Welcome to the truth in his heart, your source for conversations at the intersection of arts, culture, and community. I am your host, Rob Lee. Today, I'm excited to be in conversation with my next guest. He's an award -winning choreographer, dancer, producer, educator, recognized by Dance Magazine as one of 2023's 25 to watch. Known for his community centric approach, he is a leader in both dance and business as the co owner of Moore, Dunson Co.
Rob Lee:He is currently on tour for his new family show, the Remember Balloons, a dance theater production that explores memory loss, Alzheimer's, and grief through a blend of dance, music, and imaginative projections. Please welcome Dominic Moore Dunson. Welcome to the podcast.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Hey, man. Thank you so much for having me.
Rob Lee:Thank you for coming on. It's it's great to have, you know, 1, a bearded brother. Yours is fuller than mine's. I'm a little jealous. I'm trying.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I'm trying in struggles, but I'll be trying.
Rob Lee:I'm trying to bring mine back. I was doing this weird, I'm just gonna have a mustache and see if that works, and then I thought about the degree of nasty work it was. I was like, I got bald head, mustache, no facial hair. I'm looking feral. I look wild.
Rob Lee:So Yeah. Consideration.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. Appreciate it. No. I've been trying for I've always think about the fact that, like so I have my kids in 2020 and 2021. In fact, they've never seen me without a beard.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So I, like, always see those videos on, like, TikTok and Instagram where, like, the dad shave it off. So it's like a thing I've been thinking about, but it takes way too long for it to get back here. So I don't know.
Rob Lee:Can you know that no shave November and, you know, those temperatures start dropping, you're in a, you know, you're in in the Akron. Right? So Ohio, so it get cold. So, you know, I wanna thank you for coming on, spending some time, making some time, to join this podcast. And, you know, before we get into the deeper questions of the podcast and exploring your work a bit, let's go back.
Rob Lee:How did you first get started in dance and what inspired you to pursue choreography, movement? You know, I've heard it described in so many different ways, but what it inspired your path?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Now I have one of those, like, classic stories that you hear in, like, the show, the chorus line. Like, I'm a little brother, so my sister's 2 years older than me. And our cousin was in dance classes at a dance studio. And when my mom found out, she was like, oh, let me put my daughter in these dance classes. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And not him. Here I am the scrappy little brother who can't stop moving. I have so much energy, like chaotic energy. You know what I mean? And she's basically like, well, she going, he got to go too because I need some peace in my life.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So they do some tap shoes on me when I was 2 years old and I just had a time. I was like, I mean, I can come in here and just throw my body around for whatever amount of time. Right? And no one's yelling at me or fussing at me or anything. So that's really how it started.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And also my sister, I kinda just followed her around during our childhood. Anything she did, I wanted to do to you. So I really stuck with it because she did mostly. And then we auditioned for a performing arts in middle school in Akron called Miller Salle. And I was there from 4th grade through 8th grade, and I got to dance every day.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And that's when I started taking ballet. I took modern dance for the first time. It was super weird because you didn't have socks or shoes on and you were like a unitard. It was super strange. Right?
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Took jazz, took tap and still had like my outside dance studio. And then I went to high school and I went to a performing arts high school where I was taking dance class again all the way through 12th grade and still doing, you know, the corner dance studio thing where I was doing dance competitions. But when I went to high school, a school called Firestone High School, their dance department was very different than like how I think a lot of dance departments is for high school. It's usually it's like, this is kind of a conservatory where we're trying to make you better dancers. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:My high school was introducing the art of choreography to 14 year olds.
Rob Lee:Oh, wow.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So the intimate act of choreography is like an old school choreography book that everybody has. And you usually get that. We go to your 1st choreography class in college when you're like a sophomore or junior in college. And I had it when I was a freshman in high school. So they were walking us through this book over the course of 4 years.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And so your sophomore year, you had to choreograph a solo for yourself and perform it in front of the whole school. Your junior year, you had to choreograph a piece with like a partner. Your senior year, you had to choreograph a piece by yourself on other dancers in the in the class that you're in high school. So I was introduced to this idea of making movement when I was 14. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So it became kind of like a normal part of my dance life. Right? Like the idea of making choreography didn't feel separate from dancing. Yeah. I'm at school all day learning how to make choreography, get out of school at 3:30, go to the dance studio at 4:30, and then go dance for the rest of the night.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? In my corner dance studio situation. So it was just kind of like a part of everything. Yeah. And I think the first time I realized like, oh,
Rob Lee:I might
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I might be on to something. I had to create my solo when I was a sophomore. And decided to do a tap piece because at the time I wouldn't be tap dancing really bad. And hurricane Katrina had just happened that school year.
Rob Lee:Okay.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And I decided I wanted to make this tap dance because I was hearing the news. I was hearing about all these people down in New Orleans area who didn't feel like they were being heard by the government. And, you know, this is me at, you know, 15, 16 years old or better. And so I decided to make this tap piece where at the beginning of the piece, you know, all the theater lights are dark. The stage lights are dark.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And I started tapping really, really softly. So all you can hear is taps, which you can see anything. In about 90 seconds in the lights would come up, but I would look like a silhouette. And that happened for another like 90 seconds. And as the lights came on more, the taps got louder and more like voracious.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then it retro rated itself back down. So by the end, it was dark again. You heard these like taps and I called the piece hear me out. And I did did this piece and I got like all of this like p kids coming up to me, high school kids coming up to me talking about how great the piece was. Even girls being like, was that about hurricane Katrina?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And they could just tell. Right? It's just abstract movement, abstract art, they could tell. And I was like, I think I might be alright at this.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I think I think I might have something here. So that kind of started the bug of like, oh, I can do this this thing for real. So then when I got, you know, much older, went through dance companies. I played soccer and went to division 1 soccer school for a hot second, but decided to go into dance fully. That's what I wanted to do in my life.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I was always had the goal of I'm gonna dance in a company. I'm gonna be a professional dancer and learn how to do that. But my goal is to make work because I got something I wanna say in the world.
Rob Lee:And and that that's a good segue into this next question, but I definitely wanna comment on because I I didn't notice that thing and I like when, you know, letting having folks do their introduction and just letting them cook because you get that extra detail. Soccer and dance, there's some overlap there. There's some you were on a fleet foot. You're like, oh, I got this. It's like, oh, to the side, and let me hit this spin real quick.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Oh, yeah.
Rob Lee:They're like, can we just slide tackle this dude? Right. Can we just
Dominic Moore-Dunson:feel yeah. Well, and it didn't help. Right? Like, I was in high school and by my junior year in high school, I was 6 foot 1175. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I was a center back. Oh, wow. So, like, I could jump real high because I've I'll spend all the time dancing. Right? Like, I was really flexible, really agile, and it really, really helped.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? I think it's a lot of the reasons I got to University of Akron, which at the time was a number 3 school in the country in college soccer. Yeah. But I think dance is a lot of the reason I got into that space because I just understood how to use my body amongst space. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like, if you look at soccer to go on with my nerdy soccer tangent, if you watch soccer, it's just choreography.
