Guest Profile
Eyva Winet
s long as I have been standing I have been dancing. At two I performed my own version of ballet in my living room for my family and friends. At the ripe age of eight, my second formal ballet instructor encouraged me to try sports because I didnt have a dancers body. I returned to my solo career dancing for the pure joy of it anywhere a rhythm could be found and I never stopped wearing tutus. At 19 I discovered my true dance tribe in the form of vogue loving drag queens. Those girls taught me to question and rethink most of what I had been taught about being a women, beauty, my body, dance, performance and community. Several years later when I happened into a tribal belly dance class dance became an even more central piece of my life and another reclamation and exploration of my own relationship to my body, to power and privilege and to feminine communities. I am currently dancing with Skin Deep Dance and participating in teacher training through the studio. I have studied and performed with student troupes with both Katrina and Zanbaka as well as taken workshops from many local and nationally recognized dancers. I also currently teach high school students to dance in the American Tribal Style tradition with some fusion of other tribal styles. It is my passion to use dance to invite people back into their bodies and to find love and joy there as well as to build community. Activism, art, education and healing are themes that move through my relationship to dance as well as the way I live in the world. I teach chemistry, physics, gender and sexuality studies at a local public high school. I also hold space for healing and activism around gender, sexuality, race and class justice though my school and through partnerships in the greater community. I am a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence with The Abbey of St. Joan where I promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt while raising money for HIV/AIDS charities, doing safer sex outreach and fighting for queer visibility and justice. Finally, I sing and play guitar, write music, create metal sculpture and make jewelry, write poetry, cook and dabble in textile arts. I also have an adorable non-traditional family of the people and dogs I have chosen and who have chosen me.
