Celebrating Trans Day of Visibility feat our teachers Cam, Kit & Rowan

Every Dance Church class is a delicious opportunity to vibrate in the intersection of humans, music, movement and community building. In these spaces – sweaty studios and concert halls where thousands of feet have generously left their ghostly imprints – we hold attention and care for active inclusion, access, education and (most crucially) shared joy. In a moment when our country is experiencing major unease and direct threat to safety for so many in our community, we are driven to uplift artists and community members that we work with, admire and are inspired by.

This week, we celebrate Trans Day of Visibility by offering FREE class all week long for our Trans-identifying community. We are also honored to spread the relentlessly untamable joy and passion of three beloved DC teachers: Cam, Kit and Rowan. These three artists came together from Portland, Seattle and Chicago to share their experiences as humans, performers and connoisseurs of classic baked goods.

💖 Okay, first and vitally: rice crispy treats — with or without bonus flavors or chunks (and which ones)?

Cam: I’m a chunk lover (wh*re) 1000% - love treats and food in general with mixed textures. Ex: plain ice cream is a huge no-no, I need some nuts or something crunchy or chewy to add into the mix. I love M&M, chocolate dipped, fudge, anything with a new texture. 

Kit: I’m a RCTM (rice crispy treat maximalist.) SO ALWAYS YES TO MORE bonus flavors and chunks and stuffs!!! Personally, I love a browned butter miso rice crispy treat with flaky salt on top. I also love the Ruffles rice crispy treats at Little Jaye (right by Dance Conservatory of Seattle where we host our Seattle Southpark Sunday morning class!)

Rowan: I’d have to go for the rainbow M&M rice crispy treat!! But I love the taste of a classic rice crispy or a drizzle! You can’t quite go wrong with any of them :)

💖 Which do you secretly crave more of: silly humor or vicious intellect (and whyyyyy 😉)?

Kit: I’m genderfluid, baby; YES AND. Both. I may be a goofy bouncy guy on the outside, but I love mental rigor and truly enjoy the feeling of my lil brain cogs grinding. I loved being in school and can’t wait to go back when the time is right. When my brain is being challenged and I’m learning new frameworks or modes of analysis, I feel most myself. 

Cam: I find so much joy in silly humor and I love an intellectually stimulating conversation (with myself or others). Having a balance of both is ideal and important! I crave more emotionally brave conversations; ones that push me to grow my confidence in sharing my emotions with others. I’ve been challenging myself to make it through a more serious/heavy moment or conversation without being silly and/or without over-intellectualizing and analyzing. I suppose I crave more unfiltered communication that dares to be harsh, wholesome, blunt, raw, and utterly kind. 

Rowan: I like to spend my days exploring silly humor and childlike whimsy, prioritizing pleasure in every moment. In this I am able to awaken a new capacity for curiosity and excitement, allowing my intellectual frenzies and unique interests to be fuelled from a place of creativity and dreaming.

💖 What is the most thrilling thing on your mind this week?

Rowan: My newest research practice, takes interest in water cribs, which are water treatment plants located just 2 miles off the coastline of Chicago. One water crib looks just like a red and white striped circus tent. As I sit at the edge of the lake, staring at its vastness, my eye is always drawn to this. I wonder what could go on at these water cribs, in my wildest fantasies, what if these acted as a place for all pleasures to run free? Just something I’m dreaming about right now.

💖 Favorite place to linger these days (that is not your home, couch or bed)?

Kit: I spend most of my day working/dancing/moving at various spaces in a 5 block radius on Capitol Hill (one of Seattle’s primary gay-borhoods.) There’s a big, cute park nearby so if I have a free hour and I see the sun is out, I will go sit on the field and sun myself like the Vitamin D starved Seattleite I am. 

Rowan: Touring with a dance convention, I find myself out of town a lot these days. Modes of public and private transport often give me time to linger and reflect. I love being high above the clouds on airplanes or passing new landscapes on trains and buses. But wherever I am, I always find myself outdoors soaking up the sun, staring at, or swimming in a body of water.

💖 What dance forms have you built your deepest creative and embodied connections with? What forms do you practice?

Cam: I’ve been dancing since I was a wee babe at age 4, taking Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, and Musical Theatre classes and performing. I struggled with Ballet and had taken a huge break from it and dance altogether, mainly due to severely uncomfortable gender dysphoria. I found Contemporary and Modern styles, specifically non-ballet centered, and fell back in love with dance. I have been practicing more somatic movement and integrating that into my work, partially through Dance Church (loveee), which has been so joyful, and I am in and out of learning Bachata! I’d love to get into tap soon too, and truly there are so so many dance styles I want to dive into, experience, embody, and learn from that I won’t be able to reach in one lifetime. 