Rob Lee:Mhmm.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like, it really just is moving bodies in space and in time. And sometimes there's music. That's choreography.
Rob Lee:And and and thank you for that because, I I think of wrestling in the same way. And and one other one other thing I'll throw out there because I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it. You you touched on high school being a thing, and it's sort of that's one of those periods where I I think it's not appreciated as much as it should be that sometimes for the things that we're doing now, you know, in our thirties and so on, that there are some roots right there. It's for whatever reason. So, like, you know, podcasting, I remember having a microphone, a little handy microphone at 14, and I was a troll.
Rob Lee:So that's another piece of it. I was one of those really stringent schools, and I was just like, yo, your grades are not good. You're gone. Kinda like if you got a c, it's a wrap. And I would go around with the mic, and I was like, let me talk to everyone who's not gonna be here next semester.
Rob Lee:I was one of those guys. That's hilarious. And and I I would do it, in the 3rd person because I was a big fan of The Rock, So I I was on 1. I will not unearth those tapes, but that is sort of the earliest iteration of me recording sound and kinda doing interviews and and and so on with folks and, you know, having that interest now, what, nearly 26 years ago, it's wild. Yeah.
Rob Lee:Yeah. So in the in I find in my conversations that artists, you know, and I'm and I'm using this as broadly and I I don't like the term creatives because that feels weird because it's, like, it's deprecated, you know, a little bit. But artists, their work often goes beyond the surface. Like, you know, someone were to just use one word, it would say, oh, dancer. You know, it's like, more than that.
Rob Lee:Or for me, it's like, oh, podcaster. I I you know, and some people struggle with the term artist. Right? Right. And I think painters, for sake of argument, when you hear about, you know, an artist, painters are more than just a painter.
Rob Lee:They're more than what they're they're doing on a canvas or on a on a wall for a mural. For instance, you know, there's storytelling in their work. Right? And I think your work is no different, you know, in terms of the research I've been doing and even some of the stuff you were touching on specifically with that that the solo piece, the Katrina piece. Can you tell me about some of the aspects of storytelling and community engagement that go into your work?
Rob Lee:Because it's you know, as you described that, I was almost taken back. I wasn't there, but, you know, take it back to what, 2005. Mhmm. So, you know, talk a bit about that sort of intersection of storytelling being baked in your work and driving your work and sort of the community engagement aspects of it as well.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:You know, I think I realized I just love stories at such a young age. Like, I was just always attracted. You know, I don't know if it's a nineties kid, the Disney thing. I don't know what it is, but it's just always really attracted to stories and writing stories growing up.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And it really hit me kinda cognitively about storytelling in 2017. I was listening to this podcast called You Are A Storyteller. Yeah. And a guy named Brian McDonald, he's someone that like Disney and all these other folks bring in as a story consultant. And he's kind of like teaching about storytelling.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And so I was listening to it, trying to get better at storytelling. And he tells this, this story and he's talking about how storytelling is something that's been innate and human since the beginning. And how we've always told stories as survival information for the next generation. And he always used the idea of the torch and the hare. You tell the torch and the hare to young kids and the moral of the story is slow and steady wins the race.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And so when you get older and you're in your 30s and you're freaking out about life and you're moving a 1000 miles per hour.
Rob Lee:Right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:The thing you should remember is slow and steady wins the race. And when he said this, there was something that I remembered about growing up. So I grew up in a house with my great grandma, my grandma, my mom, and my older sister.
Rob Lee:Oh, wow.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So I had that many generations of women in the in the house now, the the baby in the house.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So storytelling, the amount of stories I always heard in my life, and I could never always understand why I was being told things in story form. And it was always the ending was like, and that's why you need to clean your room when I tell you to. Right? Like, the ending was always just like, and this is why you should always do what I tell you to do because they were trying to teach me about life through the act of storytelling, but I didn't really understand that. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And so when I heard this heard this podcast, I was like, oh my god. That's been my whole life. My whole life has been that. So I started the the act of being like, okay. What what is the thing in dance I could do with storytelling in a way that no one else is doing it?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? So I've committed myself to storytelling in this way that is abstract in nature and liberal in nature and trying to find the married place. Right? Where, like, you can follow the the arc of story or storiness. Sometimes it's a narrative show.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Sometimes it's just a sense of journey of the characters. But you always walk away being like, that's that's the thing I was supposed to take away from this. And it's a little weird because as a contemporary artist, we usually have this open like, hey, you take whatever you want. And there's still elements of that in different sections. But I'm usually saying something very, very specific about a work.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? And I just I just find that it resonates with people differently. I live in Northeast Ohio. You know, I don't live in one of the meccas of dance. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like love Cleveland, but you know, the way people talk about Cleveland, Ohio, imagine being their younger brother. Right. The city I'm from. And so when you think about dance of all art forms in Akron, Ohio, the people in your audience aren't dance aficionados. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like I always say that, like, the thing that I realized about dance, I think that made me a better dance artist is when I realized, oh, people don't care about this art form. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It made me have to think differently about how to present it.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right. I couldn't have this idea that like, well, people innately care about what I'm saying in this art form, so I can kinda do what I want to. That ain't it, homie. They really, really don't care. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like, if you try to have a show on a Sunday when the Browns are playing, no one's coming. And the Browns suck. You know what I'm saying? But, like, the qualities of life when it comes to art. So I realized very quickly because storytelling is innate to humans.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. People will test themselves to story even when dance makes them feel uncomfortable. So I've been able to get people to show up into the audiences because when I'm on a podcast talking about a show I'm doing or I'm in the news outlet talking about a show, I can talk about the story that they're coming to see and they're interested in that topic or that story. And then we do it in dance form and then people go, oh, I I guess I kinda like dance actually. And I didn't know that.
Rob Lee:Right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And it's just because you put it in the sense of story. So there's that piece. And then the community engagement part, I think that really hit me in the first kind of big piece I've ever made. So I made the show called the Black Card Project. And in round 2015, like all of a sudden our nation was talking a lot about police brutality.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Black kids were getting shot all over our country and it was like becoming national news all the time. I was traveling the country in a dance company and one night I was just like, yo, like I wanna do something. And I remember that at the same time when I was growing up being this kid who danced and played soccer and this coming from this all black community. Yeah. I was not seen as like one of the black kids.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? Like I was a warrior. I was a white boy because I wanna do all the stuff that black kids didn't do. So when I grew up and I realized that some of those same kids who kinda had this idea that if you didn't do black a certain way, you weren't black enough. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:The same kids who found themselves in trouble in prison because they like their scope of what they could be was really, really small. And then here I am traveling the country as a dancer, like wearing a unitard on stage and do my thing all the time. Right?
