Rising Stars: Meet Donna Mejia of Denver/Broomfield/Boulder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Donna Mejia

Hi Donna, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was placed in dance classes as after-school care and enrichment at the age of 12. I suspect my mother was searching for some form of affirming socialization after witnessing others bully me for our multi-ethnicity. The class environment was far from encouraging or affirming, but I did manage to locate interest and investment in the weekly improvements of my capacities and comprehension. I gained an internal locus for meaning through physical “discipline.” I stuck with dance, but opened myself to all genres and cultural traditions. Dance was a way for me to satisfy wanderlust on a budget! I learned about the world by embodying as many perspectives and movements as possible.

I attended college to obtain a business degree, but all discretionary time was spent dancing. Four years after graduation (and running out of desk-job vacation time to use for dance engagements) I took the plunge into a full-time career in the arts. I was serving in administrative roles, faculty at a college, and performing with ensembles. It wasn’t long before I felt the itch to have my own voice as an artist, so after my daughter was born in 2001, I became a solo artist focusing on the questions and inquiries of my own multi-ethnicity. I embraced experimental fusion to express the complexity of my own multi-heritage, but also as a tool to explore the emerging global citizenship I was finding with our growing connectivity online. It was thrilling to be sharing and speaking with artists and thinkers across the planet, and I felt hungry for all of it. One of my performance videos was bootlegged by an audience member to Youtube.com, which was only four months old at the time. The video went viral by early standards, and soon I was accepting invitations to perform and teach globally. My head was spinning trying to keep up: choreograph new stage works, build curricular materials for my classes, parent, and find words to adequately frame what global citizenship meant to me in ethics, practice, and impact. I was watching a new wave of unchecked colonialism driven by novelty and exoticism, and I was working hard to situate myself with integrity in fusion dance.

I was invited to join CU Boulder as the first tenure-track dance faculty for Transcultural Fusion Dance (TcFD), and discovered that I had a dual role as the initial scholar/artist: to share sound research and citation methodologies with the commercial field, and equally, to introduce a whole new genre of dance to academic conventions. The tension was uneven. I actually experienced more resistance in academia. My solo commercial career was explosively busy, my calendar packed, my performances and classes sold out in the private arena, and I introduced academic lectures on history and ethics as part of my portfolio. But fitting TcFD into the conventions of academia eventually felt like a betrayal of the form’s genius. I couldn’t cosign what I was expected to do, nor did I feel free to be myself. I was “successful” and felt more restricted than ever in my career. I began to experience illness and compromise, and struggled against exhaustion. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck. I was fully ready to embrace incubation and reconsideration of absolutely everything. I saw how much of the world needed healing, and how uninformed and unprepared we were for true global citizenship. The ideological factions and misinformation wars made it all the more apparent that my intuition was accurate. I was writing, blogging, teaching, and still performing online, but I wasn’t physically traveling, and that was a relief to my exhausted body. One of my blog articles brought my thoughts into focus about what it means to embrace both cultural sovereignty and integrity alongside experimental innovation and fusion. This article exploded worldwide, was translated by citizens into four languages, and brought publishing opportunities, keynote speaking engagements, and global collaborations with like-minded folks. Finding my voice as an artist, and as an activist and scholar, was my homecoming.

Emerging from the lockdown phase of the pandemic, I was appointed to be Chancellor’s Inaugural Scholar in Residence for Health and Wellness with the CU Boulder Renée Crown Wellness Institute. Through this appointment, I was contributing to wellness scholarship, curriculum, and programming, and studying how expressive traditions and arts galvanized and amplified those possibilities. I collaborated with Dr. Valerie Joseph to host soulful and healing conversations about tender and charged subjects. I co-designed courses that embraced interdisciplinary. I merged my life with the most extraordinary partner. I began to teach meditation, something I’d enjoyed since childhood. I won awards for sharing my pedagogies on decolonizing our minds, language, and bodies. I finally established certification in my yoga practice of over 35 years. I enjoyed helping to establish a chapter of the Dalai Lama Fellows at CU Boulder, and was part of an education al delegation to visit the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, March 2024. I created music with electronic music composer SAUNT EP, and premiered new works internationally. I collaborated with museums, art galleries, and scholars across disciplines. I published in four fields of study. I celebrated my daughter’s college graduation. I was invited to film a TEDx talk about the pedagogies I originated for approaching cultural collisions. I unboxed my work beyond one field of study and became an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies in CU Libraries.

