Office Hours

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi, everybody, my name is Giselle Kowalski and I'm the digital marketing strategist here at Texas State University, and you're listening to Office Hours. Today, I'm here with AnaBelle. How are you doing?

AnaBelle Elliot:
I'm doing really well. How are you, Giselle?

Giselle Kowalski:
I'm great. So you got to talk with Megan Moss, and this was a very emotional episode.

AnaBelle Elliot:
It really was. As a singer and someone who's more on that creative side, a lot of what she said I could hear and learn from, but I couldn't fully resonate as a dancer. Now, I know that's not true for you. I know that you have that whole background. So what did you think? What did learn from this or resonate with?

Giselle Kowalski:
It was a really hard conversation, but something I definitely needed to hear because as dancers, I think we're very hard on ourselves and we're very strict with the way that we see ourselves and what we want from technique, but she really allows people to feel like themselves without putting themselves down and I think that goes for anybody that is young. It doesn't just have to be a dancer. You are allowed to be in a space and you're allowed to feel good about yourself and to move freely and learn about yourself in an artistic way or whatever that may manifest itself in a different situation. She was just very truthful and honest and real and that's what I really appreciate about listening to you talk with her and asking those kind of questions from your perspective, and then hearing it from a very wise and very knowing person who's been through a lot and who has come out the other side.

AnaBelle Elliot:
She's so wise.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yes, she's so wise and she's teaching her students so much and it sounds like she's also learning as she goes. So it was a really cool one.

AnaBelle Elliot:
I definitely think what you're saying, there's something in there for every person, and that's really cool.

Giselle Kowalski:
So we hope you enjoy this conversation between AnaBelle and Megan Moss.

AnaBelle Elliot:
To start us off, can you please introduce yourself? What's your name, what do you teach, and where are you from?

Megan Moss:
My name is Megan Moss and I teach in the Dance and Theatre Department, specifically in the dance division. Right now I teach a lot of technique and also the yoga for dancers. This semester I teach Ballet 3, Jazz 3, Modern Contemporary 3, and then Yoga for Dancers 2. It kind of switches each semester, whatever they need me to do.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Cool. Are any of those the first time that you've taught it or are these all ones you-

Megan Moss:
No, I have done each of these before.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Cool. So let's go back in time, when you were a little kid. Did you want to be a dancer?

Megan Moss:
Yeah. When I was little, my mom was actually a professional dancer and she had a studio in our basement. I grew up dancing with her. So that's where it all started.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Would you dance with her? Is that where that began?

Megan Moss:
She did mostly ballet and so I grew up doing ballet until I was about the age of 10, and then she did end up closing her studio and then helped me go to some other studios in the area, and I really mostly focused ... my base technique growth was in ballet.

AnaBelle Elliot:
What was your high school to college transition like?

Megan Moss:
Backing up real quick, I did ballet for a really long time, more of an intense technique where we had every day of the week sometimes more than one ballet class a day, and then by the time I got to high school, I got a little bit burned out and I decided I wanted to have friends and I wanted to be involved in the high school and so I ended up doing a dance team there in my high school, which was really crazy for a ballerina to switch over to dance team. It was a whole other world that I wasn't used to, but I did do that for a little while, and then shifting from high school into college, I decided to continue with the dance team. I did something called BYU Cougarettes at BYU, and I did that for about two years.
But that shift from high school to college really just kind of continued that route that I'd kind of switched over to really working on precision dance, jazz. There's some hip-hop and so very different from ballet, but it kind of gave me a different overall background for technique being really precise, that kind of thing in a different way.

AnaBelle Elliot:
That's very insightful. Our next question is what was the biggest hurdle you had to face in college as both a dancer and a full-time student?

Megan Moss:
I think it's important to point out that I actually ... I went to college my first time when I first graduated from high school and I got a degree in exercise science, fitness and wellness management. Then I spent 10 years teaching dance, basically raising my kids, I have three kids, and doing choreography, performing, doing a whole bunch of stuff. Then after that 10 years, I went back to school and I got a dance degree. I guess I just wanted to point that out because I know ... Can you ask the question one more time? You said was my biggest hurdle in my dance degree?

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah. The question was biggest hurdle you had to face in college as a dancer and a full-time student. Does that pertain to you then with what you're saying?

