5 Things You Didn’t Know About FWDC Managing Director, Jarin Hart
1. I LOVE music and coffee.
2. I collect gig posters and have kept every ticket to every concert I’ve ever been to. It’s ridiculous.
3. I dislike spiders, geese and Phil Collins.
4. I interned at several record labels during and after college.
5. I own many instruments…can’t play any of them.
I am not a dancer. I have never taken a dance class. Ever. My sister was in show choir in high school growing up and I remember being forced to go to her competitions. I remember that while I could do without the terrible show tunes and 90’s ballads, the dancing always appealed to me. Secretly I’ve always wanted to dance and who isn’t awed by the way human beings can express themselves simply through movement?
Growing up in the Midwest in a conservative small town, there wasn’t much exposure to the arts, especially dance. In my small town, you were encouraged to play sports…lots of sports. Guys were encouraged to take over their family farms, go to school for business, or go to work in factories and girls were encouraged to become educators, nurses or mothers. Nothing wrong with that…just not a lot of exposure to the arts.
I was fortunate to have a chance last October to get a sneak peak of Gallim Dance performing the piece, Blush at Columbia College in Chicago. I remember being gripped throughout the entire 60 min. performance. Start to finish. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even blink. If I had, I would’ve missed something for sure! I have never seen such intense, intricate, bizarre movement. It reminded me of stop graphics. It was like an optical illusion, the movements were executed so quickly and so precisely they appeared inhuman. I was excited, but nervous when Liz announced that Gallim Dance would be the guest dance company for 2014. Why nervous? I wasn’t sure how I was going to market such a unique group to the Fort Wayne audience. Sometimes coming from a non-dance background allows me a unique insight into appealing to a general audience; sometimes it feels like a major disadvantage.
I sat towards the back of the Arts United Center during Gallim’s performance and watched the audience react to what they were seeing on stage it was AMAZING. You could feel the energy of audience members as they were processing the movement on stage just as I had last October. After the show, people gave a standing ovation, filed out of the auditorium and headed straight to the talkback to meet the dancers. Many of them were glowing! I heard many exclaim, “Unbelievable!” “That was amazing!” “Best performance I’ve seen in years!”
While I am not a dancer myself, (Liz would like to argue with me) I can certainly appreciate movement and the art of dance. It’s time to step out from behind the desk! I feel if more people such as myself were willing to try something new, a whole world would be opened to them. I love my job, and I am so fortunate to be in a position that allows me to expose people to the arts through the Fort Wayne Dance Collective.