Rowan: Over the years I have found myself most tethered to contemporary, hip-hop, and musical theatre forms. My current choreographic practices operate at the fusion of these forms. I love styles of dance that offer space for authenticity and playfulness. I love to perform and be unique! I love athletic movement that allows me to embody my physicality at its maximum, countered by indulgent pockets for leisure and play.

Kit: I started doing ballet when I was three years old, and did it with conservatory-level regularity and intensity for about 15 years. It was my first love and consequently, my first heartbreak. Through contemporary and [post] modern movement, I healed. In burlesque, my current movement home, I thrive.

💖 Are there any pivotal experiences that have helped you to shape your understanding of the traditions and forms you love (or love to hate)?

Kit: I look back on my years growing up in ballet and have come to accept that if I could have been coached into and assumed more masculine roles, I would have been more successful and fulfilled. Literal gender roles (like characters) aside, I liked to jump high and slow, I was a turner, I was tall, I was muscular, pointework didn’t agree with my ankles, I had no personal vested interest in being perceived as fragile or waif-like, the list goes on. This is why the relative gender “neutrality” of contemporary and modern movement called to me, and why I sought refuge and healing through it. Certain values like the androgyny of the costuming, or the celebration of athleticism (just to name a few) made me feel like those forms could operate without or outside of gender entirely. And for a while, that was enough. But ultimately, I’m not a person without gender, I’m a person with many/much!! Burlesque and drag contexts allow me to play and switch and subvert and camp-ify in a way that is so beautifully aligned with my experience as a human being. 

💖 What drew you to these dance forms, and how have they shaped your journey as a movement artist? How has your journey evolved over time?

Rowan: When reflecting on my connection with dance, I almost always find myself drawn to the physicality. Dance is a space for us to express our internal landscape through our muscles, ligaments, and bones. There have been times in my dance journey, due to my transness, where this embodiment has not always felt safe or supported. Often times in codified techniques, where the way you are allowed to move is directly associated with your gender. As I get more comfortable in my ever-changing and shifting body, I find my ability to tap into physicality more accessible. My movement is a conglomeration of the many things I have learned throughout my life and training and is in direct relation to my bodies’ ability to express and embody different forms in different moments of life.

💖 How have you come to see yourself in the dance forms you practice? How does the “you”ness of you light up, challenge, engage with or push back on the modalities that you’re invested in as an artist? 

Rowan: I think within discovering my transness, I have felt othered from many cisnormative spaces, such as musical theatre and some concert dance. It has been hard to see a place for me to thrive within these communities. It is through this disconnect where I have been able to find and expand my understanding of what dance can be, leading me into dance theatre practices. Finding ways to create work that directly breaks the mold of cis and heteronormative spaces, while still creating the emotional and physical impact of dance and musical theatre work.

Cam: I find that I can love and have compassion for myself through movement, accepting the polarities that live within me by moving in vastly different ways, with a range of sounds, but all through my own body. I feel my weight shifting around, guide myself through the space, and express through qualities, and I feel close to myself. I often get restless and/or find my overall health decline when I’m not moving enough and this really just shows that dance is integral to my health and life. I heard someone say once that of those people who dance, there are those that love dance, and there are people who need dance… it took me a long time to accept that and value dance as a ‘career’ or ‘worthy’ investment and pathway, but boy I am so so glad I got over my ego about that. 

💖 What does mentorship and lineage mean to you as an educator and as a learner?

Rowan: Mentorship and lineage is everything! I, in 2025, would not have the ability to express myself so freely and comfortably as a queer, trans dancer without the courageous art makers and movers before me.

💖 Who are your mentors and heroes in the forms and communities where you practice?

Rowan: Looking to my Ann Arbor roots, I met and interacted with such incredible mentors who entirely shifted my views on dance and art making. Clare Croft is a badass queer writer, historian, and dramaturg who offered me a safe space, when dance institutions felt like they had no place for transness. She pointed my attention toward thriving queer art makers, showing me that there was not only space for my unique perspectives and experiences, but a home for them to be celebrated.

Kit: First of all, I owe my reconciliation with art and performance to my collaborator and peer, Hannah Simmons. She saw burlesque as a home for me before I even knew I was looking for one, and then ushered me into the form/community with love and acceptance. Lily Verlaine followed suit and through starring in her works, I have grown immensely as an artist and performer. Miss Indigo Blue is a fucking LEGEND and I couldn’t be more honored at her willingness to mentor me as I explore making in more and new performance contexts. Honorable mentions to Betty Wetter, Miss Texas 1988, and Jane Don’t, all of whom inspire me on the regular through their art, creativity, contributions to/investment in community, and general fabulosity. 

