life - breath - soul
OLIVIA WALTON
Dancer & Choreographer in Life
Business Administration/Finance Team
Olivia Walton is native to Wilmington, North Carolina. She will graduate from Elon University in 2021 with a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography and a BA in Arts Administration with a minor in Business Administration. Olivia has studied in Florence, Italy with a focus on site-specific work, and Jerusalem where she worked with past members of the prestigious Batsheva Dance Company. At Elon, she has worked with guest artists, such as Gallim Dance Company and Kira Blazek Ziaii, faculty, and students in stage and film performances throughout the year. Olivia has also choreographed for Dancing in the Landscape (2019).
A Note from the Artist:
I remember dancing during the day at my preschool. Since that time, I have integrated dance into every aspect of my life. Dancing crosses my mind constantly. When I taste an exquisite dish from my favorite restaurant, my first thought is a little dance. When I walk through an arboretum I look at the trees and imagine I could move so wistfully yet be as grounded in expansive roots.
Moments like those fill me with life. But such an expression is often used to describe only positive feelings and never depressions and failures, I believe being full of life is to be unapologetic and steadfastly individual. The working class virtuoso is in. I dance how I live my daily life and I appreciate dancers that exhibit exertion with ease. Dance is a direct way to share these qualities and the mountains and valleys of life, without using our voices or when we cannot. The act of creating a dance, even improvising, invites something new and invigorates the soul.
Dance improvisation and free-writing can be an intoxicating release; both fuel my creative and choreographic processes. I compare it to the saying “what you say when you’re drunk is what you meant when you were sober.” It is an investigation of what you experience in the present moment, a certain vulnerability. I use these improvisation tactics to balance the strength with effervescence in my choreography. People tell me that my style is true to how I lead my life and that I work deep from within my bones and muscles and heart, even if it is just a movement of the toe. I search for texture and quality and prompt my dancers to do the same.
I am inspired by creatives such as Salvador Dali, Quentin Tarantino, surf and psychedelic rock bands, and the diaspora of dancers from Batsheva Dance Company, all of whom turn monotonous events of living into a surreal story worth living for.