Megan Moss:
Yeah. I mean, I just think that both college experiences were so very different. I mean, the second time I had three children, I was a single mom, I was pushing to provide for them, provide for me, go to school, get my degree, all of the things. Trying to make money as an artist is very difficult anyway and so there was a totally different set of hurdles in that particular time I went to school versus the first time, which the first time was more about finding myself and figuring out how to balance if I wanted to do dance and that kind of thing. They both had challenges, which is ... it was beneficial to go back both times because they just had different hurdles.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Wow. That is. Wow. Our next question is ... so dance requires not only physical endurance, but emotional stability with performances. How do you stay healthy and happy as a lifelong dancer and choreographer?

Megan Moss:
Oh, that's a great question. This is something I think about all the time because I look at these students here and I want them to have that healthy mindset and have this lifelong career in dance because I really feel like my first part, I'm going to go back to the precision, is not always the healthiest mindset because there's this, "You need to be this, you need to look this way, you need to do each of these steps", and there's benefit to that if you can approach it with the right frame of mind. I feel like I've spent the second part of my life really diving into how can we still have technique? How can we still feel like we have a beautiful product per se, but not miss the process and the healthy way to approach it and the enjoyment of doing it.
One of the things that I've been honing in on the last couple of years with my students is this idea of instead of approaching your own movement with criticism, approaching it more with this idea of curiosity. Because if I look at something and I look at a step and I'm like, "Ooh, I wonder if I can find more breath in my movement there to help me exhale and really come down to the ground" and use it more of a curiosity in the mind frame instead of, "That wasn't good, I couldn't do it and it's not enough" and that kind of thing. The more I focus on that, I feel like it just changes the process a little bit for me as a dancer. What's interesting, I feel like it also changes the experience that someone who's watching has.
If we talk about the audience perspective, with someone who comes and approaches their movement with curiosity, they're having an experience and they're moving and they're enjoying their movement and they're enjoying doing it, and that then translates to this audience member feeling that curiosity and it almost brought into their world in a different way that I think it just makes everything a lot better.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Thank you for sharing that too. The next question is since you've worked all over the country, both as a performer and a choreographer, is there a particular piece of work you have most enjoyed? Then if so, why?

Megan Moss:
That's a great question. So a long time ago I did a dance with my mom.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Is it in the basement or is this-

Megan Moss:
Yeah, it wasn't in the basement. We actually did it in a show. She had a mother-daughter dance. I was just tiny. I was probably like six or seven, but I always remember dancing with my mom because I looked up to her and I saw her do that, and then I got to do something similar to that with my own daughter. So when she was about seven, we did a dance together and so just having that kind of tradition pass on and enjoying each other on stage is something I'll always remember.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Going back to that mindset that you talked about in approaching dance with some curiosity in your body, is that something that you experienced with your mom?

Megan Moss:
It's hard for me to remember all the details because it was so long, but I do remember her enjoying moving and this presence that she had with her body, and I wanted to copy that. In fact, so much that I would open my chest and I would almost like this third eye kind of at your sternum that you would have shining out that I had this, "I am beautiful, I can dance, I can move", that when I went into a studio later, there were some girls that were making fun of me because they were like, "You just think that you need to be so big up here", and really the fact was I was doing a lot better than a lot of these students because my mom had paid so much attention to me and I had really progressed and there was some jealousy there, but they always made fun of me opening up.
But then I was the one that ended up getting all of the jobs and all of the promotions and the different things because I had this openness, but my mom taught me that, to be confident and let the shoulders come down and open up the chest and present yourself in this almost ... I guess that could be some curiosity. Also just a confidence that was a little bit different that I kind of lost a little bit and then came back a little bit.

AnaBelle Elliot:
That openness, that sounds like an authenticness, being open to it.

Megan Moss:
I think that's something that a lot of my students we've been working on as well, because we always spend so much time hunched over looking at electronics or coming forward that when I notice a dancer is having difficulty moving across the floor or opening up or stretching or taking up space, sometimes we tap into this idea of rolling the shoulders back and creating this almost third eye shining out from the heart center and build the confidence a little bit more, and that affects the way that they move and this whole letting that authentic self come out, having the confidence that all affects the way you hold and carry your body as a dancer.

AnaBelle Elliot:
I think everybody listening to this should take a moment and roll their shoulders.

Megan Moss:
Open up the chest. We do that in the yoga class as well. We work on Tadasana and different things like that.

AnaBelle Elliot:
What do you think is the most important life lesson you've learned from being a dancer?

Megan Moss:
Gosh, there's so many. That's a hard question. But one of the things, and I think I'm just going to go off of what I'm feeling right now because it changes, I think, with each era of my life, but right now I feel like what I am learning from dance is this idea that I'm allowed. I'm allowed to take up space. I'm allowed to enjoy moving. I'm allowed to be myself. I'm allowed to be good. I'm allowed to have time for myself. I'm allowed to pause and have stillness. I'm allowed to be me, whatever that means. I think when I dance, it's almost like giving myself permission to move physically and be in that space and be present and just this idea of ... that's just been something that I've been thinking about, this idea of being allowed and it changes with each era, but that's right now.