Cam: I’m still working on building my experience and connections here in PDX, but I highly value and look up to Kindell Rae, owner of Portland Dance Exchange and teacher, Walle Brown, local Hip-Hop & Breaking educator, organizer, and MC, Sonia Kellermann, Dance at Franklin Director, Caroline Schwiebert, director of Portland Drama Club, and my Dance Church team here!! I am inspired by and look up to every performer, teacher, director, etc… people sharing their art and skills with the community and on the internet has really helped me feel comfortable and confident in networking and finding dance community in Portland. From my time in Salt Lake City, I find the deepest gratitude and impact from the compassion, love, and challenge shared with me by Meghan Wall, Westminster University Dance Chair and educator, Allison Shir, dance and Pilates educator and performer, and Natosha Washington, performer and choreographer, educator, and administrator. 

💖 If you were to pull in voices from others to share about the context and history of trans performers and educators in dance in the United States, who would you evoke? Are there pioneers you think we should know of? 

Rowan: Drag Performers!! Drag performers are at the root of queer expression and fluidity. Within the mainstream, drag has offered a tangible way for people to connect with queerness. While in the club, drag offers transcendent experiences for queer people to celebrate their bodies and creativity. Drag centers pleasure, creativity, and embodiment.

💖 Got any events, workshops, performances, gatherings coming up that you’d like to shout out?

Kit: On May 1st, Hannah Simmons and I will be performing at Live Nude Mammals, a saucy variety show of stripping, burlesque, and drag, hosted by Kitty Glitter at Queer Bar on Capitol Hill. At the end of May, I’ll be performing at 3, 2, 1 at Seattle Open Arts Place (formerly the venue at 18th and Union.) High Faggotry at Unicorn Bar is coming up in July!! 

Cam: I teach through my LLC Into-ition Movement on a monthly basis, mostly Contemporary and Hip-Hop classes, and mostly for kids 10-18. I’ll hopefully be branching out more to teaching adult classes but follow my Instagram @intoition.movement for more info! I have worked in Arts Alive at Franklin High, da Vinci Middle’s spring dance show, and choreographed for Seussical through Portland Drama Club, coming up this April and May! I am itching to perform again soon too. 

Rowan: While I am here, I wanted to shout out the incredible dance convention I work for, Embody Dance Conference!! Embody is actively doing the work to create dance environments centering queer, trans, and BIPOC dancers, teachers, and leaders. 

💖 How do you see dance as a tool for connection—whether across cultures, histories, or communities?

Cam: Dance is our way as humans to use our organic vessels to communicate with, feel, and process our world. We hold so much history, love, pain, and depth inside us and that n e e d s to move through us one way or another. I see dance as a tool for connection in that we must have a relationship with our bodies in order to connect with ourselves. We connect with others via empathy and the related human experience in our bodies. It breaks my heart that sooo many people are so detached from their bodies and have such a fear of breaking that barrier and getting to know, acknowledge, and listen to themselves physically and what lives within them, particularly in white, Western, Christian colonized, capital-driven communities and cultures. I teach dance to offer space for people to break that wall and face themselves; all that joy, pain, love, and history that lives within them. I’m constantly learning and failing while doing this, and it brings me so much joy and gratitude that I have found and made spaces to do this in Portland, like through Dance Church!

💖 Tell us about your favorite way to show up as a dancer in community spaces. 

Kit: My favorite way to show up is with snacks on hand for sharing. I have been known to some as the Snack King, or Snack Dad. I’m good with either. I’ve also been known to show up to the club with a purse or fanny pack full of chips. Like to be so clear, literally just loose chips and nothing else.

Rowan: My favorite way is to show up as a dance artist is with honesty and care. I believe in spaces that prioritize the totality of human existence. I create spaces that allow for highs and lows and everything in between. No part of our emotional experience should be left behind when we enter a dance space. It all informs our moving, making, and connection with the other dancers in the space.

💖 Have you had any particularly special moments of connection or community joy through Dance Church? We’d love a story…

Cam: I just started teaching with Dance Church recently but each memory I’ve had so far has been special and sweet! When I visited Seattle for training I had so much fun with Alethea, Kit, and Janu that I was like “wait do I need to move here?!?”! My first class teaching was life changing; I felt so held by the strong and warm community here in PDX. The PDX team just had a special Nike x Dance Church event for Women’s History Month and it was so PRECIOUS and WHOLESOME to have all 4 of us together at once, bringing the hype and being able to connect with each other and what we love. 