I LIVED fully engaged and with joy, and then…

Felt exhaustion returning just as eldercare duties intensified. As this “sandwich generation” chapter of my life arrived, I was again ready for a cycle of hibernation, creative incubation, being of service to others, and supporting from behind the camera. Caretaking is intense, no matter how much one pre-plans. It’s simply relentless and consuming. I am making peace with adaptability and changing the flow of my day at any time. I am giving myself a longer onramp for writing, projects, and research. I reclaimed dance as cultural and spiritual practice, and let go of external evaluators for my artistic activities. My yoga and meditation have blossomed into community practice with others. I experience deep satisfaction uplifting the genius of others, while I marinate and formulate my forthcoming writings about embodiment, interoception (sensing within), mindfulness, and cultural learning. It truly feels like another homecoming… and convergence of a truly astonishing life filled with experiences of cross-cultural exchange, generosity, unconditional care and compassion. I fell in love with the world, and ached to aid understanding and alleviate suffering with each conflict or aggression we collectively enact. I’ve learned to honor and actually enjoy cycles of hibernation/incubation/generation/engagement, and trust life implicitly. I’ve learned to prioritize my own wellness, and welcome help when inadvertently overextended. There is a beautiful and enormous “quiet” rising within me, and turning towards it feels right. I know every chapter brings enormous gifts and understandings, and this one promises to be insightful, vast, and rich.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I struggled with congenital internal malformations and that impacted my daily pain levels, physical performance, and reliability. I did opt for surgical correction when I finally qualified for it, and have been pain free since. A powerful combination of wellness practices and meditation help tremendously too.

I undertook the intense effort to extract myself from an unhealthy partnership full of betrayals, in which I couldn’t ascertain whether something was ever real or true. I began to understand manipulative personalities, and watched, from a front row seat, their struggle with addiction. I loved my daughter with thoughtful vulnerability, so she would hopefully not suffer from the same naïveté that led to my decision patterns. I have, since that chapter, found true partnership and mutuality, and there is simply nothing like it… worth waiting for with patience! My struggles were not in vain though, my daughter is wise and steady and she can sniff truth miles away… she’s amazing. I’m glad she was able to witness the effort I undertook to reclaim my head and life.

I faced professional sabotage several times in my career. It stung that people would put so much monumental energy into trying to detonate my opportunities and lifework. Haters can be distracting and draining, but I’ve learned not to let them make a monster out of you—dragging you to their level. Your people are out there so don’t give up your daydreams! I’m very grateful I remained tethered to my original inspirations and kept an enduring focus on the next thing I could learn to support those interests. My growth has been organic. Learning that I’ve been underpaid compared to male counterparts is infuriating. That is still an obstacle for female-identifying folks.

Family issues were intense. I was born into a family that really didn’t get me, and resistance was presented at every turn of trying to be myself in the world. I am now a caretaker to people whom can be flip between friendly or viscious/hostile on a whim. Embracing the practice of compassion, and seeing their humanity first, helps tremendously to remain kind. I know I’ll never receive apologies for what happened in the past, but I’m also learning so much spiritually, and finding awe and magic in each day. Life is flying by, and keeping my heart and mind open has become a priority.

Last year, I filmed a TEDx talk about a framework I originated to encounter the unfamiliar in life, and between humans—Fumble Forward (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tavnOncCOzE) . That recording is a cumulative insight from years of collaborating across cultures and ideologies. It represents every misstep I’ve had in communication, every awkward moment of failed alignment, and every heartbreak. The general public has celebrated it as resonant, and that helps me to know we’re all trying to get through life in our own way… and a little nudge towards kindness, humility, and patience can go a long way.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Both my commercial life as a dance artist, and my career as an academic, have been fueled by intense curiosity and creativity. For me, there was a legible web of connection between all the things that interested me, and I utilized whatever tools of engagement were within my grasp to engage the world. At times those tools were through public performance of dance and artistic curation. Many, I have been invited to give keynote talks to wonderful communities, businesses, conferences, and festivals. For new ideas that are congealing within me, I bring my research forward in publication as a way to find community. Publication is like sending out a homing signal to learn who resonates with the notions I’ve put forward. Thankfully, many have responded resoundingly, and I have been able to witness the global impact of my work within my own lifetime. That’s incredible.