AnaBelle Elliot:
That's the beauty of it. Is granting yourself that permission something that you had to work towards?

Megan Moss:
Yeah, I think it was. I think we are in an era where we miss out on self-care, for one. I think as women sometimes we get told that there's only certain things that we're allowed to do and telling myself I was allowed to work and to have a job and to take care of myself in alliance as well was taking care of my children was a difficult thing for me to really accept and be OK with. But I think that we almost don't feel like we're allowed to take up the space in a studio and I look at some of these students and I see this worry or concern or wondering if they should be there, wondering if they are enough for being in this space or being in the class. I want them to know that they're allowed and that they should take up space. So we practice doing that, physically traveling, taking up space, and I remind them they're to be there, they're meant to be there.
Owning that physically sometimes can help us grasp ahold of this mental or emotional idea of being allowed to be, being allowed to have a favorite thing, being allowed to do whatever you need to for that day for you. Does that answer your question?

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah, it does. It does, and that's inspiring. That's beautiful.

Megan Moss:
Thank you.

AnaBelle Elliot:
So beautiful. What was the journey to becoming a full-time professor here at Texas State?

Megan Moss:
I have people ask me this all the time. I'm not sure mine is going to be the same it is anyone's, and that's probably how it is with anyone in their life story. You look back and you see you had planned for something and something else came that you weren't expecting. So my journey was very different. I think I didn't sit down and say, "I want to be a professor in a couple years, and so this is my plan." I really followed what I love doing, and I had this hustle as a mom trying to figure out how to provide for them as three kids and they're looking at me and I'm like, "OK, you know what? I want to make sure that I hold space for me. I want to show you how I hold space for me and do things I love, but I also got to figure out a way to make the money and help so that we can pay for the things."
So there was this different push and I really pushed, I did all of the things and because I kept reaching out and looking for ways to grow and develop as myself as a dancer, do things I love to do, I didn't always pick things that I knew that would make money or give me the right resume. Sometimes I was working for a community theater and really making next to nothing, but I just loved working with those artists and I surrounded myself with other people that had this passion and desire for what I wanted to do. The more I reached out to those people and the more that I connected with those around me in that area, I feel like different opportunities started to come and that's what I tell my students too. You can't always plan and say, "This is what I want. I'm going to get there and this is the way I'm going to do it."
Especially in an artistic field, you really have to just follow the things you love, keep doing them, and yes, you have to be smart and you got to make money and there's going to be sometimes when I'm teaching fouetté a bazillion times, even though that's not my favorite thing to teach, and I can do that and sometimes I do that if I needed to do that to make the money. But then I also keep finding those things that light me up, that enliven this passion in me for movement, and that just brought different opportunities. And so I did. They reached out to me after I had finished performing professionally for a company in Colorado and actually speaking on that, that company had reached out to me and said, "We would like you to come perform in this show. Will you do this role?" I hadn't even auditioned, but I had been reaching out to different things and things started to come my way because I was giving and finding those things.
Anyway, so they had reached out. I had a couple different opportunities, and Texas State was looking for someone I think probably that had some experience in the field that understood about teaching. I had many years of teaching. I had taught all the way through since I was 5 and I started dancing when I was 5, and then continued teaching from age maybe 13 I was doing dance camps in my mom's basement for all the kids. Then I continued teaching in different states and different studios and was just developing and growing. I think they were looking for someone that had some experience in the field that understood about teaching, and there was a spot that they wanted me to come teach, and so I taught that first class there that semester and they had some more needs and so I continued teaching and I've kind of been there ever since.

AnaBelle Elliot:
If you look at that line, I guess, if you look at it as a timeline all the way up to where you are now, is there anything that your younger self would find it hard to believe about you today?

Megan Moss:
As a dancer, as a person? Or career-wise?

AnaBelle Elliot:
I guess both, if there's something that comes to mind within that.

Megan Moss:
I think younger me would be very surprised at where I'm at because I just feel like you do. You learn along the way and you shift a lot of ideals that you didn't have before. I think I would be surprised in my shift of genres and dance. I was so very much into that precision and it needs to look a certain way. I don't think I knew that there even was a different way to approach dance. I think a younger self was really worried about what I would do, what the world would see me as, if I was really precise, if I had the right technique, if I got the perfect job, all those different things. An older me, I think looking back, would just ask this younger me to pause and just notice how I'm feeling and let that kind of drive me.
Am I enjoying doing it? Yes, I did enjoy doing the precision of ballet, but I think not necessarily that I would change what I did, but advice I would give a younger self would be enjoy the passion of it and the curiosity of it and the process instead of the product. That's kind of the shift from the younger me, if that makes sense.

