Artist Profile: Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde

Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde is a Nigerian American freelance dance artist living in New Jersey. His work was recently seen at Your Move: New Jersey's Modern Dance Festival in Fall 2019. 

What are your earliest memories of the arts?
My earliest memories of the arts are in myself and at home. Every opportunity my older sister and I had we were crafting, creating games, singing to one another, dancing for one another, inventing stories and making makeshift meals when our parents were away. I have memories of being in our small apartment, imagining the space differently then interacting with my space through the layers of my imagination. Closing my eyes, dreaming up stories and worlds where anything of my imagination was true. Making new story lines where my the things that scared me became odd places of pleasure and indulgence.

My mother’s church is my first encounter with performance. It is one my first encounters with my culture beyond my immediate family home. It was and is preparation, remembering, appreciation turned into performance through song, dance, conversation, style, sermon conflict and culture.

What is inspiring you right now? Who do you look to for inspiration?
Inspiration is ever flowing through and around me. Information and sensation blow
through my essence through every medium named and unnamed. So to name a few; I deeply appreciate the work of writers Sadiya Hartman, Wole Soyinka, Lucile Clifton, Marlon James and many of their contemporaries. Through words they can chip away at the layers of mist in my eyes. They invite me to look with fullness and let the life of others wash over me; they bring me into empathy. I follow Myssi Robinson, a visual artist living in Jersey City who’s work reminds me of the radical power of intuition and invites creativity into our perception of time. I find myself looking at the visual work of Billy Traylor; he reminds me art does not exist within validation. Though art can be a trade they are not one in the same. Art is a mindset, an invitation of spirit to doing. I encounter much inspiration from the ordinary lives of people I’m surrounded by daily.

Nature is a teacher. Blackness in its creative resilience, in its unending evolution, in its brass reluctance to coerced commodity, in its dopeness, inspires me in a way nothing else can.

Why do you dance? 
I dance because it can grant me access to experience myself shamelessly when
approached with open mindedness and care. I dance because it is a part of my life like a lover and we do the never ending work of learning how to love each other properly. Dance is a creative spin on movement. Breathe is movement. To be alive is to have access to dance. I understand the work and skill my peers in the field and I have acquired to be able to attain and produce capital in this field. But on my most courageous days I can do away with most taught validation structures and find myself a dancer non the less. This I find extremely unique.

How has your style/aesthetic changed over the years?
Over the years I’m learning a fixed aesthetic does not work for me. When creating I
focus more on how I feel and how much I’m willing to share of it, rather than its look. That change is a current, constant journey.

Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde is a Nigerian American freelance dance artist living in New Jersey. Since Rutgers University he has worked with Colleen Thomas, Bill Young, Netta Yerushalmy, Company SBB, Kayla Farrish, Douglas Dunn, The Trisha Brown Dance Company and his dear friends Kyle Marshall and Miriam Gabriel + Carlo Antonio Villanueva. He finds inspiration in the artistic markings Myssi Robinson and enjoys reading fiction.

Website: oluayorinde.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/oluwadamilare.ayorinde
Instagram: @oluwadamilareayorinde