Rob Lee:And so
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I decided I wanted to do something. I didn't know what to do, but I knew I can make dances. So I made the show called the Black Card Project. That's about this little boy named Arty. And his mom was very concerned about his lack of awareness of his cultural identity.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So she sent him to this urban downtown school called Booker T Malcolm Luther Parks Academy of Absolute Blackness. It's good. In a single school day, he had to pass all these classes like how to dance on beat, bugging 101 and all these things in order to earn his black card. Right. So when I kind of came up with that idea, I was like, it would be interesting if I could get residencies and work with kids to see what they thought about this subject or this topic.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. Right? So I like do dance classes and do movement workshops. And we just talk about race and identity. Okay.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:How do they feel about themselves? Did they think they could be anything they wanted to? So I did that with middle school in a high school. And then my brother worked for Goodyear Rubber and Tire Company and they had an affinity group called, the Black Goodyear Network. And so I got into this fortune 500 company and did the same thing with these suits, right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Talking about self implicit bias. What does it mean to be black in corporate spaces? Do you feel black because you're working in corporate space? So we are taking all the things these people were saying and implementing that into the choreography. Wow.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then I would go back and show these people the choreography before we like did the show and get their opinions like, hey, do you like this part? What should be different? They'd be like, well, we talked about this, so I wonder if he should do this. And these aren't dance people. Right?
Rob Lee:Right. Right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:But I would frame it in such a way where they could watch it and be like, oh, you should change that because this is the thing we talked about. And I think that would look more like what we talked about. So I basically did that over the course of like 9 months and that put this show on stage. And then everybody came to the show where all these people who were involved in the making of it. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So it wasn't just me as the choreographer and the one other dancer in it. There was 50 people in the audience who were also choreographers. So this idea of kind of just like continue to build on like what does it look like to involve people in the creative process of making a show? Learning other people's stories, honoring people's stories and not being the sole person kind of like the genius artist who decides I'm the one who knows everything. I'm a make the thing.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Everybody should be down with it. But like what does it mean to be almost like a curator of stories? And storiness and putting into something that feels right for all of us. And then presenting what we came up with. So that's kinda more how I look at my work than, like, the soul, yeah, genius choreographer who just makes stuff, and everybody should be down with it.
Rob Lee:That's that's really, really good. I like the way that you explained that. Because I I think, you know, when I'm having these conversations, this is how I relate. Right? And when I'm having these conversations and folks say, oh, you're a storyteller.
Rob Lee:I was like, yeah. Sure. I was like, in this scope, I'm helping to facilitate someone sharing their story. I'm a facilitator of anything. I am a point guard.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right.
Rob Lee:I'm a very slow, not agile point guard. It's like, I'm gonna back you down from half court. Small guy. I'm gonna back you down from half court, then it's like pocket pass, you know. And but but really, it's, you know, in terms of going deeper than that, it's in the curation.
Rob Lee:It's in who I'm talking to, how I'm talking to them, and that's sort of the thing. And I've seen so many sort of baseless sort of mid mid sons, daughters, if you will. So a few copies that are floating out there, and I don't think they're getting it. They look at it on the surface level of, oh, you just talk to people.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Mhmm.
Rob Lee:It's not just that. Like, I make it a point to send over the questions beforehand, and folks kinda get a get a idea that this is the direction that I'm trying to go at, and they're able to see, like, oh, he actually takes this series. He didn't ask me. So dance. Right?
Rob Lee:That's a thing. It's like, no. What's baked into?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right. Right. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, everyone has a story.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Every single person you know on this earth has a story, and that's the brilliance of it. So you don't have to feel like you're playing God and you're building stories out of nothing. Right? Nothing's new under the sun. So my role is just to be the editor in the room, use my skills as a choreographer to edit how everything is put together, but kind of crowd sourcing the stories from the community so they can just be told in in the clearest way possible.
Rob Lee:Yeah. So I saw this one thing that came up, urban Midwest storytelling. Talk about that. Give us that that quick sort of, you know, what that is before I move into this next one.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. So I'm from Akron, Ohio, which is a Rust Belt City. Right? And if anybody knows anything about the Midwest Rust Belt Cities, we had, you know, the companies that kind of boomed us in the 20th century. They all left and we kind of look like these dilapidated cities in the Midwest.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? And then at the same time, I'm in Northeast Ohio, where the Rockefellers are originally from. And it's because they're from Cleveland. Yeah. And so what they did is they built something called the Emerald Neckra the Emerald Necklace through Northeast Ohio.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So it starts up kind of north near Cleveland comes all the way through Akron and goes back up to the other side of Cleveland. So there's this really interesting environmental dichotomy a group in of like buildings that are look the worst. Right. In the most beautiful greenery. But if you come to Akron, one of the first things you'll say, especially in the spring is, I didn't think there'd be so much greenery here.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. And it's just the most interesting thing to see all these factories that used to have life in them be lifeless next to literally some of the most we I live like 3 miles away from National Park. Right? And it's like that growing up in that is such an interesting thing. So I kind of took that environmental idea and started using it in choreography.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So in my movement, like what does it look like for there to be like a sense of hopelessness about my storytelling in the movement, but also the sense of beauty and sense of life. So there's always this kind of juxtaposition of of, you know, I'm I'm reaching this way, but I'm pulling my torso back to this way. So it's always inside the movement and the storytelling also also has that sensibility. So in the show that I'm doing now, the remember balloons, you're talking about Alzheimer's. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Something that can be so hopeless. But then I'm asking, well, where's the hope inside of this, though? So you feel that tension constantly when you're watching my work.
Rob Lee:And and thank you. And you you kind of, cued it up a little bit there. Let's let's talk about the remember balloons. You know, award winning children's book that's being adapt that you've adapted, and, and there's themes of memory loss, aging, intergenerational relationships. What was that that draw to to that that sort of subject matter?
Rob Lee:Because, you know, I I did a I did an interview in this podcast that, I had I had the fort I had the opportunity to teach this this past summer, and I was talking about being vulnerable in in the class and folks sharing their stories and so on. Right? And I referenced an interview that I did with, it was a playwright and, Tanya Everett, and we talked about sort of grief. And, you know, and having that conversation that's baked into a you know, this this, TED talk she did, you know, called the grief dance. And, definitely, I'll send you the link, but, you know, it's it's one of those things, and it was sort of an interview that I wasn't expecting to have a emotional reaction to.
