playful little study of self-realization. Told through kitschy colors and sharp characters, it follows a light narrative of sisterhood, friendships, and self-love, bolstered through a bright musical score which stirs the soul.
The artistic, as well as the executive imperatives of putting on this production, required the dedication of these six dancers from City Ballet, headed by Carly Topazio. Every last detail of this project commanded the unique focus and discipline paramount to the success of any performance. These dancers choreographed, directed, rehearsed, planned, marketed, and fundraised their entire budget with help from the community.
Humans are adept creatures genetically made up to feel and experience a wide range of emotions. Art, in every medium, is the one way in which beings can translate, share, explain, discover, transcend, and explore those emotions. Art is needed, it is vital, humanity which lacks the capacity to be stirred by art, or void of art itself, might be almost savage, separated from and more hostile to one another.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Doing anything for the first time will inevitably be littered with road bumps and obstacles, so we expected that nothing would run smoothly. It was definitely a big learning curve for myself. I have always been on the artistic side of every performance I have been involved in, never giving much thought as to who was writing the programs, or organizing all the stagehands or marketing to make sure there are patrons showing up to fill the seats. Being on the business side, as well as the artistic side when creating The Rosin Box performances, I definitely had hurdles I needed to navigate. I think the most difficult part was actually selling tickets. When we initially announced tickets were on sale, nothing happened. They weren’t selling. We got so many verbal confirmations that people were coming, but nothing on paper – no one was actually buying tickets. My biggest nightmare was that we would put all this work into creating an awesome show, one that we were so beyond stoked to share, and no one would show up. Thankfully, the winds changed in our favor, and we ended up selling out all three shows just a few days before opening night.
The Rosin Box project – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
What sets The Rosin Box apart from other professional performing dance companies in the area is that it is much more personally intimate. Many patrons who have come to see the City Ballet of San Diego performances – of which all of The Rosin Box dancers have been a part of seeing as we are all from City Ballet – said that The Rosin Box was a totally new and different experience. This is not to say the talent, professionalism, or artistry is lacking from the shows, it is the same caliber of ballet and dance, but without such a vast separation between audience and performer. The ballets performed are not like anything City Ballet would have in their seasonal repertoire, they are edgy, experimental, and exploratory. The voice of each ballet changes noticeably which each dancer-turned-choreographer and the performances become the collective vision of numerous artists. Not to forget, as
well, that the small venue leaves almost no room for there to be a fourth wall between the performers and audience when the front row is practically dangling their feet just above the stage. It is like having court-side seats to an NBA game; any closer and you would be a part of it!
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
This entire project! The fact that we actually pulled it off, and then some! I think if I had to pick a singular moment, aside from the incredible journey creating this show, the success of the actual performances, and the astounding acceptance we received, was maybe two days after the performances ended. I checked my inbox to find a flood of emails from people involved with The Rosin Box, friends, and complete strangers, all asking the same urgent question: When is the next show?!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.therosinboxproject.com
- Email: cktopazio@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ctopaziophotography/?hl=en
- Other: www.ctopaziophotography.com
Image Credit:
Christopher Hoover, Anna Scipione, Carly Topazio Photography
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