Kit: I personally mark my success as a guide based on how many people told me they cried; shoot me, I’m a Cancer. I LIKE FEELINGS. But actually – I’ve had a few people message me on Instagram that one of my classes was their foray back into movement after a surgery, a heartbreak, just a long period of not wanting to engage in those kinds of spaces, etc, and they’ve all shared how impactful my class has been for them in those moments. “Meaningful work” has always been a strong value of mine, so I’ve done my best to hold jobs that felt aligned with this. Dance Church is by far the most important work I’ve ever done in my life, and I’m so genuinely honored and grateful for the opportunity to guide people through these hour-plus sessions of silliness, because I know they are so much more than that. 

💖 What drives you to teach movement? Like, what’s the mission or heart behind the wild and gorgeous public face of the labor?

Cam: I remember changing my major a few times in college and I landed on dance because I couldn’t stay away… I felt like I needed movement in my life and even though I never imagined myself teaching dance in any capacity, I just knew somewhere in me that it was my path, no matter how scary or “not me” it seemed (insecurities, scared of my body and sharing that with others, valuing myself and my skills/self confidence, etc…). I considered teaching dance or movement therapy and ended up on a teaching track, with the goal of integrating somatic dance/movement and social emotional learning, and fitness/kinesthetic education. I believe every person has a right to get to know their body, process their experiences and history through that body, advocate with and for their body, feel curious and compassionate and brave and kind and loving and loud with their body. 

Rowan: I love to dance!! I love to dance with others!! I love to inspire people to dance who never thought it was possible for them! I believe dance is for everyone and I am grateful for any chance I can to share the love of dance with others!

Kit: I’ve had the absolute PRIVILEGE of growing in, out, around, and back into myself with movement and embodiment as a given throughout. I have processed trauma, built resilience, celebrated achievement, grieved loss, regulated anxiety, all through moving my body. I don’t know how else to be, it is my only frame of reference, and yet I come to appreciate more and more all the time how lucky I am to state that fact. I place myself in contexts where people come to find, deepen, or heal their relationship to their body because there’s nowhere else I can imagine being more helpful. 

💖 What does Trans Day of Visibility mean to you in the context of movement, performance art and/or dance?

Cam: Trans Day of Visibility means a lot to me this year. There is so much fear around the unknown and the beautiful possibilities of a genderless or non-cis-centered, nonbinary world. I’m so grateful to be living somewhere (PDX) that I feel safer and more seen and welcomed. I’m grateful for this body allowing me to move through the uncomfortability, joy, pain, and growth that I feel. Transness is beautiful, disruptive, ridiculously freeing, and so comforting in my life. I am proud to be trans and to choose to use my trans body to move, express, teach, and live. 

Kit: It’s weird to be an AFAB/transmasc drag queen in the early stages of transitioning. I only recently introduced he and him as a second set of pronouns one could use to refer to me, and even now I often don’t know who people are talking about when they do 😂 But given this (that my assigned gender at birth matches the gender in which I often perform,) I come up against a fair amount of invisibilization. The fact is, I love performing in femme drag because I’ve done it literally my whole life, only now I get to be so real about the fact that it is indeed a construction, a collage of bits and bobs of gender expression glued together for fun. For now, drag king-ing doesn’t appeal to me. My masculinity still feels new and sacred, and I’m not quite ready to poke fun at it. This will no doubt change as I grow and get bored with myself and give birth to new personas and more genders and shelve past selves. 

Rowan: Trans people have always existed and will always exist!! There are notes to be taken from all communities on the fluidity, shifting and rebirth that comes when exploring your gender identity beyond the normative. Give yourself permission to dream of new worlds and possibilities beyond the context of what we’ve been told our whole lives. Life is more fun when you break the rules! Allow yourself to break them again and again and again. Movement was never meant to be codified, but has always meant to be embodied, uniquely your way. You pave your reality. Let it be as wild as you can dream :)

💖 Is there anything else you’d like to share with our community?

Kit: My internal experience of queerness and gender dysphoria/exploration has been a long, steady, subtle, and relatively crisis-free unfolding of self. For this, I am lucky and know it. On account of this fact, I feel quite at ease interfacing with folks who might have relatively less context or access to these ideas. I’d like to offer myself as a low-stakes entrypoint for anyone needing or wanting to talk about their own experience or perhaps that of someone they know or love. 

💖🤍🩵