Rob Lee:And in the podcast, that was the thing. So, you know, sort of that that that notion of we all get older and we all have stories. Right? We're all getting older and that notion of your story and maybe forgetting pieces of your I don't wanna I don't wanna be diving in too deep, but, you know, I I I wanna give that up to you, but it's just something that I think is a shared thing. But what drew you initially to to the story?
Rob Lee:Because I I read about you were also in, like, a library or a bookstore? So let's talk about that. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So I didn't plan this. I so I have 2 well, they're not toddlers anymore. But at the time, they're 2 and 1 years old. And we used to go me and my wife used to take them to the local library here where we live every week just to go get more books, come back, read them, go get books next week. And 1 week we had been to the play section for like 90 minutes and I was like kinda getting bored.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I was like, alright, we got to go home. I'm sick of being here. So I go to the, bookshelf and I'm like just looking through books and I come across this one shelf that says children's books about difficult topics. And if you know me, difficult topics, chef's kiss. That's where I'm at.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And so I started like flipping through these books. I'm like, oh, this is super cool. And I pull out this white book that's gray scale and has all these colorful balloons on it. And skeptically, I looked at it like, dog is balloon. How hard could this be?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So I opened it up. Now I read the story about this little boy named James who has all these memories that are inside his balloons that he holds, which was a really cool concept. I was like, oh, super dope. So I keep flipping and he loves his grandpa. Him and grandpa always tell each other stories.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:His grandpa has all these balloons. And as you keep going, I'm just reading this story and he's talking about all his favorite dog and this one time when he was young and there was this cow with all this cool stuff. And I'm like, oh, this is really cute. And then this page comes in and goes, but grandpa's been having trouble with his balloons lately. And I like
Rob Lee:all of
Dominic Moore-Dunson:a sudden, like my hands, like turning the pages slower now than it was before. And you see that, you know, him and grandpa have this shared memory that's silver where they went fishing one time. Yeah. As the story goes, grandpa starts losing more and more balloons. And all of a sudden, James is like running across the page trying to capture his balloons to bring him back to him, but he can't.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And of course, the last balloon he loses is the silver balloon. So he forgets who James is. And by this point, the tears are starting to run. Yeah. In that face.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And so you see this little boy trying to figure out, like, how do you deal with being forgotten by somebody you love? And so he's, like, trying to figure out and his parents tell him, look, look up. That's what he does. And there's more balloons than there was at the beginning of the book that he has. And he comes to realize, oh, because grandma told me grandpa told me all his stories, I'm now the holder of his balloons.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Wow. And so the very last page, my favorite point is him. He climbs up into grandpa's lap. So he's sitting in grandpa's lap, telling grandpa about his new balloons, telling him his own stories. Wow.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I am crying. Rob, I am losing it in this children's section of the library. So I handed my wife, I'm like, you have to read this right now. And I'm like looking over her shoulder as she's reading it to see if she's crying to you. And she ends up crying.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So we pack up the kids, we go home. We started having this long discussion throughout the afternoon and evening about Alzheimer's dementia. Yeah. And she goes, you know, I remember the day my grandma forgot me and never remembered who I was anymore. In full context, we're 34 and 33.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:We've been together since we were 17 18 years old. I've never heard that story before. Right. And I was like, what?
Rob Lee:And I
Dominic Moore-Dunson:was asking all these questions. And so later that night, you know, because I had toddlers, I wasn't sleeping at the time. It was like 2 AM. And I was like, I wonder if I can find the author's website. So I just looked up her website, jessielaveros dotcom.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then I just go to type to her like, hey, this story is amazing. This is what it did for my family. And at the very end, I was like, would you ever consider letting me turn this into a theater show? Send. Never thought anyone would get back to me.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Very next day, I get an email from an agent. Hey, I got like 30 minutes today at 3 o'clock to hear your ideas. We'd love to hear it. And I'm like sick. What ideas?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I had no ideas. So, you know, I read the book felt like a 100 times. I came with these ideas talked about like, oh, I'm gonna get this this music, original music by Darren Brown, jazz score, this whole thing. I'm just making things up. And I'm like telling the story.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And long story short, I did a pitch with them, did a pitch with the illustrator next week. And 5 months later, we owned the North American rights to the story all the way through 2026. So we only wanted to make the story in North America. And what what attracted me to it as someone who doesn't personally have Alzheimer's in their family lineage was the generational storytelling. Cause it goes back to that thing I was saying earlier about my life.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. My great grandma, my grandma, my mom, my older sister. Spending time telling me stories about how to survive in this world. And you had grandpa telling James all these stories and now it gets flipped. Now James is telling grandpa all these stories.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So that's the thing that just pulled at me. And I was like, there's some, I just had this feeling. I was, there's something about this story. There's something there. And I've never adapted a thing from a book before.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:This is the first time ever. But I was just like, there's something too important about this. I'm just gonna go on faith, go on a limb, and see what I can figure out. And here we are.
Rob Lee:Wow. I mean, in in hearing that piece, I was definitely curious about it of, you know, sort of the the collaboration. You know, you mentioned Darren, Brown. So talk a little bit about that collaboration there and sort of, you know, sort of the shaping. Like, you know, as you you were saying a moment ago, haven't haven't done an an adaptation in that way, you know, before.
Rob Lee:So what was that like? And maybe taking something from literally a children's book, and it's like, this is now gonna be a theater show.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. Well, first, I think it's really important to mention, like, Theron and I, both in our mid to late thirties. He has 3 kids under 6. I have 2 kids under 4. So we're kinda sort of in the same place in life, so I think that's helpful.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:We're both dads. We're both artists. So like we're just trying to figure this thing out. And he's from Akron as well. So we've known each other for years and we decided we always wanted to do something together.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And I was like, this is the thing. So when we got into the studio with the dancers, I decided upfront, we're gonna build this entire show through improvisation. The entire thing. Yeah. So he was on the p and o in the dance studio.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I had the dancers and we do all these exercises. So an exercise would be like, okay, start on this side of the other room, dancer A, I want you to act as if you're entering a memory, experience that memory and then exit the memory on the other side of the room. And then they would just start improvising that and he would improvise with them. So we did all of these experimental improvisational based exercises to just first figure out what is the relationship between dance and music in this world we're creating.
