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Artist profile: Kaia GiljeMay 23, 2010 (The Bellingham Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Western Washington University's dance program presents its annual BFA Capstone Concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, May 27-29, continuing June 3-5 at its downtown location, Ving!, 311 E. Holly St. Among the performers is Kaia Gilje, 20, a student at WWU's Fairhaven College who's graduating this summer. She talks about her love for dance and about this upcoming performance. Question: What was your childhood like? Answer: I was born in Bonners Ferry, a logging town in northern Idaho. When I was 9, my family moved to Holden Village, which is in the middle of the Cascade Mountains, inaccessible by any road. In the 1940s it was a copper mine, but now, after being a ghost town for many years, it is now a retreat center where people can come to visit for a week or two -- and where others live and work for longer periods of time. In the winter there is often 10 feet of snow on the ground. The public school there only has about 10-15 children in the elementary and high school combined. I lived here from when I was 9 until I was 18. As a child I always wanted to move, whether playing soccer, running, hiking or dancing. When I was a little girl I had the opportunity to take some ballet classes. I remember loving these, but had to stop when we moved away to Holden because there was no studio there. As is often the case in very isolated situations, you need to create things to occupy your own time -- so my friends and I would often make up dances together and some years there would be someone at the village who would have dance experience and could help instruct us. Q: When did you decide to take dance seriously? A: I found modern dance for the first time when I came to Western Washington University. I don't know exactly how I was allowed to do this, but first off I took an advanced modern class taught by Kathy Casey from Montreal Danse. I had no experience at all doing modern technique at the time. I fell quickly in love watching bodies fly across the room. I learned by immersion -- awkwardly throwing myself into the movement and trying not to get in other people's way. This experience really shaped me because it made me never embarrassed to be the worst at something. I knew fairly quickly after this that I wanted to become a modern dancer. So for the next four years, I have slowly and methodically been learning the basic foundations of modern and ballet technique. Q: What do you enjoy about being on stage? A: I love performing. It is a chance to communicate physically with other people. I think words are great, and very effective to use for communicating specific information, but movement can communicate bigger things that are so deeply buried in most of us. I love it when I see that someone is affected or changed by the kind of communication that happens between performers and audience in a dance. It brings me joy to throw my body around, be off vertical and upside down, move in every way possible, and it brings me joy to work hard on something and see it develop to the point where it can have a positive impact on the world, on the people around me. Q: What's your focus in Western's dance program? A: Dance Makers is a program that I have now been involved in for three years. It is a troupe of dancers from Western's dance program that travels to different elementary schools and brings an interactive performance that focuses on a specific area of study. For instance, we have focused on dance and science, dance and visual art, and dance and health. We explore these concepts in movement and then invite the kids up on stage to dance with us. It is really important for kids to see examples of people using their bodies to express themselves -- held up and recognized as an important and positive thing -- because often children are reprimanded when they use their bodies to express themselves so they grow up to see this as a negative thing to do. They also spend much of their school days contained physically, so when they do express themselves physically it is often in a violent, aggressive and non-constructive manner. Also performing for kids is really fun because they are completely honest about how they feel about what they see, remarking verbally "cool!" or "weird!!" or "gross!!!" Q: What will this upcoming dance concert include? A: At the Capstone performances this year you can expect a diverse range of dancing. The BFA candidates for this year will all be performing a solo made either by a dance artist from outside of the university or by a Western faculty member. We will also be presenting our own work. Q: What's in your future after graduating from WWU? A: I know I will continue working to develop my ability as a dancer -- and to continue creating dances of my own. I think eventually I would like to move to a larger city and find a community of dancers and artists to participate in and learn from. I will search to find dance artists who would want to use me as a performer in their work and watch and learn from them as they do their work. I want to bring people's eyes to things they normally skip over and do not see. I am interested in the cracks in our worlds, streets, houses, minds, relationships and beliefs. I am interested in the things that live and die in these cracks or that fall straight through. Reach MARGARET BIKMAN at [email protected] or 715-2273. To see more of The Bellingham Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bellinghamherald.com. Copyright (c) 2010, The Bellingham Herald, Wash. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 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