My name is Ingrid Mackinnon and I am a movement director, choreographer and teacher. I live in London with my husband and son. 

My pathway into dance appears straightforward but now that I think about it, it kind of wasn’t really. I started dancing at 4 yrs old at a local dance studio. I loved it all and continued training there in ballet, jazz, tap and acrobatics. I’m from Toronto, Ontario, Canada and through my dance school I went to numerous dance competitions and conventions in Canada and the US. I suppose where it gets unusual is that I didn't study dance at a conservatoire, I went to Western University in Canada and in 2000 graduated with a BA in Kinesiology. 

My pathway from study into dance was unusual because I started dancing professionally in my summer breaks while at university in everything from music videos,  independent dance companies and film jobs. I then pursued a professional dance career once I graduated from Western. I was always disappointed that I didn’t do the dance college or conservatoire training, I always felt like something was missing from my experience as a result. It’s not that I missed technique training because I was fortunate to have phenomenal teachers and frequent visits to NYC but that I missed that opportunity to blossom into an artist. It has always felt like a hustle for me and still does to be honest. But it’s my hustle and I really love it now. About halfway through my time at Western, I was accepted into the Ailey School in New York City and didn’t go. I was encouraged to get an academic degree, something to fall back on. This was a very difficult decision as it was seeing a performance from The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as a child that made me want to dance forever. I next worked in Dallas, TX with a contemporary dance company called Dallas Black Dance Theater (DBDT). I basically learned all of my formal modern dance training on the job! I worked out that some of my colleagues at DBDT would have been classmates at the Ailey School had I gone. Felt like an imposter most of the time but what I know now is that you will feel like an imposter almost ALL of the time. My job as an artist is to press on, follow my creative instincts and trust in my abilities. But I’m not going to lie, it was hard!

When I left that company my plan was to get into another contemporary dance company and continue down that path. I auditioned for a few and wasn’t successful. Rejection is embarrassing more than anything else. You feel so humiliated for thinking that you stood a chance. I mean I’m pretty sure that I was just overlooked but hey ho! But what I’ve learned is that all of these rejections are merely steering you towards your true path. Sounds incredibly cheesy but it’s incredibly true! After those rejections, I went to work on a cruise ship and this is where I met my Scottish husband. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you never know what is behind the next door if you can pick yourself up and press on. For me, it was my future husband and unknowingly, a career in the UK. For you, it might be another creative opportunity that you couldn’t even have dreamed of or a chance to learn something about yourself. So I danced my way around the world and made some lifelong friends. It was where I needed to be at that time in my life and I’m so glad I did. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be a London based movement director, choreographer and teacher if not. It would be something else, but not this. Oh and that undergraduate degree that I was encouraged to get from my mom turned out to help me complete my MA in Movement: Directing & Teaching at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama practically 17 yrs later!  Even thinking about future academic studies, so watch this space. I continue to bounce from success to rejection to success even now. I think that I’m learning that this dance creative world has many facets and you can fit into all of them, maybe not all at the same time but it's absolutely ok to do the unexpected, to go down the less beaten track. You’ll be surprised who you meet, and what you discover about what you want/need as an artist to have a long career if that’s what you want in the end. 

The advice that I would give a graduate now is something that a good friend of mine once told me. He said, our careers are like cars in different lanes with their own set of traffic lights. When my light is green, yours might be amber and when mine is red then yours may have turned green. Just stay in your lane and you’ll do just fine. There is no right or wrong way to go about this thing but just be true to yourself and your needs. Make sure that you have a sound moral compass about how you expect to be treated and how you will treat others. Remind yourself that there are others who have ‘kick ball changed’ their way down some of these paths before you, so always be respectful of that. You will of course add your own spin on it, but once you leave formal training don’t stop learning about the history of your craft. Always be curious about that. And finally, the professional dance world is very small, so be very kind because everybody knows EVERBODY!

Good luck!