A Dancer and an Illustrator Compare Creative Energies

We found two active and physically inclined creatives and had them talk to each other.

The daily life of an urban artist is an exercise in maintaining inspiration and balance. Jules Bakshi is a modern dancer, choreographer, and wellness professional who encourages empowerment and body positivity through her dance and fitness classes. Bakshi's work is movement and vitality. Alelli Tanghal is a painter, illustrator, and art director at Doubleday & Cartwright, a creative agency with several clients in the world of professional sports. Tanghal's work is to interpret movement and athleticism. The two New York-based artists met on the Vice rooftop to discuss creative movement, finding equilibrium between the personal and the professional, and the genesis of collaboration.

The Creators Project: How did you discover that intersection between activity and art?

Jules Bakshi: I was always a super active child. So as soon as I was old enough, my mom put me into gymnastics. But when I went through puberty, my body changed and gymnastics became really scary and I had a lot of mental blocks. When I discovered modern dance when I was 12 years old, I totally fell in love with it because it was that outlet for all my energy, but it was creative.

Alelli Tanghal: As an illustrator, my movement comes from the lines and the ink. And I think it's mainly inspired by the female form and our gestures and curves.

When did you discover that the female form was really your main inspiration?

Tanghal: What's funny is I used to draw strippers. When I went to the strip club for the first time, I was amazed. They're kind of acrobatic.

Bakshi: They're totally acrobatic. They can be, especially pole dancers.

Do either of you have a work/life balance philosophy that you stand by?

Bakshi: I'm a dancer/choreographer, but I'm also a wellness professional. It's my job to know when things start getting out of balance. That doesn't always mean that I can reel it in, but I can tell right away. Our bodies know when we're not getting enough rest, when we're not eating well, when we're not exercising enough, when we're not sleeping well. And my work suffers when I'm not in balance.

Tanghal: I constantly struggle with trying to find that balance. I have my full-time job and I try to get my personal work going, but if I don't have that personal creative space, that's when I feel drained. As a rule, I try to give myself at least two hours of personal creative space every day. Some people need their yoga sessions, I need time to draw and research and look at things. I bet that's the same as keeping your body tuned up.

Jules, you're passionate about making dance accessible and encourage women to be kind to their bodies. As a professional, how do you put yourself in the mindset of someone who comes with hesitancy or needs inspiration?

Bakshi: All of these women who I look up to and who I admire and who I think are amazing still don't feel happy or free in their bodies. You don't have to be a dancer, you don't have to look a certain way. You just have to be happy in your body to enjoy the pleasure of moving your body around.

Alelli, what's your relationship to professional sports? How do you engage with them when you're conceptualizing a project versus when you're not?

Tanghal: I'm not generally a sports fan. But there's a lot of research that goes into all my jobs. So you do get sucked into the world. You start to respect the athletes. What these people's bodies are capable of and also how everybody's got their unique move or their unique talent that they're identified with. I have to think of these movements visually. So when I thought of Kyrie Irving's crossover, I imagined it as an infinity symbol and I somehow had to illustrate that.

Do you have a ritual or a process whenever you're starting a piece?

Tanghal: I like to go through piles of books and flip through things. And sometimes I like to go to junk stores. I need to explore in order for me to get inspired or get excited about something.

Bakshi: I usually write first. It's usually during my writing practice that it comes out that I need to make a dance about something. And once I write about why I need to make the dance, then I call on my very talented coven of collaborators and ask them very nicely if they'll come into the studio so I can experiment with them. Collaboration is probably the most important aspect of my work. First, I start with the dancers and the physical part of it, and then later, once I figure out what it's about, because something's coming through in the writing. I have to get into the studio with this feeling. It reveals itself. I don't usually say, "I'm going to make a dance about…"

Tanghal: No! Nobody ever does. Nobody ever makes [visual] work like that either, and I think that's the difference between commissioned work and personal work. It has to come out. I have a question for you. When you're choreographing, do you have to get people familiar with a certain movement to get them to pull [a feeling] out of themselves?

Bakshi: Yes, I totally do. I was in the studio trying to figure out what this idea is that I had for my next piece. I said, 'I want you to dance together, and the [concept] is you're going to stay in this box of light' that just happened to be shining through these weird rafters. I said, 'I want you to stay in the square of light and I want you to do the dance of building something that keeps falling apart.'

Tanghal: You're telling them about a feeling and then you have to associate that feeling with something visual.

Bakshi: Right.

Tanghal: That's how I would think of [your work] relating to visual art. I'm trying to picture what you're painting with your movements, and that's a palette right there.

If you were going to collaborate on something together, how you would approach that?

Tanghal: I would want to do a choreographed strip club where we're on the subway and the strippers are on the poles. But they're very graceful and elegant.

Bakshi: Oh, I'm down.

To learn more about about Jules Bakshi click here. To learn more about Alelli Tanghal click here.

This content was paid for by the advertising partners and was created in collaboration with VICE creative services, independently from The Creators Project editorial staff. 

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