Rob Lee:Right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then also what I like to do is I often have like a whiteboard in the studio too with markers. And so as we're talking about stuff and we're experiencing things in studio, you know, we'll write questions on the board. So one of the first questions we came up with was what is the weight of memory? Mhmm. So basically, do some memories weigh more than others?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Are some memories more important to other than others or are they same? And that came just from like the physical weight dancers were feeling when they're doing some improvise exercises and the weight there was playing some weighty notes versus other ones. So those are kind of questions that were popping up and Rob, we probably came up with a 100, literally a 100 questions. Just like, what does it feel like to lose your memory? What does it feel like to lose your memory when you know you're losing it?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Because that's different. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed like you're losing your memory and you don't know what's happening. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And like, and so all that investigation brought up all the things we needed to know about these characters before we all started actually working on like scene 1.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And we probably did that for 3 months of improvising. And like when we were in the studio, these were long days. So it'd be like 5 hours of improvising to my hour 5 you running out of stuff to make up right but like hour 5 is where the good stuff comes in because you've you've like gotten rid of all the things you know how to do and all of your like kind of like the things you said in your brain like, oh, I'm gonna improvise. I know I'm good at these things. You start digging in real deep.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So all that improvising also created this marriage between the music and the dance because everything from then on was built together. As we continue starting to actually make the show, Theron played the entire score, the entire show on the piano from memory. So he just watched the dancers and just play. Right? So as dancers were making adjustments in real time, he was making adjustments in real time and remembering them.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then going and sitting down and writing what he remembered. Or we like video a lot of stuff so we could capture on video. So it was all about the act of being in improvisation, making ideas and choices on the fly, recording those things. So then all the recordings, all the questions, all the questions, all that stuff basically gets put into like a pot of soup. Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then you can decide like, okay, we need a little bit more of this than I thought. We actually need to take out some of this and I thought, and then you end up with this this suit that you actually really want because you're like, okay, we authentically came to the studio in this space with making as opposed to being like, let me write down the script of exactly every movement that's gonna happen and then do it like that. So it was really this true authentic collaboration and frankly a lot of storytelling amongst each other. I learned a lot about those dancers I didn't know. I learned a lot about Theron I didn't know.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:They learned a lot about me. Just because you when you end up working on a subject this difficult, you end up having real conversations about your life. And that influences the literal muscle fabrics the dancers use in their body. And that's what I love in
Rob Lee:it. Had I mean, that sounds like amazing. It sounds like something that is a a huge like, you you you look at the, you know, sort of before, Eddie is sort of the after. It's like, how am I changed as a artist after this experience? And, you know, this podcast was born in the improv space and in in the Baltimore Improv Group Theater.
Rob Lee:And, you know, I I'm not an improv person, you know, but I respect it. I acknowledge it. And I did another podcast for about, 10 years, and I'd have a few things, like a few notes that I'm like, okay, I want to cover this, but we're riffing. We're going off the top of the dome, you know, in this this pod and, you know, sort of those skills are baked in. And another thing that comes to mind that you're describing sort of maybe from those those 5 hours and getting to that back end.
Rob Lee:Right? That's almost in my head, and I see you get the Nike join us. I feel like you've lifted a weight in your days. It's almost like when you get to, like, alright, I'm at my top set. What do we got?
Rob Lee:What what do we have here? And you get to see, are you actually strong or you've been b s? That's it.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:That's it. Yeah. Because when you get to that point in the creative process, you actually stop relying on all the years of training. Mhmm.
Rob Lee:What you
Dominic Moore-Dunson:start relying on is the authentic conversations you've been having in the room all day. Mhmm. What you start relying on is the way your body's falling into positions. What Darren starts relying on is the the tiny melodies are starting to show up that he would usually ignore. Because it's like, I gotta go get something because I've been doing this all day.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And all of a sudden you're like, oh, this is it. That 5 second melody, that's the beginning of the the entire section of grandpa remembers. Right? That one movement. Oh my gosh.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:That is the motif that's gonna show us that grandpa is aging throughout the entire show. But it was because we got to 4 hours and 47 minutes of improvising that you get this movement that feels like he's listening something and then memories come out of his ears. Right? Like, that's how you get there. And we really utilize that process as a way to find this entire show.
Rob Lee:It's fantastic. So I had, like, one more real question. It's a multi part question, and then I got some rapid fire questions. So, you know, my understanding is as we're recording is you you guys just kicked off, you know, just, like, launched the one of the the first dates in Virginia, what have you, and this is part of a multi city tour. So, you know, I know we're fresh in, but what's that been like seeing from sort of that that that period in which you're describing, sort of the building of the preproduction, the, you know, improvisation of it all and building what this adaptation's gonna be like to sort of being in the very beginning of this this multi city tour, you know.
Rob Lee:And, also, what were some of those considerations in sort of which cities to go to, you know, where to go at during this tour? So talk a bit about that.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. So a lot of the cities, that we're going to, they actually helped in the pre production of the show. They learned about the what I wanted to do, the process I wanted to take, and they said, you know, we wanna be a part of this somehow. So whether it was just bringing me to come to the community, do some residency stuff, talk, you know, I did a lot of classes with senior citizens and students, or bringing the entire company and us going and working on the actual show in the theater. They're letting us have the theater for free.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So we can do that, paying us to be there, which is incredible. But this doesn't happen for for most artists in this way. So we were able to work on the show and even those early days, one of the things that always like got me, because I've always been really intentional about every time we're about to leave a city that's brought us in the work on the show. We're going to do a showing of some kind. Even if it's 4 minutes, 4 minutes to the whole thing.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I don't care what it is. We need to show something. And as you get these stories out of people, man, like this, this show pool stories out of people that you're like, you literally would have never told me that. I could have asked you for that specific story a 1000 times. You didn't never told me that.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:But it's because like they're watching what we're building in front of them in such like a visceral way. I'll never forget. We're in Sheridan, Wyoming, which is one of the stops that we're doing in November. And I was in this residency with, this kind of senior the senior citizen class. And we were working on this idea of like feeling comfortable being storytellers with our bodies.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And one of these women, probably 70 year old, 70 years old said, you know, this class has made me realize I'm really uncomfortable being a storyteller. And it's because I thought no one in my family ever wanted to hear my stories. And I say, we'll say more. And she goes, I'm so used to being the person taking care of everybody. I've convinced myself that no one cares about the things I have to say or what I care about and wanna share in this world.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I said, well, do you know that for sure? And she's like, no, I've assumed this entire time. And I was like, well, maybe you might be right, but also they might be waiting on for you to say something. And she and she goes, well, I don't care if they are or not. They're about to start hearing the stories now.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:But even in that, like that conversation was the reason I created this section in the show that doesn't exist in the book. There's a section in the show called invisible mom where we make the mom character a bigger character in the show. And she does this whole solo about her feelings of being the sandwich generation between James and her grandpa being the caregiver of both. But her feeling that no one takes care of her. And it's like the emotionally the most difficult section in the show.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And but like those type of stories just keep coming out. We're in Des Moines, Iowa and had someone working with us, the videographer who was kind of just talking to us about what we were doing and he interviewed me in there and at the end of it this very large like 6 foot 5 man was bawling, talking to us about his mom who has Alzheimer's. And he was saying that him and his brother had been fighting for a while now about whether to tell her she has it or not. And he decided after watching the show over the last couple of days, he's gonna call his brother after he leaves and he's gonna say, we're telling her. And now I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer to that.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:It's the fact that like this person took action as a result of seeing this work. Right? And that's that's all we can really ask for at the end of the day is like that people don't feel like they're in this weird limbo with this conversation that's so difficult. What do I do with my grandparents? Do I talk to them?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Do I not talk to them? It's about allowing them to have agency to make a decision. And the thing I've told the dancers a 100 times is if we go through all this stuff and it's one person, one person who decides I'm gonna stop ignoring this And I'm going to push forward in some way, shape or form with my family. We're gonna talk about what's going on. We're gonna make sure grandma has what she needs, whether that means us every day or us not at all, but we're gonna do something.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So we're taking care of our of our people and we're taking care of the stories that they hold. We've won. So we've got it. And so, yeah, the stories are amazing. Even like from the show, one of the things that I think is really taking me back is how young people in the audience is sitting next to their parents.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And after the show, we always do, like, a 15 minute q and a. Then these young people, they raise their hand up strong and ask these very, very pointed questions. Right?
