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Good Life Project

Nicholas Palmquist | Dance, Equity and Access

Good Life Project

Jonathan Fields / Acast

Living Well, Midlife, Education, Health & Fitness, Wellness, Self-improvement, Intentional Living, Personal Growth, How To

4.53.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2020

⏱️ 104 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This conversation is different, it’s actually two conversations recorded four-months apart. Be sure to keep listening after our guest, Nicholas Palmquist, answers what is usually my final question. The dialogue after is powerful.

Palmquist is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer who has toured the world, performed and choreographed for stage, TV, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, The Tonys, and feature films. Finding his way to NYC, Nicholas focused more on choreography and began teaching packed classes at the iconic Steps on Broadway studios. There, he'd eventually bring cameras into the studio to share the experience with a global community on Instagram, and introduce a sponsorship/patronage model that allowed people from all over the world to sponsor dancers who struggled to afford his class.

Then, the pandemic hit. Everything shut down, including Nicholas' work. A few weeks in, he found himself, like so many others, awakening to the realities of racial injustice, violence, privilege, and protests. This led to a profoundly personal period of re-examination, along with a commitment to bring himself, his heart, mind, teaching, and sense of service and equality to the world in a very different way. I asked him to convene for a follow-up conversation, which we taped just last week and edited into this episode, so we could tell the fuller story of his evolution. 

You can find Nicholas Palmquist at: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/napalmquist/

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey there, so today's conversation is a little bit different than any we have air.

0:10.8

It actually is two conversations recorded for months apart.

0:15.2

My guest Nicholas Pongquist is a dancer, teacher, choreographer.

0:19.0

He has performed in choreograph for stage, TV, places like Netflix, Saturday Night Live,

0:24.7

the Tonicio, the Tonis as well as feature films.

0:27.6

Growing up in a small town in Missouri, it wasn't easy to be a young male dancer until

0:31.9

he discovered a place of refuge in a local dance studio and the community around that.

0:37.4

Eventually making his way to New York City, Nicholas took a very different approach to

0:41.3

creating a career.

0:42.7

Stepping into more of a choreography and teaching role, he has toured the world, awakening

0:46.9

everyone from professionals to kids, to movement music and possibility.

0:51.8

While also leading packed classes at the iconic steps on Broadway dance school in New York,

0:57.8

and beyond his mesmerizing and really joyful choreography, he decided to do something

1:02.7

a bit radical.

1:03.9

He brought cameras into the classroom and shared these many performances with a giant community

1:09.1

on Instagram.

1:10.5

That in fact is how I first discovered him when my daughter shared a clip of him dancing

1:14.7

to the Who's Baba O'Reilly which we both are huge fans of.

1:18.8

That was much of the focus of our original conversation in the beginning of March.

1:23.8

Then the pandemic hit, crippling New York City.

1:26.9

We decided to hold this episode to hold that earlier conversation for a bit for a time

1:31.8

when people could gather in person again and be with him again in his New York City classes.

...

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