Date: 13/09/2006
Place: Her kitchen

Cynthia Loemeij started dancing when she was eighteen. When she left school, she came to Brussels to become a dancer in Rosas. Fifteen years later, she is still in the company. The city is very much linked to the company for her. She invested in living here so that Brussels would feel like home. It was an adventure for her to come to Brussels. She respected and admired the people she was going to work with and wanted to learn as much as possible from them. She really wanted to go for the job and absorb all new information she could get.

Loemeij feels part of a dance scene that consists of dancers and people who are involved in dance, like set designers and musicians. What makes it a community is a shared passion for dance and the simple fact that they all live in the same city and meet each other. The best way to stay connected is to go to see shows of others and to create work oneself. Going to shows is an important way to stay connected with what is going on and with the social context of the community. She considers Rosas as a community on its own with its own group dynamics. For her, the larger dance community consists of different layers: first, the people she works with or has worked with; second, the people in the Brussels dance field that she knows but has never worked with (people of other companies for example); third, people she recognizes but does not know and finally people she does not know at all. She feels that both her person and her work are recognized by the Brussels dance community.

Loemeij says that she has a sense of freedom in her profession, in the first place because she has chosen to be a dancer and also because she can create things and express herself. Her top priority and the prerequisite for everything else is to stay healthy. Her artistic need is to be challenged: by meeting others, by new projects, by teaching others… It is a recognition for her to get appreciation for a show, whether it is from a choreographer or from someone from the audience.

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