Will A. Ervin Jr. is a choreographer and dancer born and bred on the East Coast.

I dare to dream and create my reality because I believe humanity's ability to fantasize and imagine is the root of real change.

Through dance, I explore the relationship between Afrofuturism and the synchronistic. Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science, and the reimagining of a future filled with arts and technology through a Black lens. For something to be synchronistic, two or more events must exist or occur at the same time. In dance, synchronistic experiences occur all the time because the choreography itself (as an idea) exists in parallel to the history of every performer—both their learned and unconscious movement languages.

Because fantasy plays an integral role in my work, I excavate how choreographic ideas and performers can physicalize imagined spaces that are not governed by sexism, gender, or color discrimination. At the end of it all, my work is an experiment to see how the rigidity of social institutions and fantasy antagonize yet fuse in the same space.

The ways I deconstruct ballet and contemporary in the studio are intertwined with a sense of play from the street dance vocabularies that shape my foundation as an artist. I've studied house, vogue, popping, and other street dance forms, which helped me foster a sense of identity and reaffirmed my belief in the power of invention.

In fact, I represent—a few different communities (a young, queer, Black, New Jersian), which I weave into my work. This sense of play allows me to be awkward and clumsy, yet sexy, direct, and confident.

The imagined future is filled with otherness, surprise, mystery, and uncertainty—and although that may terrify some, I believe that it is the key to greater empathy and innovation, on and off the stage.