Today we’d like to introduce you to Dymond Davis.
Hi Dymond, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
My name is Dymond Davis and I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. My family moved between Houston and New Orleans a few times so both places feel like home. As a child, I loved singing and dancing. I found safety and comfort within the arts. I began doing theater in High School as well. Following the pandemic, I began at Texas Woman’s University as a Dance studies major and a Business Leadership minor. I am projected to graduate in May 2024. I have always been who I am. I’ve always had a deep intrinsic drive to follow the path of leadership. My passion was not built but I had to learn to narrow my focus and my goals. Throughout my life my parents never discouraged me, they warned me of course but they always let me have the final say over my own path. Having that type of strong foundation has given me all I need to continue living out my truths.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
No good story comes without plot twists. I faced a lot of struggles and I know there will be more to come. Family life was not the easiest. My parents tried to make sure I did not know but we financially struggled a lot. There were times my parents had to sacrifice things they loved or wanted just to keep me fed and clothed. In addition to helping me they had to support my sister who was a teen mom and that was extremely difficult. I was six and I didn’t really understand why they couldn’t give me as much attention or time. For a long time, I resented my sister for taking them away from me. Once she finally was on her feet in my teenage years, I was so angry with them that our relationship was no longer a relationship but more of an exchange. A big part of that anger also came in when I realized I was queer. My parents are extremely religious and very vocal about their disapproval of “the homosexual lifestyle”. I felt like I had to prepare myself for their departure. That their love for me could not be stronger than their faith. I still haven’t found out if that statement holds any truth but no matter what happens I will stand firm in who I am because no matter how hard they try they did not create that. In High School, I struggled a lot. I went to an academically rigorous school and it kind of diminished my worth. I was defined by a number in a grade book and my teachers had me convinced I would be nothing in the world if I didn’t have high grades so I sought refuge in dancemaking. Falling in love with teaching and choreographing was the only thing that kept me going. High School is also when my anxiety began to bubble over. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and I really didn’t know how to coop with it. AT the end of high school, I really didn’t think I was going to get in anywhere, I got into most schools I wanted to attend however my parents could not afford a single one. Then the pandemic hit my senior year. That was one of the worst things to ever happen to me. I went to community college and then moved out in January 2021 which was extremely hard but it felt necessary I was in fear that my parents would one day decide I wouldn’t be their daughter because of who I loved so I needed to find ways to depend on them less. I worked and went to school full-time. Two weeks into my move my car crashed. It took two months for me to find a new car and I completely wiped my savings from high school. Five months later I had a panic attack and crashed that car. So, I was alone and penniless. Desperate to continue school I applied to Texas Woman’s University, got in, and moved all within a week. Although that seems like a miracle, staying at TWU was even more stressful that the events that came before. I had to fight financial aid to give me in-state tuition and the worked three jobs just to afford it. But I regret nothing.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a dancer, dancemaker, and writer. Each of these things is an outlet for my creative exploration of myself. I am spending my life understanding myself. Who am I? How did I come to be? What is it that I do? Because I am a work of art that deserves time, effort, and love. My work has two components across all mediums: me and the collaborative process. I do not enjoy working alone. Art is just one big metaphor for life and I fear loneliness. I hate being by myself so I always create with some kind of collaboration. In writing, I often collaborate during the revision phase. In dancemaking, I collaborate with the dancers and as a dancer, I am in collaboration with its maker. There is a continuous string of connections in all work I do. Art is not its product but its process. Creating art is how we connect something beautiful that will always come from collaboration.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
When I was a child, my mother would tell me a key phrase. “Just be quiet and say okay.” She would say in reference to my talk back. I was always one to question what I was being told. Even though she never saw it, I actually took her advice. But not in the way she may have intended. I continued to fight back against her questions, suggestions and opinions. No matter if I agreed with her or not because all I wanted was to prove that we were equals. Although I was wrong, we were not equals, I never wanted to feel beneath her. My mother’s constant push for me to assimilate angered me. I had been taught in school, church, and even from my mother’s mouth that difference was to be celebrated yet she continuously defied her own preachings. It is easy for my mind to villainize her, a woman who worked forty hours a week so that I might have a place to live and food to eat. But how could I? She is a mother. I assume it is not easy. Mothers do what they think will give their children a fighting chance. In my journey, I have come to realize my mom gave me what would have helped me survive her world, not mine. My mother and I are three generations apart. She gave birth to me at forty-two years old. Her times were not my times. The world she experienced was what I read in history books. She was completely out of touch with where her child would be. I think I was given a lot of what I needed to survive the world. Unfortunately, I was never taught that life is for living not surviving. So, when we argued, I talked back. I hated nothing more than being talked at. I desired to be in a conversation with my mother, not a lecture. With black New Orleanian parents in their fifties you can imagine how often I got my ass beat. But it never stopped me from talking back. Even at a young age, I would not let myself go unseen by them. I refused. But the words, “be quiet and say okay ” ring in my mind because it is more often than not, I allow myself to go unseen.
To be unseen, has a nuance to it. I would become unseen in the brightest of places because it made me feel more powerful. Just because they could not see me, does not mean I could not see them. It made me feel more in control of the things around me. When I gave people unlimited space, I was able to see how much space they chose to take up. It was a dangerous game to play but somehow, I felt more protected this way. I would not have to guess their worst when I saw it in a controlled environment but what I failed to understand was when people do not see you, they do not know you. What a lonely place to be. To be unseen you have to be isolated. When you are truly unseen you cannot know of yourself and that is a scary place to be.
Becoming unseen made me lose all self-trust I had left past my childhood. It had become insanely wild. I could not make a simple decision without the validation of another person for a very long time. I could not see. I did not know who I was or what was true. Even when I felt I had discovered something, how could it be true? Becoming unseen dismissed my humanity. It dismissed any reality pertaining to me. If I was not perceiving it then it was no longer real in my mind. I had become a figment of my own imagination. And it was scary. Very very very scary.
Through words, I was able to see myself again. I was able to witness the building of the person I am today. The construction is not complete. But to live is to understand I have to see myself all the time. When I see myself first it no longer matters who is looking.
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Image Credits
Juli Rangel
