Since I was very young, dancing and theatre has been a passion of mine. People who are familiar with the performing arts community know that there's no room for intolerance or homophobia. Everyone dances and performs together, and uniqueness is embraced.
Stepping outside this community, I realized how unaware and unaccustomed everyone else around me was to this world. While I had become comfortable with boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls, others still felt extremely uncomfortable around it and thought it to be a strange sight.
This short video featuring my friends Patrick Justin and Alec Leddy, two incredible male dancers at University of Tampa, is to intentionally cause the discomfort my less accustomed peers feel when confronted with homosexuality. It's also a kind of character study using a Patrick to illustrate a boy who understands the conventional views of love but chooses the "me" that he sees, not the one you might see on the outside.
On a strictly dance level, I also used this project as a way to experiment with seeing the difference of a man partnering a girl and the same man being partnered by another man.
PS One of the installations that the boys are dancing on might also offend, but I found it to be a wonderful coincidence that it was installed in Curtis Hixon Park around the time I wanted to shoot there!
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