Janet NOVAS
Dancer

Janet received a grant to participate in the Camping project organized by the Centre National de la Danse.

What is your artistic background ?
I started to dance when I was four years old in the folk groups in my village, and from that moment I knew that dance was going to take an important place in my life. At eighteen, I decided to move to Madrid to start my studies of contemporary dance and to train as a dancer in different schools like Carmen Senra and the Professional Dance Conservatory. A year later I joined the Provisional Dance company which gave me the opportunity to travel and enter fully into the professional world. In 2008 I left the company and from that moment began my career as a freelance dancer, collaborating with different artists and national and international companies. At the same time, I began to develop my own work, opening a new path in the dance scene and allowing me to continue investigating my needs and interests as an artist.

How do you see your profession today ?
I believe that in the country in which I live, art is not accepted as a necessity but as entertainment. From this point, I am in a constant struggle to recognize dance as a place of thought necessary for society.

How do you see yourself in five years ? In 10 years ?Honestly, I'm not interested in thinking about how I see myself in five or 10 years, I'm more interested in thinking where the dance scene will be at that moment. My wish is that in a few years this artistic discipline can be part of the education system of my country and in this way build a more sensitive society that responds to the basic needs of the human being. If we don´t know our bodies and its behaviors, it will be difficult to understand the world around us.

This interview was conducted in 2017
Photo credit: Céline Anaya Gautier