Like many families, the global pandemic has brought the Crim family together.
In their Madison-area home, Dawn and Elton have spent the past few months with their daughter Danielle, who recently graduated from high school, and their son John, who returned after training for two years with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet in San Francisco.
But unlike most families, the Crim kids have taken advantage of this time together and responded to the call for social justice by creating a powerful work of art.
Danielle and John collaborated to create STOP, a video for which she wrote, sang and produced music and he choreographed and danced. Barefoot and wearing a simple black T-shirt and shorts, John moves through a vast green park to Danielle singing “What’d you think was gonna happen when we couldn’t breathe for long enough?” and “Need this to stop.”
It’s a beautiful, strong and haunting work that the two created in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement — and it came together quickly and naturally.
The siblings had long talked about collaborating, and both felt the pull to respond and contribute to the moment.
“Being in a pandemic, being in a racial pandemic — my art has responded,” John says. “It was truly on both of our minds and lingering in the air.”
“I started making a song,” Danielle says. “At three in the morning, I went into his room and said, ‘John, can you dance to this? Let’s make a video!’”
FINDING THEIR PATHS
The response to STOP has been positive and supportive, Danielle and John say, and working together on it proved to be a silver lining of this unusual and challenging time.
“He’s always been out and about scattered about the country,” Danielle says of her brother. “One of the pros of this pandemic is he’s home, I’m home and we have this time.”
Prior to this point, the two have pursued their art independently.
John has been “dancing since he could walk,” his mother says, and his talent and drive led him to train with Madison Ballet, Kanopy Dance and the Monona Academy of Dance locally and Alvin Ailey in New York — and win awards for his skills in ballet, jazz, hip-hop and tap — before attending the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.
“I was on my own and I really got to explore realms of movement and dance and step into my own vibrations,” he says.
On the heels of his time at Alonzo King, John was going to teach and work on some projects this summer, before the pandemic altered his plans. But he’s taking the changes in stride.
“I’m a dancer,” he says. “I’m flexible.”
Danielle also began her path to art early on.
“I started the piano at age seven and immediately fell in love,” she says.
In fourth grade, she started writing her own songs, filling notebooks with “very bad” lyrics. Soon after, she picked up the violin, the guitar and the ukulele. But getting a laptop was a real game-changer.
“I began producing music,” she says. “I felt like I could do anything I wanted.”
Through songwriting, Danielle discovered a way to express herself, one that grew as she found new things she wanted to talk about. But for years, she kept her words private.
“The first time I ever shared my music, I was in eighth grade and it was terrifying!” she says. “Only my brother knew I was writing.”
But once she made her talent public, she began performing on stages and garnering a slew of awards, including winning Overture Center’s Rising Stars competition, being named the Madison Area Music Awards’ student of the year and earning a silver medal in music composition for a national NAACP competition.
Danielle just released her own album, Exploration of Life. And in the fall, she will head to Columbia College Chicago, where she will study music.
John hopes to move to New York City in the fall “and really jump into the contemporary dance realm that is New York. The energy is so lively and vibrant.”
FOLLOWING THEIR PASSIONS
Both John and Danielle say they couldn’t have discovered their passions and pursued them to such success without the support of their parents.
Dawn and Elton not only drove them to lessons and showed up at recitals, but helped them identify their gifts and work hard toward goals.
Elton, whom Danielle calls a “music fanatic,” has provided both equipment and great advice for his daughter, and performed with his son in the Nutcracker.
And Dawn, who played basketball in college and professionally before moving to Madison to join the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball coaching staff, understands what it’s like to chase a dream. And she knows firsthand the power of having parents who didn’t push her into a specific pursuit, but rather encouraged what she loved.
“What I realized was my sports background was not because of my parents but because it was my passion,” she says. “It was ingrained in me that my parents let me follow my passion.”
Dawn says she and Elton made a commitment to help their kids discover what they love and support them in excelling at it. They are proud of what Danielle and John have accomplished already, and how they’ve turned a challenging times into an opportunity to create, express and inspire.
“I marvel at the two of them,” Dawn says. “This is their moment.”
Katie Vaughn is the editor and co-founder of Northerly. She is a University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University-trained journalist with experience as a writer, reporter, editor, blogger and author. She lives in Madison with her husband, daughter and son, and is always up for an adventure.