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Taisha Barton-Rowledge

@taishabr

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Dancer with les Ballets de Monte Carlo. Likely to be found playing mermaid in the Mediterranean.

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So grateful to finish the first year of our Global Studies Masters playing around on one of the best rooftops in Geneva. Thank you so much to the Experiential Movement Lab Geneva for all their creativity and guidance, it was so fun to celebrate the end of term by moving and breathing together ! taken in Geneva, Switzerland by @taishabr

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4 months ago

Closing out this year with my heart wide open. Thank you to all the people who loved me so well through the wild swings of making momentous decisions, and gave me the courage to hear my own voice. I am so incredibly grateful, for the joys and the lessons, and I feel so loved. 💚 wishing for peace in this next chapter, in our hearts and in the world.

📷: @alice.blangero by @taishabr

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2 years ago

Puglia taken in Puglia, Italy by @taishabr

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2 years ago

It’s rare to live a life where your dreams become reality quite this literally. The two year old in a sparkly blue tutu had no idea she would one day get to wear a sparkly blue tutu and fairy dust onstage at the Bolshoi. I never even dreamed I would go to Cinderella’s ball at the Théâtre du Versailles. When I saw @jeanladanse’s Romeo et Juliette in Seattle at 17, I never could have imagined where that road would take me; I just knew I wanted to dance THAT.

We always dream, as artists, that our work will touch someone, make them feel, change their life even. I don’t know if I have done that for anyone else, but I do know that this work has changed me. It has given me a place to channel all the feelings, and it has touched me to the depths of my soul.

These past 8 years with @lesballetsdemontecarlo have been a dream come true. I can’t wait to dance with you all two more times here in Lecce — there can be no more beautiful send off — and I am so grateful to all of you. Team, you have changed my life 1000x over, and none of this means anything without the family we have built. I am in awe of so many of my colleagues, and so lucky to have shared the stage with you.

Thank you for dancing with me 🥰 by @taishabr

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2 years ago

You can tell how old I am by the quality of my school photos…. 🙄😬

Growing up in Seattle at PNB was such a lucky geographical coincidence. I saw Nutcracker on the big stage when I was …4?… and said I wanted to be up there one day. By 8, there I was. Each step of the way presented new challenges and new proof that it was possible, actually, to live out the reality of your dreams.

Being pulled out of the audience and thrown into Ballet Imperial at 17 meant that for my entire career, I was ready for any situation, just in case. Doing a 45-show run of Nutcracker meant that I held onto the idea that even in exhaustion, this was someone’s first time seeing ballet, and they deserved to experience all the beauty and joy I could bring. Swan Lake taught me that as @francia.russell said, Odette and Siegfried were the heart of the ballet, but the corps were the lungs, and we allowed everyone to breathe with us. @petboal brought a new version of Romeo and Juliette to the west coast, and I realized for the first time what kind of dancing I most wanted to do. Little did I know that was only the very beginning of @jeanladanse in my life.

Dancing in NYC with Time/Lapse dance opened up my ideas of what dance might be, and made a soft spot in my heart for Loie Fuller. What a joy to play her in Roland Petit’s Les Forains a few years later with @jody_sperling in my mind. Carolina Ballet gave me my first real contract, my first taste of what this life might be, and the jump board to what I wanted next.

Growing up in dance in America was where I learned about hard work, that celebrating your friends’ successes didn’t take away from your own, and how to stand in line. @chelseagle, I am so glad that we found each other again all these years later, because no one can fully understand that time if they didn’t live it with us. I love how our friendship has deepened and matured with us, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. From the very beginning, you’ve had my back, and I am so grateful that we are getting to live this moment together too. 💚💚💚 by @taishabr

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2 years ago

At the end, I don’t even know what to say. I have always talked about one of the unique strengths of dance as an art form being that it bypasses language. Dance allows you to connect with your audience directly, without the analytical filter of language, where if your emotions are true enough when you dance it, the same mirror neurons in their brains light up watching you. I’ve been trying to find the words to express what this career has meant to me (or even to announce my retirement), and words are failing me. Maybe they were meant to, because some things you can’t explain in any other way than to dance it out.

But… going to try anyway 😉 to start my little trip down memory lane (because if I can’t be nostalgic now then when can I), my 5 years at Ballet du Capitole in Toulouse was full of self discovery, joy, challenges, and deep friendships that showed me that I could move to the other side of the world and find people to walk this path with me. I am deeply grateful to Nanette for bringing me to Europe, and to so many friends and mentors who helped me feel like I belonged here. I love that my life in Toulouse was more than just the ballet — working with Amnesty International, getting my history degree, doing my first international tours — and full of little routines — going to the market every Sunday, having lunch at my friends’ restaurant, sipping wine on the balcony looking at the Pyrenees with @imsjulian complaining about how hard we had it, and then remembering how lucky we were. Thank you, deeply, to everyone who shared that chapter with me.

