THE LOVE DANCE: An Interview With Dancer, Choreographer & Web Series Girl Guerdley Cajus

From the editor: If you know me, you know I love love love to dance. All my poetics go out the window and I become a sweaty, grindy mess.  Actually, fuck it. That is poetry. This is why I wanted to interview Guerdley–she is one beast of a dancer, a powerhouse of a woman and a thinker. I hate the term je nais se quoi, but she has it. Duende. Having been involved in communications, web series hosting and choreography, she is someone to watch for.

You’re into everything; webcasts, journalism, dancing and choreography. There’s even a documentary coming out. Who IS Guerdley Cajus?

Guerdley, being a complete and total babe and badass. She’s in blue.

To put a 20-something year old story in a nutshell, I’m a chick on a life mission of full expression. Ever since I was a mini-Guerd with braces and Spice Girl sneakers, like many people I’ve been entertaining the idea that everyone has a simple and specific message to share with the world. A message that is a specific and unique as our fingerprints. Our mission is to figure out what that is, and influence the world with it. If we don’t, we rob humanity of its full potential… (Yeah, arguably one of the most emo kids in elementary school history, I know! Lol!)

So back to that nutshell! I’m living, learning, and communicating in every tongue that comes natural to me: body language, public speaking, hosting and writing, until I realize my full message, whatever the hell it is. *Shrug*

You worked on WWMD. That fascinates me! What inspires you ladies to start that show.

The question What Would A Man Do? started off back in college as in inside joke between my co-hosts and kick ass besties, Chazeen and Tracy. Every time we’d bring a neurotic dating question into the ladies room, we’d slap a chick with the motto. Por ejemplo:

Q: I want to call this guy but I don’t want to show too much interest. What should I do?
A: I dunno, WWMD?

Q: Should I sleep with this guy, he’s hot but I don’t want him to think I’m easy?
A: I dunno, WWMD?

Q: I’m sick and tired of this kid, I want to curse him out but I don’t want to look like a Bitch… What do you think?
A: I dunno, WWMD?

In every one of those scenarios a man would do whatever his ambition told him to do. Some women, most women have a hard time acting on their ambitions when it comes to dating. We get overwhelmed with empathy and reservation. Which aren’t bad things, but there’s a lot to be learned from men in that regard.

After college, the idea kind of snowballed and we really started to get curious about what a man would do and think in a number of circumstances. Chazeen put the idea in a web show format and ever since then we’ve been hosting it, and asking guys some incredibly uncomfortable questions all for the sake of female curiosity lol! Good times a’rolling!

What’s the biggest gender misconception you’ve encountered?

Since I’ve been writing and interviewing men for WWMD I’ve learned that dudes are hella sensitive! Way more sensitive than we women give them credit for. Women naturally assume that men are the more durable gender. Which may be the case a lot of times physically, but not the case emotionally.

So many men covet their feelings causing women to believe that maybe they’re not there. But the truth is that men conceal their emotions a lot of the times because they can’t deal with them.

A woman’s greatest strength is her emotional endurance, which is why we can withstand so many broken hearts and still live to love again. Most men, never truly love the same after their first heartbreak. Which is a totally bummer for the future woman in his life who will have to wonder why the man she’ll give anything to won’t fully reciprocate… So yes, chest hair aside, men are in many ways delicate little babies that we women must handle with care –as long as he’s not a jerk!

You started choreographing your own dances for music videos and other productions. You’re an incredible dancer. Very sexy, strong and unique. What I inspired you?

First off, thanks! Secondly, I’m pretty inspired by how much dialogue the human body is capable of having and concealing when it comes to convos about love. That’s why I named my portfolio #TheLoveDance because there’s always a love story behind these projects –-either subjectively or objectively. “Van Vogue” is a quirky dance story about lust at first sight.

“Thinking Of Forever” is a short dance film about using passion to fill in the void the Boston Bombings left behind. And “Watch N’ Learn” was a labor of love story — all of the dancers that performed quit dancing years prior, and all came back together to make that concept video happen, just to name a few.

How do you see the dance world and its relation to women? So much dance is seen as vulgar or shameful–how do you deal with that?

I don’t deal with it. I refuse to. There’s art. And there’s entertainment. They may have striking similarities but both serve two completely different functions in the world. One was meant to advance society and the other was meant to pacify it, both necessary functions depending on how you see the glass. When I look at dance, before I even regard it as dance I classify it as entertainment or art, which keeps me pretty sane.

We have to ask: As a dancer, what are your thoughts on Miley Cyrus? How’d you feel about people shaming her after her “dance” performance?

Miley Cyrus reminds me of my freshman year of high school. I dated a bunch of trashy dudes, went out and bought any Godforsaken fashion trend that was popular, and listened to the same horrible music everyone else was in to, I used to pretend to be bad ass –all in hopes that somehow I’d stand out by fitting it. It’s a pretty juvenile way to look at the world, but I graduated from it. I’m sure Miley will too.

What are you working on right? What can people expect of you on the future?

A whole bunch of fun shit! A lot of dance and artistic productions pieces which I’ll be tossing out on my blog TheLoveDance so subscribe to check to them out! I’ve also been helping to build a global stage for dancers called RespectMyStep, which is going growing pretty quickly with much more to come, so be on the look out!

And of course, my ladies and I are working on new webisodes of What Would A Man Do? and we’ve elevated to a new level of audacity with our male interviews, so that’s going to be a whole lot of fun as well. So what should people expect from me? More. Way more.