Overcoming Rejection with Resilience

Ashley Ray Garcia, 25, is a performer and dance major at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a passion for dance that has led her to some of her greatest accomplishments to date.

Early in her career, Garcia became a member of a touring dance group at a fine arts summer camp where she was selected to perform in Europe during the summers of 2014 and 2015.

In 2021, Garcia along with the rest of the senior class at UWM, choreographed pieces for the Department of Dance annual New Dancemakers show. Her piece was based on the sexualization and objectification of women from a young age and into adulthood.

The American College Dance Association will be welcoming Garcia’s piece along with others around the nation to compete in the spring.

Born and raised in Manistee, Michigan, a small town with a population of about 6,000, opportunities for dance weren’t common in the area. However, at age four, Garcia was able to enroll along with her older sister at Dance Alliance North, one of the only dance studios in the area.

“I was always dancing in my living room,” said Garcia. “When I was younger, I just liked to make my family smile and laugh.”

Eventually Garcia’s three younger sisters followed in her footsteps and started dance. “We all had a collective love for it,” said Garcia.

Garcia was given a lot of freedom to express herself in her hometown studio. But with four daughters in the family all enrolled in dance, it was hard for her mom to afford it.

In the third grade, Garcia became an assistant to her dance teacher and in return received free tuition for her own dance classes. She eventually worked her way up as a paid dance teacher in high school.

“She’s the type of individual that has a desire to grow, the desire to experiment and the desire to experience dance in its fullest,” said Garcia’s Professor of Dance at UWM, Simone Ferro.

Garcia later became a recruiter at the fine arts summer camp for the European tour she previously participated in. In this position is when she befriended many at the camp, including Michael Parmelee.

Garcia admitted that at the time she didn’t think she was good enough to dance in college, but friends at the camp encouraged her to go for it. “Everyone was so encouraging,” said Garcia. “But more than anyone, Michael was the one who really talked me into going to college for dance.”

Garcia’s hesitations about her dancing abilities have been something she has carried throughout her life. Alumni from UWM and Ashley’s former roommate in Milwaukee, Hannah Stingley, 24, saw Ashley’s doubts firsthand. “She is so talented and creative, but sometimes she doesn’t see that side of herself,” said Stingley.

Garcia’s hesitations to dance in college only worsened after she was rejected twice as a dance major from Grand Valley State University, the closest college with a dance program two hours away from her hometown.

“I was rejected and that really messed with my mental health,” said Garcia. “I realized I wasn’t what they were looking for, but it still hurt because I just didn’t understand why someone who is passionate wouldn’t be accepted.”

The third time she auditioned she was accepted as a minor, but she couldn’t imagine doing anything else as a major and didn’t accept the offer.

Resilience and passion are the two things that kept Garcia going through the rejection she faced. “Her dancing is her life,” said Ferro. “She embraces each opportunity in front of her with passion, joy and a lot of desire to learn from it.”

Garcia completed general education requirements at a community college in Michigan, but despite her anxieties about leaving a town she had lived in her whole life, Garcia decided she didn’t belong in Michigan anymore if she wanted to dance.

At age 23, Garcia moved to Milwaukee and started at UWM as a transfer student studying dance as a BFA.

“There’s always been a voice telling me to keep trying and keep going,” said Garcia. “Resilience is the biggest thing that has shaped me throughout my life.”

Moving to a big city like Milwaukee was hard for Garcia after living in a small town her entire life. But she quickly met people in the dance department which led her to her roommate Hannah Stingley.

“Ashely was there for me at some of my darkest times, she helped pull me out,” said Stingley. “She loves with all her heart and truly cares about others.”

Stingley was there during Garcia’s transition from Michigan to Milwaukee. “Change really affects Ashely and the move made it really had for her to adjust at first,” said Stingley.

However, Garcia continued to make friends and participated in her first show at UWM just months after joining the department.

“New Dancemakers changed everything for me,” said Garcia. The New Dancemakers show is an annual show in which the seniors of the department cast fellow students to perform in their works. Garcia was cast in two dances the first year she auditioned.

Garcia now participates in two SURF, Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows, programs with Professors of Dance, Simone Ferro and Mair Culbreth, and she has submitted her work to multiple film festivals, one of which was accepted back in her home of Michigan.

“Because of her passion, she is an artist at heart, and she has had a transformative experience,” said Ferro.

One of her transformative experiences came from her choreography in the 2021 New Dancemakers show.

“I was inspired with this idea my first semester here at UWM when I was going through a rough relationship and slowly realized that I was just being used for objectification and sexualization,” said Garcia. “Realizing too that the strong beautiful women who had inspired me throughout my life had gone through the same things, inspired a contrast between anxiety and strength in my piece.”

Garcia shared that her mom, grandma and nana were the biggest influences in her life growing up. “They were all strong women who taught me how to be an independent woman,” said Garcia, adding that neither her grandma nor nana had husbands in the time Garcia was close to them. “They didn’t need a man in their life and that inspired me.”

Garcia made sure her cast members felt welcomed, much like she did when she moved to UWM.

“It was so nice to have someone to talk to about things we were going through and have a place to rant and get our feelings off our chest,” said Koree Brosig, a dance major in Garcia’s cast.

“She is so caring,” said Brosig. “She was always a good person to lean on for anything, inside and outside of dance.”

Garcia has become a reflection of those she used to look up to and those who gave her a place to call home at UWM. After all the hardships and rejections, Garcia finds herself in first place at UWM to compete in a national dance competition at ACDA for her New Dancemakers piece.

“I was so proud of her,” said Brosig after finding out they were selected to compete. “Obviously I was happy for the cast members and myself, but I was most proud of her and that her work was finally being recognized by the world.”