📸 @davidherrero.fr taken in Toulouse, France by @taishabr

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2 years ago

taken in Bangkok, Thailand by @taishabr

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3 years ago

These past few months have been made so much richer, lighter, truer and more beautiful by the work we have done to bring this beautiful piece by @chelseagle to the stage. I am so proud of you my love, both in how willing you were to share your insides with the world, and in how pure and beautiful those insides are. Thank you for trusting us and for gifting us with your magic 💚💚

🌊🔥🌱🌬🌙 1 cycle for 5
@emileeblake_ @roger.neves_ @cristian_assis @alexandre_mats

📸 @alice.blangero toujours là au moment magique taken in The Tree by @taishabr

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4 years ago

The River of No Return always leaves you a little different by the time they pull you out downstream. What a pleasure to share this mythical week every year with such splendid people, I adore all of you.

Goons, I hold each of you so so close to my heart. GP2, it’s been such a pleasure watching these boys come to life around you, and thank god they found a group of gals who can more than handle their crazy. This trip only gets better the more Lungmi it involves, and it was such a pleasure to ease Woody into gravity sports and non-suffering in the outdoors. Kyle, I never could’ve faced the upstream wind without you, and Devon, no one rocks fur like you — welcome to the madness. Ty, Tar, Sher, thank you for making the time for this trip, it was so wonderful having so much time together this summer.

Mum and Dad, thank you for being our fearless leaders, I am so proud of you for making this happen, and for giving up the reins a bit this year and enjoying the ride.

Til next year 🤞🏽🤞🏽
Thanks @connnornielson for all the 📸 taken in Lower Salmon River ID by @taishabr

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4 years ago

Nana. I have had an overwhelming sense of gratitude this week, to have been lucky enough to live in this world beside you for this long, and that I got to live in this world that you made more beautiful and true. Your radical compassion — true, deep support of everyone around you that stemmed from love and acceptance, which gave everyone the freedom to be exactly as they were — made the world around you brighter. I feel so incredibly lucky to be raised by your daughter @lrowledge, and to carry within me the legacy of your love, which my children in turn will carry one day.

I am so grateful for the spirit with which you embraced life for over 9 decades — exploring Europe with me, zip lining in the Costa Rican jungle, protesting to protect public health care, listening and loving your people endlessly… and that’s all since you turned 80. You saved countless lives, both in and out of the hospital, and brightened the world everywhere you went. You were unapologetic in pursing joy, as much as you sacrificed for everyone around you, and that gave us permission to seek out our version of that joy in our lives.

You were a wonderful friend, superb mother, amazing auntie, incredible community leader, and the best grandmother one could ever imagine. Your partnership with Papa over these past 69 years has been an example of what the best kind of love looks like: caring but free, between two strong people who were both proud, but not too proud to put the relationship first, who complemented each other without caving in on each other. He loves you and is so proud of you, and he won’t stop saying it. We promise to look after him.

Thank you for teaching me to dance in the kitchen, for the poppycock and the chokecherry jam, for listening to my messes and successes and loving me all the time regardless. The stories with you are infinite, and every one of them just glows with love. You will be missed - the world feels empty right now without you - and yet your love is also everywhere. Thank you for wrapping us up so well in that love, it will keep our family warm for generations to come. You have given us everything we need.

I love you. I miss you. Thank you. by @taishabr

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4 years ago

💚💚💚 This is a @hulagurl appreciation post.

I’ve carried this post card of Noe and @lucienpost with me across continents and oceans and decades. I brought it with me to university in 2018, where I could only explain my imminent departure from academia to go dance by showing my friends videos of R&J, trying to demonstrate that if only I could make art like this, it would be worth it to try. I brought it with me to my first company, where it helped me remember what I was dancing for. I had it on the wall in Toulouse, as part of my vision of the dream that had brought me so far. And it is now in my dressing room at BMC, where I get to work with @jeanladanse every day and perform this Romeo et Juliette all over the world, and it reminds me of how far I’ve come.

Noe, as you celebrate your last performance, know that there are so many people around the world grateful for your existence. I don’t know that I would be dancing today if I hadn’t fallen in love with your Juliette. I definitely think it’s unlikely I’d be at BMC if you haven’t been brave enough to chase your own dreams across an ocean first.

As artists, we never know what random circumstances mean that our art touches a certain person in a certain way on a certain day. All we know is that our job is to bring our whole selves to the work, every day. Thank you for embodying that. I feel so lucky that I was able to witness your beauty and humanity and dedication across so many decades, and am forever grateful for the gifts you left at exactly the moments I needed them. @cpyballet is lucky to have you and all the gifts you still have to give. Bravo, ma belle 💚💚💚 by @taishabr

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5 years ago

There’s no time like river time.

It’s been a long two years since I last was out on a river (or in North America), and this trip was everything I’d been waiting for. So much laughter, the best conversations around a campfire and floating through canyons, wild life, adventure, incredible food, family and (both old and new) friends… and a hot chocolate-and-whiskey dance party while we waited out the rain. The professionals are coming soon with the real photos, but here’s a taste of life out in the wild. taken in Lower Salmon River ID by @taishabr

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5 years ago