Trevor Mazzei, eighth-semester psychology major from Long Island, NY.
Tell me about your favorite memory from the UConn Dance Company.
“I think that one of the most influential memories on the company was… it was my freshman year, it was fall. I was going through a little bit of a rough time during that whole year — probably two years to be honest. I signed up to choreograph for the company at co-time, and obviously the room looked way different than it does now, it was a lot of different people, but a lot of my friends from last year who graduated were in that class. I taught the combo, and everyone just seemed to love it. And for me, it helped me find a lot of value in life that I hadn’t felt for a while. It made me feel rejuvenated and I felt happy. I was like ‘woah this is a place I can belong.’ Which, at that time in my life, I hadn’t really felt that in a while. It was very influential. I’d say that was probably one of the main moments that made me feel at home on our company, and with the people that I made friends with in the next four years.”
Can you describe your mental healing process through dance a little more?
“Well, obviously after the pandemic, you know [in] 2020, I ended up doing online school. I was in biomedical engineering. At that time, UConn wasn’t doing in-state residence, so I ended up in fall of 2020 just doing online school. I did not do too well, I actually kind of fell under pressure by the time we had to reschedule our spring schedules. I didn’t really finish the semester. I ended up taking a semester off, and I worked full time. Then I came to UConn with everyone, still in biomedical engineering living on campus. And throughout that year — it’s the same fall of when I taught the combo and all that stuff — when I met everybody for the first time. I was still not happy. A lot of what I thought [was] contributed to the pandemic…clearly wasn’t, it was other choices I had made. My mom actually told me ‘You know if you’re really unhappy, you should not do it anymore,’ and I looked at her and I was like ‘You know that’s a good idea right there.’
“I love psychology. I guess that’s part of personal experience too, and I think it’s a very necessary field and something that people need to need right now especially. From fall 2021 to spring 2022 I was in biomedical engineering, and I switched to psych, and I’ve been loving that ever since. As far as dance is concerned, at that same time period … I started choreographing ‘The Corner’ which was the first piece I did at UConn in the spring. It was the first time that my whole friend group was choreographing too, so it was a big moment, we were so excited for the semester.
“It was a random weekend my friend Aidan from home — he doesn’t go to college, he actually dances full time, he’s trying to do the whole thing — and he was like ‘Hey, do you want to do this convention from this choreographer, Theresa Stone,’ who is pretty big in New York right now. She’s very busy and I’ve kind of trained under her a lot, so a lot of what I teach now is what she has done. So, she did this weekend convention called AB Train, and the curriculum is basically centered around reshaping how you think about not only dance but also yourself as a dancer and your confidence, and I went and it was a life-changing experience. I kid you not, there’s like 70 of us in this big room in Jersey, and I cannot believe I decided to go on this weekend because I think if this weekend never happened, I don’t think I would have found my place. But this one class, she had us line up all the way down the room in and she had us step forwards and repeat ‘I am’ and then you had to say a word. So literally, people are saying ‘I am anxious,’ ‘I am human,’ ‘I am sad,’ ‘I am happy,’ anything. I honestly forget what I said, or it might have been a phrase. I think it could have been like ‘I’m fighting’ and you could be like ‘I’m fighting depression’ or anxiety. It was very open room, very intimate setting I guess you could say, and we just [improvised] for like 20 seconds, and then we’d come back in the line and then the next person would go. So we all got to watch each other scared out of our minds just say something so vulnerable, or not, and then just move based on what we said, like to portray it. It was such a weird thing for me to see in dance, and it kind of made me fall in love with dance again. Because when I got out of my studio in 2020 when I graduated, in my head I always wanted to keep it in my life, but I didn’t want to, you know four years later, I teach kids. I taught kids this past summer — the past three summers — and now it’s getting to the point where I’m kind of getting consistent work at home, and I’m getting compliments from parents and I can tell I’m making an impact on people with this newer approach, this less toxic dance kind of environment, and it’s really, really cool. So, I think that weekend, had I not gone with my friend Aidan because we both kind of went through it together, we both left that place looking at each other like ‘bro we’re healed.’
“I was doing like nine hours of therapy a week at a place down the road from campus, and basically after that, I went back and even the therapist was like ‘you look different,’ ‘you seem different,’ and I was like ‘I feel different.’ And she said something so wack, but it made so much sense, what she said she was, ‘It seems like your mind and body realigned.’ That was what she said to me. And ‘I said oh my God, that’s excatly what happened.’ I think that was the switch, and then from there it was an uphill. You know, every day I had to work, and I think not one year not two years, but I could say now, the way I’m living my life now, so much more happy, positive. It’s crazy the difference that I see in myself from the last four years. I think that’s kind of how dance influenced it, and I guess as I’ve improved in my dancing and my teaching and my passion for that and other parts of my life, my mental health has improved as well.”
Would the person that you were four years ago expect the person that you are now?
He’d probably expect me to be in the same place I was in. I had no intentions on getting better for a long time. I was very okay with walking around saying ‘hey I’m depressed, this is what I fight with, [these are] my unhealthy coping methods, all the above.’ I didn’t really have intentions on getting over that. And after that convention, it still wasn’t just straight uphill, it was ups and downs and everything in between. Even though I got back, I still had to finish out the semester, which when you’re in the same environment, it’s hard to make those changes right away. But then I lived off campus, and even then was not living the healthiest way I would have loved to be improving on myself. That was when I made ‘False confidence,’ that whole year. And then even last year, I feel like it was just another step up, just improving the way I live on a daily basis. Then January came, and this sounds so stupid, but I started working out and that just improved my mental health a lot too I’m not going to lie. So now I’m living, I’m eating the right foods, I’m doing the right things, I’m not just sleeping all day. I don’t think that depressed Trevor back four years ago would have been… I think he would have been very very surprised to see where I am now. I think he would have been proud, but I don’t think at the time he would have like expected me to make as much progress as I have.