Kimiko Versatile: Destined to dance
HER face, form and movement is fast becoming a constant on the popular dance scene.
Born Kimiko Miller, she is known in local and international dance circles as Kimiko Versatile, a talented, fierce, bold and creative dancer and choreographer who is steadily making a name for herself and her brand.
In recent weeks she has hit screens in the music video for the track Silver Tongue Devil by Jamaican American artiste Masego, which features dancehall’s current it girl Shenseea. In October her work as a dancer whose primary focus is on dancehall music made her one of the subjects in the documentary Move by French film-makers Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai, which is now streaming on the popular online platform Netflix.
However, these accolades did not come easy for the graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. In an interview with the Jamaica Observer she explained that she has had to work extremely hard to build a name for herself and combat the stereotype associated with the arts and artists in Jamaica.
“I believe I was destined to dance. I’ve been dancing since I was about two or three years old... movement always seemed to come easy to me. I would win little competitions at events, but I really started taking it serious in about grade four of primary school. I joined the dance group but the teacher told me I had ‘two left foot’. I just knew that I would have to put in the work to get the technique right and she was shocked how quickly I caught on and could adjust. The love for dance continued in high school at Ardenne. I joined the troupe there and performed for JCDC festival. I then became a member of Ashe and was exposed to singing, dancing and acting at an even higher level. It was the founder of Ashe, Joe Robinson, who insisted that I attend Edna Manley College and study dance. He thought I could make a great dancer, given my natural talent and formal training.”
However, not everyone was on board with her decision to become a dancer. Miller explained that her mother was staunchly opposed to this move. At the time, her mother didn’t see dance as a career and wanted her daughter to follow along a more traditional career path. Miller tried to convince her and when it didn’t work she had to call for back-up, drawing for Robinson, faculty from the school of dance at the college and others, until her mother finally relented.
Always cognisant of the need to convince her mother and others that dance is a viable profession, Miller sought to create a name and personal brand by offering something out of the box. She found that in dancehall music and its movement vocabulary, but there was one problem — there were no dancehall classes taught at the Edna Manley College.
“I just knew I had to stand out, so I tried all the avenues. At the time, there were all these nightly street dances, and these became my field trips and dancehall dance classes. I went to all of them, Weddy Weddy, Bembe, Passa Passa, you name it I was there, as these offered me a raw energy that I could not learn in a dance studio, but went well with the theory and other dance forms I was being exposed to at school,” she explained.
Wanting to gain further exposure, while still in college, Miller teamed with fellow dancer Benton Morris in 2007 and entered the televised competition Dancing Dynamites, where they placed second. That platform resulted in increased work as both dancer and choreographer, doing work for commercials, music videos and live performances. However, she quickly noticed that her work was still being seen as a hobby, not worthy of being taken seriously.
“I went through the phase of little or no pay for my talent and then it came to me that I needed to take my brand seriously in order for others to see it in that light. I had to show that dance is a profession, a career, it makes sense and my talent is worth it.
With the training I received at college I set out to treat dance as a business and build my production company,” Miller noted.
She quickly realised that the world was seeing dancers as artists in their own right and therefore had to improve her outlook to be taken seriously.
“I saw that dancers were now being booked for international tours. No longer was a dancer just going on tour with a singer or a deejay to be a back-up dancer, we had reached the level of the artiste, so I had to up my thing. I had to raise the quality of my work and focus on the business side. If I was still seeing it as a hobby and having a good time then how did I expect others to see it any different?” she said.
For the past six years she has been making an annual global trek to perform and give lecture demonstrations on dancehall music. She has shared her craft all across Europe, 24 cities in Russia, the Arctic region of Siberia, Australia, China, Japan and Taiwan. However, like the rest of the entertainment industry her work has been affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“I was on tour in Amsterdam when the pandemic hit. The plan was to move on to Germany, but then they started closing the borders. I had to make the quick decision whether to stay in Europe or make my way home. I just decided to come a mi yaad. So I was on that famous last flight out of Belgium with Elephant Man. We had to be quarantined and all of that, but I was glad I made it home.”
Miller lives up to her Versatile moniker. Determined not to falter during these uncertain times, she continues teaching dance online from the dance studio which she has been operating for the past two years. She also calls on her other talents as a make-up artist and a groomer of locs.
While she is pleased with where dance has taken her and can show tangible benefits, she is still aware of the road ahead.
“We still need a lot more structure to look out for the welfare of dancers. There is no association, no government assistance. I remember going to renew my passport and realised that dancer and choreographer were not among the list of professions, so I had to choose entertainer. That just shows that we still have a far way to go,” she remarked.