"Dance is empowering. It helps us release our emotions and sets us free."

How did you start dancing?

Growing up, both my parents were musicians. I didn’t play any instruments, but I needed a way to interact with the music and dancing came naturally to me.

What prompted the transition from dancing in your living room to becoming a professional?

I was accepted into a dance academy in Florence, studying ballet, and graduated while I was still attending high school. As I grew older, I found myself detaching more and more from ballet. When I was 19, I thought I was through with dancing; I wanted to study medicine instead. When my ballet teacher heard, he decided to send out tapes of my solo performances to contemporary dance schools around the world. I was accepted into a few of them and ended up going to the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds, En...