3 Questions

Hannah Rapp is a 28-year-old Kentuckian who manages the Love Yourself Café at the DeVargas Center and, in her free time, she enjoys dancing as a form of self-expression. Along with local nonprofit An Ascension Space, Rapp presents the Galactic Goddess Cabaret at Paradiso Santa Fe (7 pm Friday March 16. $15. 903 Early St.). This is Rapp's inaugural cabaret performance wherein she plays as Venus and the Cacao Mother alongside seven other women. The event features an array of performances as well, including aerial dancing, storytelling, spoken-word and bellydancing, just to name a few.

How long have you been a dancer, and how has that evolved through the years?
I started when I was really young, and I did performances when I was little; but I'm 28 now, so I haven't performed since then. It's more just been like self-care, therapeutic and an alternative expression for me—and exercise as well. It's a way to get community, a way of understanding my internal progress and process as well as how to relate to other people in that process. And it's just playful. Part of my work is wanting to bring playfulness and remind people of their playfulness and their childlike essence into everyday life.

What should people understand from cabaret?
Well, when anyone has heard the term 'cabaret,' at least for me, it's culturized as sexual. When I think of dance, there is an intimate sexual and sensual aspect to any sort of movement that we offer or express. Along with the message that we're bringing … is that it's sort of desexualizing and more representing sensuality as an [important thing] for all people to feel and to express, as opposed to putting so much emphasis on sexuality and sexualizing women. So, it's bringing it out in a playful, sacred way. In a sensual expression through dance, it can be erotic and sensual. View the experience of the dance in a way that's sacred as opposed to, 'Oh, they're doing this for me.' It's more of, 'How can I relate to this and how does this tell a story over time and … what does it bring up in me?' as opposed to this drooly sort of outlook on it.

What are you trying to give to the Santa Fe audience with this performance?
I would like to bring the full potential—the full spectrum, actually—of what the goddess represents, and that is storytelling. We've lost a lot of storytelling in our culture. So, storytelling, sensuality, nurturing, powerful unconditional love, and trust that can vary from woman to woman. Those are the essential foundations that we're representing as the goddess and that I want to bring to the audience.