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Why was mom so upset? Why do you think? Well, it seemed like she was frustrated because she can't help grandpa. And they're sitting next to their parent and the parents like, what? Right?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like, because as adults, we don't think kids understand what's happening in the world around them. And they do a lot more than we think. Right? Because they're willing to just experience life and let kind of the interpretation come to them about life. Whereas adults are always trying to intellectualize and dissect everything for without it touching us in our heart.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? So like watching kids do that next to their parents, it's just like it warms my heart because I'm like, they're about to go have a real conversation in the car when they leave. Mhmm. That's what we want. We want people to leave and have actual conversations they would never have otherwise.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And then maybe hopefully get to the point where they understand that, you know, I need to start sharing my stories with my kids. Where I need to get more of the stories out of my parents and make sure I collect them somehow. So people's stories live on
Rob Lee:and on and on. Yeah. You know, I'll share this one thing, you know, that that relates to, but in sort of sort of my lane that, so I remember growing up. This is so ridiculous and off center, but I remember growing up and my dad who he'll be 70 this year. And, you know, just you hear you hear certain stories, you hear, like, the same stories, and then it's like, alright.
Rob Lee:You're not really sharing that story or kinda less details with this one. And I I remember, and and that's one of my fears too, also just being a person that's kind of a, I guess, a heady intellectual person and kind of having those lapses and those slips myself at times. You know, that's that's a thing of, you know, anxiety. Right? And I I remember I had this opportunity.
Rob Lee:My dad's, like, you know, ex marine and all of that stuff. So we're in the studio, in my studio, and I I do a movie review podcast that I haven't touched on in a while, but I had him come on and do a movie review with me. And it was an old John Claude Van Damme movie. Wow. It was double impact.
Rob Lee:Double the Van Damme. And we're sitting there. He was so shy, and talking about it. I was like, alright. But then just him just he he he was lit up in that he remembered us being kids watching this movie with him and that being part of, like, you know, me and my brother being part of our our our childhood and watching these going to blockbusters every Friday night.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:That's right.
Rob Lee:They get these VHS joints. What out? What we got? Oh, Steven Seagal got a new one? Yeah.
Rob Lee:I'm a get that. Yeah, man. And then being able to maybe revisit that. And then the other the kicker of it is having it as a recording. So it's just like, yeah, you know, he didn't talk much during the day, you know, but it is one of those things of him listening to me recall sort of what my experience was, you know, kind of experiencing that with him and just like, oh, oh, okay.
Rob Lee:Cool. Yeah. Yeah. You did enjoy that. You did appreciate that.
Rob Lee:It was I don't know. It was just a really cool thing, and it comes from just doing a podcast and capturing the story. That was the other thing about it. Like, there's a recording of this conversation about this movie that came out 30 years ago. Yeah.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And it and it's we underestimate the power of I I think even like this idea of artists being storytellers, like storytelling has become like such a buzzword, like storytelling. It's this thing that only a select few of us actually know how to do. Right. But it's like literally every one of us does it every day. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? Like some of us frame it in a different way, which is why like we get paid to do it, but we all do it. But we underestimate the importance of everyday storytelling. Right? Oh, there they go talking about that story again.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? But so I'll tell you one that I I do have this process because I decided like I need to hear from my grandma more. Right? My grandma is a younger grandma now. I was born.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:She was 46 years old. I grew up with my grandma. Right. So she's, you know, 81 or 82 down. And so I was asking these questions.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:She's from Kent, Ohio, and she was like one of 3 black families in Kent, Right? In in the mid 20th century. And she was born in 40, 42. And she's telling me this story about like, yeah, we used to go to church. She's like, and we used to throw peanuts at like all the people, you know, on the ground.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And I was like, well, grandma, how come y'all always sat up at the top? And she was like, well, we weren't allowed we weren't allowed to go on the bottom. I was like, because of segregation? What? Like but it was just like, but you're her.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:It's just a story about how we were kids and we used to throw peanuts at all the white people on the ground. Right? Yeah. And and it was like, in the context of history, you're like, what are you talking about? But she has never ever told me a story about living through segregation.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right. Plainly. It just comes down this way. And then she tells me this story when she's 18 or 19. She's working at this corner store.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And she said like, I was working at the corner store and all of a sudden all these people came down the street. They were busting in the windows of the corner store, all this stuff. I ran upstairs. I locked the door. Like hit up there all night and she was like, Kent was like on fire.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I was like, well, grandma, like when was this around? That's something like the 1960s that I was like, you mean when Martin Luther King died? Right. But she would have never said, I remember the time Martin Luther King died. Then there was a right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:It can it just comes out and it's kind of free flowing, like, way. And you're just like, your life has been time stamped by such important parts of our history, especially as black people. Yeah. You don't view it that way. And if I don't hear your stories and then compare it to the time, I'm not gonna know that balloon.
Rob Lee:Right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Now I'm not gonna be able to pass that balloon to my children who, you know, I'm 1 generation away from segregation. Right? My kids are, you know, 2 or whatever it is, but I'm able to take this balloon and go, you know, grand grand.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:She grew up like this and to see importance of of that. So that, like, things like American history just don't sound like things in a history book. But they have people that they love and they love growing up when they're kids who are part of history.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And that part's really important to me. Like, you know, the book's about Alzheimer's. It's about dementia. It's about generational storytelling. But there's a much bigger meta conversation about the telling of history through people.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right. And that's the thing that I think I'm so passionate about is get people's stories, get their balloons, and then figure out what was going in the world at the same time. Because that's how we're gonna tell the story of our country and the story of our people. And we have to stay connected to that. We can't let it go.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:And it's really hard during the age of technology where it feels like everything's on a screen. But the importance of hearing people's stories and hearing them over and over and over again so much that you can tell it correctly
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Is super important. And that's why, like, as the show's developed, I keep getting more passionate about. We gotta figure out ways to do this. We gotta figure out ways to tell our story of the remember balloons to help people get inspired to capture other people's stories.
