Welcome to THE TRUE NORTH COLLECTIVE℠ PODCAST: SEASON 3! With co-hosts Rachel Bellotti (she/her) and Jenell Riesner (she/her), this is a gathering of un-sugar-coated conversations celebrating the untold stories of everyday people fearlessly finding and living their true north. 

In our own search to discover and live from our TRUE NORTH, we continue to meet many interesting, courageous people from all walks of life, doing all sorts of amazing things to live life in their own unique way. Stories from all over the world. Stories with heart. Stories with grit. Stories with plot twists. Stories going untold - until now. This season, we celebrate these untold stories of everyday people who are fearlessly living their true north and inspiring each of us to do the same.

Today, we talk to Agora Artists practicing movement artists and co-founders, Avery-Jai Andrews (she/her) + Lauren Kravitz (she/her). Agora Artists is a new arts service organization run by dancers, for dancers; focused on providing programming and resources that contribute to a supportive ecosystem for dance, maintaining an active and sustainable creative life in DFW. We chat about the importance of hibernating, having a supportive community and space to create, allowing life to express itself through your body + your organic movements, and saying yes to the open doors in front of you even if they seem like they are totally not in line with where you thought you would be going. This episode shares the importance of having a physical experience of life, inviting you to step beyond your thoughts and your words to allow movement to be an intuitive way of receiving new information about life, from your body. 

*note: this episode includes explicit language appropriate for those ages 16+

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Agora Artists
• Booker T Washington High School for the Performing Arts
• Arts Mission Oak Cliff
• Artist’s Way
• Kibbutz contemporary dance company
• Firefly Cacao + Virtual Cacao Ceremonies
• Music from: https://www.jukedeck.com/

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS:

1. Sometimes we end up in places where we don’t feel like we fit in or are conducive to supporting us in the way that we like being supported. And in fact the very discomfort there and the time you must learn to get comfortable and accept yourself there is actually the thing that leads to and fosters your growth.
2. Having a physical experience of life opens up pathways of expression, release, understanding, forgiveness, curiosity, etc that just cannot be tapped with words alone. We are typically taught to only really value the head as a means to intelligence and wisdom, however, the full body is a massive untapped resource. By getting quiet and listening to physical sensations, we can allow ourselves to let life move through us, we are able to connect to a deeper, subtler connection and understanding of life. We connect to a universal language that invites intuition to step forward through the body and give us new information that would otherwise lay dormant.
3. Importance of hibernating to think about what you really want and what is really important to you and what you want to create or get up to. Taking time to look at where you aren’t satisfied and how you could be, reflecting, and not doing that much to allow new insights and awarenesses and desires and directions to emerge.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [1:30] Being a child model
• [3:10] Falling in love with a clown in Costa Rica
• [6:30] Introducing Avery-Jai + Lauren from Agora Artists!
• [9:30] Becoming a choreographer + entrepreneur 
• [16:00] Benefits of being forced to be in a place where you don’t feel like you fit in
• [19:00] Dreaming about a sustainable movement career
• [21:57] The kibbutz for creativity - living in a community of people that fosters your creative lifestyle
• [28:00] Could a virtual kibbutz community exist? Or does tech kill the magic of IRL?
• [38:00] Creating life experience anchored in movement
• [45:00] Learning to untrain your body + movements
• [51:00] Understanding the importance of having a physical experience of life
• [56:00] Changing up your body movement patterns
• [59:00] Hibernation periods
• [1:01:00] How movement relates to living your TRUE NORTH
• [1:05:00] What’s coming up for Agora Artists
• [1:12:00] How do you live your TRUE NORTH?
• [1:14:30] Contact Agora Artists via email welcome@agoraartists.com or Avery-Jai via IG @aveand or Lauren via IG @lauren.kravitz