I perceive I’m regarded as a scholarly creative and activist. I’m not just interested in my own choreographic experiments with micro-contortionist and juicy, crunchy beats. I’m also deeply interested in communal learning and education. I have learned so, so much about teaching with a trauma-informed and inclusive lens over 30 years. It’s been humbling and equally thrilling to add new understandings to my pedagogical approaches. As a movement educator, I’m known for detail work: attending to small insights within the body to enable shifts within the entire mind/body/heart system. I’ve invite people to feel into new areas of the body that may have fallen off the radar, or never been explored before. At the heart of it, I’m aiming to curate a friendliness and reverence towards our amazing bodies. The physical instrument is arguably incapable of untruth: when it no longer has the resources to meet the demands put upon it, imbalances and illness are revealed. So I treat the body as a friend who is with me ever nano-second of my Earth-walk, and will never lie to me. I want to keep my senses attuned when awake, and fully utilize cycles of deep rest and lucid dreaming as restoration and repair. All bodies have some kind of compromise, and require watchful adaptation. We might as well have a playful approach to it! In my early education, my body was treated severely, and it took me many years to unpack this kind of trauma. I’ve not been a perfect teacher myself, but I have humbled myself to apologize when I’ve underestimated, misunderstood, or completely missed the mark on something!

As a scholar of interdisciplinary, I attend mostly to the unfolding of cultural studies: how humans configure identity and communal systems. I do this in order to contribute to lowering thresholds of misunderstanding, conflicts, and cultural collisions. This part of my life-path seemed inevitable, because my multi-heritage identity and ethnic ambiguity attract many odd interactions to my doorstep. I was either going to be defensively at war my whole life, or be proactive about my own appearance confusing people. I made it a point of co-education rather than a point of contention. So I perceive people think of me as something of a lightening rod: I’m always going to speak to the unseen issues in a room… embrace the weirdness!

What am I most proud of? Good question! I’m most proud of thriving: responding creatively to adversity. I’m proud of my daughter, for she is a strong and true woman. I’m proud about having healed by facing my fears with the heartspace, and earning the partnership of a remarkable and brilliant man. I’m proud to have conquered the biases and prejudices that the world tried to teach me, and I enjoy friendships with all kinds of amazing humans of every gender expression, differing ability, ethnicity, ideology, nationality, and socio-economic placement. Life is so much bigger than the categories we attempt to encapsulate it in.

I’m proud to be weird. I’m not embarrassed to nerd-out on all kinds of things. I stopped watching TV at the age of 10, and it’s given me so much time to explore and discover. I’m a renaissance human open to trying many new activities and wrapping my head around many subjects.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Another good question. I would say I’ve experienced both privilege and disadvantage in my life. I’ve never truly thought of something as lucky or unlucky. Life, if I’m honest, has always felt purposeful even if the unexpected unfolded. When circumstances do not align with what I thought I wanted, I become watchful… observing what I may need to learn or integrate into my understanding before I obtain or release something I’m attached to. More and more, I trust life, I regard myself as a co-creative respondent to the process of life. At some level, I must have requested the advanced placement track of living, AKA the “trial-by-fire” version! I’ve been underestimated, misread, exploited, dismissed as under-qualified, reminded that I don’t fit in, and left out so many times I couldn’t track a count. I’ve also been uplifted as unusually talented, given VIP treatment, enjoyed access to healthcare for my ailments, grown through grass-roots word-of-mouth, and given awards for my efforts and products. It’s an interesting balance indeed! I never assume anything, and try to steady myself for each encounter, wondering if I’ll be treated as a threat or a familiar friend.

Someday, I hope to be one hell of an ancestor; one whose name is invoked when the unexpected presents!

Pricing:

• I frequently donate my services to communities and causes that are making a difference. Collaboration is worth its weight in gold.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://donnainthedance.com
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHrbkiCARmqorZy9n5veOLg/videos
• Other: https://www.colorado.edu/crowninstitute/donna-mejia-mfa

Image Credits
Donna Mejia with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India: Glenn Asakawa-Jour, 2024