AnaBelle Elliot:
I have a question about that. When you talk about that curiosity and that wisdom that it sounds like you kind of found within yourself in this new approach, is there any inner child within that that you refound or was that something that was a new discovery for you, that new mindset of basing your movement in curiosity?

Megan Moss:
There's probably two parts to that. Yes and no probably. Yes, I feel like there was a new way, and for the curiosity, for example, if I'm doing improvisation or I'm doing some sort of contemporary or modern movement and I'm expressing myself through this idea or concept, I feel like that curiosity came later because I was able to let go of what it looked like, care less about what people thought. Part of that's just maturity. Part of that's just doing it enough to know that there are so many right ways to do something. There's not one right way. That was kind of maybe a shift later, but there was a time ... Actually, I didn't teach ballet for many years and just recently the last maybe five or so years, I came back to it and was like, "You know what? I want to teach ballet", and I've almost found this childlike joy from teaching it, remembering when I was little doing ballet.
The thing is, I didn't teach it because for so long I thought, "I'm not enough to teach ballet." I wasn't on professional companies for years and years and years. Yes, I did perform on a ballet company and with several shows like the Nutcracker, La Fee and different things like that, but I didn't feel like maybe I was enough or perfect enough to teach it. Then recently in the last just several years, people have been asking me to teach ballet and since I actually do have quite a bit of background in ballet technique, I found this kind of childlike, "Ooh, yeah, when I tendu or when I pointe that way or when I bend my knees in plie and then lift to the back, that feeling of growing", I remember that kind of as a child and almost there's a different joy that comes from that. So I have been doing that more in my life, finding those almost childlike curiosities or rememberings or nostalgia, whatever you want to call it, has come back a little bit more from my childhood. So I guess both.

AnaBelle Elliot:
It's a beautiful dichotomy that those exist together. That's really cool. We're getting to the end of our questions. If you could give me one piece of advice as I move throughout my college career, and I'm a junior, so I've still got some time here, what would that advice be?

Megan Moss:
I think there's so much pressure in college to have this perfect plan, that you're going to do this, you're going to get this job, you're going to go this place and do that. I think I'd go back to this idea of enjoying the process more than worrying about what product you're going to get from your college experience. That means talking to professors. That means talking to other people in your class, really taking opportunities with these master classes or guest speakers or this whole experience at the university or college level of people and of yourself and enjoying it and not worrying so much about, "Did I get the perfect thing?" or whatever, that along the way. Because there's so many things to learn from this, not just a grade on a test or a grade on your jazz exam that we just did today for my class, and not worrying so much about the points of that, but really just holding onto the process, taking note of the things that light you up along the way and continue to follow those because we only have this one life.
If you decide you finish graduating and you actually didn't want to do that, then don't do that. I went to college the first time and my degree was exercise science, fitness and wellness management, and I did do a little bit of that, but then later I decided I didn't want to just be a personal trainer. I wanted to change, and you know what? I'm OK. I shifted, and I think it's OK to change your mind. I think it's OK to not know how it's going to turn out and just enjoy now. Enjoy being, enjoy the present.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Even as you say that, the way that you move, and I'm thinking back to a few minutes before when you were talking about taking up space and going across the floor and being open, this is all connecting, and I'm getting a better understanding of who you are, and this is really cool to get to ask you these questions.

Megan Moss:
Thank you.

AnaBelle Elliot:
My last question for all of this is finally, what is your mantra or your motto and what keeps you going every day?

Megan Moss:
Well, I think I'm going to go back to my what is my thing right now, because it changes through my different eras of my life. I think right now I'm just finding the joy, finding things that light me up, finding things that make me happy and putting more of those in my life. That doesn't mean shrinking from things that are difficult, because I even still find joy in attaining difficult goals. But I think just following the joy, that's kind of my mantra right now. Sometimes that means doing a ballet class, teaching ballet, even though I did not think I would be back in this place, really enjoying that. But just finding the joy in the process.

AnaBelle Elliot:
That's all of our questions, so thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Office Hours. We hope you enjoyed this conversation, and make sure to tune in next time to learn more about the experiences of our amazing Texas State faculty. Also, remember to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube at TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the host and the guest, not of Texas State University. Once again, I'm AnaBelle and I'll see you next time.