Rob Lee:It's really, really, really important and, you know, that's one of the intent in doing this as I, you know, shared, you know, earlier that, you know, I recently released my 800th episode, and it's it's one of those things where getting the feedback from folks of, like, this is a living archive. This is sort of this moment in time of this place, these people, and what they're doing. And sort of some of my intentions, you know, really embracing that are, alright, let's go back into earlier in that archive and see where people are at now and kind of do that sort of follow-up where you at in your work now. And almost like no one's an animal. I'll just say that, but it's almost like you tag an animal.
Rob Lee:It's like, alright, what bomb that? Yeah. But but but the capturing those stories is so important. And it's the last thing I'll say before I move into these rapid fire questions is, I I think it's it's really important to be able to capture those stories. And, you know, as you were you were saying, have having people do them because often, you know, we have these conversations where, it's in the best interest of certain folks to maybe glaze over parts of history and not talk about parts of history.
Rob Lee:And I have pretty good memory, and I I and, like, we we get weird when it's stuff from, like, 5 years ago. I was like I was like, what was this person trash? Right. You're right. Oh, they're back?
Rob Lee:Okay. Cool. We forgot all about that. Alright. K.
Rob Lee:Cool. Cool. And, you know, and and because I'm a data analyst in my day job, when there's a number attached, woo hoo. So, you know, it it it's that for me, and I I see that that sort of stuff happening. And as we have these grandparents, these parents, and so on, as they're getting maybe further away from that time stamp moment, you know, it's important to really get that that story, get that memory, capture that balloon if you will, and hold on to it because it's in someone else's best interest not to put history in books, not to have history documented because I want it warts and all.
Rob Lee:I want the full things. I know what's good. Yeah. You know, we we do this rebranding. We we do the shifting.
Rob Lee:We you know, it's a whole lot of different things that you were touching on that are baked into sort of capturing a real story and how it's delivered and how it's, sort of recorded. Mhmm. Hey, guys. Rob Lee here chiming in the middle of the podcast, and we'll be right back to that in a moment. But I wanted to remind you that if you're following me on Instagram, and I hope you are the Truth in This Art, make sure that you explore the links, the link in bio.
Rob Lee:I know that people always talk about follow me, link in bio, and all of that, but there's some valuable stuff in there such as a survey for my newsletter. You've probably received the newsletter, and if not, definitely sign up for it. There's some interesting stuff there. We have profiles of certain guests. We have sort of, you know, curated episodes because we're we're we're around 800 right now, And, it's a lot to go through, and all of them won't be available on every platform all the time.
Rob Lee:So being able to revisit and go back there, to check out those episodes is important. So definitely check out the survey. Let us know what you think of the newsletter and what you would like to have included in there, and, continue to make this podcast, yours as as well as mine's. And, yeah, back to the podcast, Rapid Fire. Now I got that out of the way.
Rob Lee:I got I'm gonna step off my soapbox. I got a couple rapid fire questions because here here's the thing. You know, this is how Noah conversation's gone well when I've added multiple rapid fire questions. Okay. Alright.
Rob Lee:Alright. Alright. So, you know, as I tell people all the time, don't overthink these. You know, I said what I said. I sorted the answers we're we're looking for here.
Rob Lee:Alright. Here's the first one. I think there's a a closeness and a and a sort of perceptional what folks might call you. Right? Like, the diminutive of your name.
Rob Lee:So, like, there are some people that call me Rob. People in a professional setting is just like, alright, Robert. No one called me Bobby. I'm like, yeah. You you you gotta take that out.
Rob Lee:What do they call you? Are you are you Dom? Are you Nick? Are you are you always Dominic? What what is it?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:So most people call me Dom. I'll say that started when I was playing soccer. It was the first time people started calling me Dom, and I was like 12 ish years old, and they kinda always stuck. There was a 10 year period when I was in the company, people called me Domi.
Rob Lee:Okay. Alright. I I like it. I like it. I I yeah.
Rob Lee:I like it because, yeah. Because I I I've been studying Japanese, like, the last 400 or so days, And, I like the Japanese version of my name, Roberto. I was like, yeah. Yeah. Just
Dominic Moore-Dunson:tell me.
Rob Lee:Put it out there.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I I will say about my name, though, and this kind of drives me crazy, is that if you think about the line across America under under Tennessee, as soon as I pass that line, everyone calls me Dominique.
Rob Lee:Oh, there's no clue.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:It's crazy. It's crazy. They will look at my name and say Dominique. And as soon as I come back North, people say it right again. It's the wildest thing.
Rob Lee:I went to Morgan State University. I had a teacher. And again, 64, you know, tall dude or what have you, and and bigger guy. And I I remember my teacher would say, so Roberts with an s. I'm like, yeah.
Rob Lee:I'm not 2 people. What? What's up? What are we doing?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:What's up?
Rob Lee:Okay. Here's the next one. Obviously, you know, you you were describing, you know, sort of some of the, like, the movement getting warmed up and things of that nature. I would imagine it's a very physically taxing sort of pursuit. Right?
Rob Lee:Do you have a favorite activity, physical activity that, like, keeps you limber? Are you a big stretcher? Are you are you hitting the gym regularly, you know, with the weights? What what does that look like for you? So this
Dominic Moore-Dunson:is a funny thing. So I grew up dancing, grew up playing soccer. Outside of, like, having to do, like, my, quote, unquote, job stuff, I'd never wanna do anything else. Because I'm in so much pain from doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing. But, you know, one of the things I actually loved the most, I did it for a while, was hot yoga.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Because it gets your muscles really warm. And that's someone who's flexible, but I'm like a tighter, flexible person.
Rob Lee:It
Dominic Moore-Dunson:would get my muscles really loose so I could like really, really stress like deeply in my muscles, I'd be sore as all hell afterwards. But it was always like great to like really like get a little too hot, like really move your stuff because in a couple of days later when you're less sore, your body was like more limber, more able to do more stuff, which for someone who's like just a little bit tighter as a dancer, it was super helpful.
Rob Lee:I'm a very tight individual. I've been doing the gym 5 5 to 6 days a week for like the last year and change and definitely it was just power lifting initially. Now it's just sort of full body, more of a bodybuilding approach to try to sculpt and recomp. And I remember one of the things I was talking to with the the trainers, it was just like just get your hips right. It's just always get your hip right.
Rob Lee:And he was like, your hips are very stiff, and I run every morning now. Oh. My knees are terrible, and he was just like, do a lot of this. He's like, you just gotta, you know, get a lot. He's like, you're stiff.
Rob Lee:He's like, just keep that in mind. He's like, and it's cold. So I keep all of that in mind. And I was like, alright. Cool.
Rob Lee:Cool. Cool. So, definitely, I'm hearing that. My memory is is working. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I have
Rob Lee:to make sure I'm not, stiffened and sore and just I I see the flexibility, especially in the hips. So definitely, you've spent a lot more time just, you know, bodyweight squats and things of that nature really to get in there deep. And I I feel it. I feel the gait improving and all of that good stuff.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Mhmm. Yeah. In dance, we also talk about, like, the pelvis is the center of the human body. Yeah. But, like, in day to day life, when you say to somebody, like, what's the center of your body?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:They're gonna say, like, their chest. Right? How most people feel. But, like, because the the pelvis is sets of hinges. Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Right? As well, like it's so important that that thing is mobile and it actually like if you think about working the pelvis and then like moving throughout to your body like okay, make sure my pelvis right, my core is right, and then work on the limbs. You also get, like, a, your body's gonna be able to do stuff for much longer in your life too.
Rob Lee:That's a good point. Longevity. Yep. So this this now now we delve into more of the pop culture in these last two questions. This is this is this is a go.
Rob Lee:I like movies. What is a dance movie in your opinion that gets it right? You know, however you deem that, like, from your perspectives, like, you know, like my my partner, she she did dance for a while. One of her favorite movies is Black Swan, and she was like, yo, these toes. Right?
Rob Lee:I was like, what do you mean? Because I'd never seen it. I was like, oh, those toes.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Those toes. Yeah. The movie Tap from Lee Lee's early nineties was my literal favorite movie growing up. It's made me wanna be a professional tap dancer because you have all these tap legends.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like in the one scene where they're all like challenging each other. Right? And it's like 8 minutes of the best tap dancing you've ever seen in your life by these men who are like in their sixties now. It's like the movie that you're like, this is everything a dance movie needs to be. Right.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:It's the greatest thing. I will say one of the things that makes you laugh though, because I saw this online the other day. Someone was talking about how, like, in the early 2000, there was a time when, like, we had a bunch of dance moves coming out. You guys served honey, like all these dance movies coming out and like they felt so raw at the time. And then you look back,
Rob Lee:they're taking to the streets. I get to the streets.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:The beginning of you guys start breathing, breathe out, you're, like, pumping the chest, and you thought that was so raw when you were in the street. Bro, you had the long white t shirt on too. You had the headband like a marion. You're real. Everything.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:You watch it now and you're like, oh. Oh.
Rob Lee:I mean, what is it? What is it? What what is step up, you know? Oh, yeah. It it was in Baltimore.
Rob Lee:And we do that scene check on, like, that ain't how Hampton is.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Mm-mm. It's
Rob Lee:like, alright. Sure. Oh, lord. Now it's one thing I'm gonna end up having to watch, and it you you you mentioned Taz, you definitely looked this movie up as a Gregory Hines joint from 85.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yep. White Nights? White Nights. One of the best dance scenes ever,
Rob Lee:dog. Man,
Dominic Moore-Dunson:him and Mikhail Bryshnikov dancing together. Jeez. It's so good. It's that, the scene where he bets him he can't do 11 pure wits.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Rips off them pure butts 11 in a row. You're like, holy crap.
Rob Lee:Alright. This is the last one. This is the last one I got for you. You'd mentioned a couple of times. I heard you.
Rob Lee:I heard you. You said it. Favorite Disney show? Good.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Okay. My Disney my probably favorite Disney movie and it's because at the time it was like to me the only like black Disney movie was the goofy movie.
Rob Lee:You get it. You get it.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like, in my head, I was like, these are all black characters.
Rob Lee:All of
Dominic Moore-Dunson:them are.
Rob Lee:Kevin Campbell was. Yeah. Right. Like, I was like, when I was a kid, I was like,
Dominic Moore-Dunson:oh, this is my favorite movie by far. Look at him.
Rob Lee:You're the eye to eye?
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Eye to eye. That's all that's all I needed. That's the end. I was like, this is MC Hammer. This is everything I wanna be.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Like, this this movie is representation for me.
Rob Lee:Perfect cast.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. That is that right there. I was like, they went way too hard on eye to eye. Like, this was an R and B single that should have been out of Bob in the club.
Rob Lee:Martha wash pops up and like, yo, this is what we're doing. You're right. We're weird.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:That's what we're doing
Rob Lee:right now? With goofy? Yeah.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:I mean, I was I was my movie, man. I this was like, if I was a character, I wanted to be Max when I grew up. That is always my favorite.
Rob Lee:The the last thing I'll say in that vein and and before I before I end with this, to sort of close out here, there there is this running bid I'm trying to get out there in the universe. I'm gonna say it in this podcast. I feel like the majority of, like, Disney cartoons, their themes in the nineties were blackity black. And then when that dipped, the quality dipped. Quality dipped.
Rob Lee:You so right. You so right. Oh. Yep. That's just a playlist.
Rob Lee:It's like, yo, hit the dark wing duck.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yet, look, dark me up, dark wing duck way. It's like when they had all of us on the intro songs to every show, we were doing alright. Yes. They stopped doing intros. They left us alone.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Now look at you.
Rob Lee:Yeah. Done. Useless. No pirouettes. Right.
Rob Lee:Right. So, you know, with that, I wanna do 2 things. I wanna close out here. 1, I wanna thank you for coming on and spending some time with me. We did just over an hour.
Rob Lee:It's been just just great to chat. And, and 2, I wanna invite and encourage you to share with the listeners, show the shameless plug portion, details. You know, this will be a November release. So, you know, give folks, you know, who are listening. We got listeners all over the place, you know, some of the details, where the tour's at, social media website, all of that good stuff.
Rob Lee:Floor is yours.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:Yeah. Yeah. So, the remember balloons is coming across country to 8 cities. We'll be for everyone for Sheridan, Wyoming, University Park, Illinois. We'll be in Des Moines, Iowa, Knoxville, Tennessee, and some other places.
Dominic Moore-Dunson:You can find all that stuff out at remember balloons live on Instagram and Facebook. Also, you can follow me, Dominic Moore Dunson at d more done on Instagram or just Dominic Moore Dunson on Facebook. Yeah. And if you want to have a taste of what we got going on in the show, you can actually find the original soundtrack to the show on all music platforms. It's just the remember balloons by Theron Brown.
Rob Lee:And there you have it, folks. I wanna again thank Dominic Moore Dunson for coming on to the podcast and sharing a bit of his story with us. And for Dominic Moore Dunson, I am Rob Lee saying that there's art, culture, and community in and around your neck of the woods. You've just got to look for it.
