Teens of expression: Nick Rodriquez
COLUMBIA-Nick Rodriguez, 16, never seems to just sit around. If he isn’t dancing, he’s writing rap lyrics. Or practicing guitar for his newly formed garage band, Disruptive Perceptionz. Or drawing or trying to improve as a graffiti artist. And he wants to act, too; he just hasn’t found an outlet yet.
“I don’t know what it’s like not to perform,” he says.
Dancing, in particular, is something Nick has been doing his whole life. Even when he’s just talking, his shoulders move subtly from left to right, as if sensing some beat or rhythm in the air.
He sees dancing as a way to be himself and to express things he can’t show otherwise. “It’s freedom,” he said. “From everything.”
When Nick break dances, his whole body becomes an instrument. To make a “freeze,” he dives into the ground, stopping himself with his sinewy arms as his legs kick up. For several moments, his body is a statue.
More than a year ago, Nick and his buddies formed Poetry in Motion, a move that pushed and inspired him to another level of self-expression. He borrows now from whatever he sees.
“I watch everyone else,” he says. “Ballet, gymnastics, ballroom dancing, everything.”
Nick’s creative influences are drawn from beyond dance though. “I’ll see something that interests me, that usually leads to something else, which leads to something else,” he says. “It gets me interested in things that it came from. I just want to find out more, or why. I ask a lot of questions.”
At Hickman High School, Nick knows his desire to create and perform is foreign to many of his classmates. He wishes more of them would have more passion.
“Everyone’s so quiet and off to themselves. People are like, ‘Oh, that’s just Nick,’” he says. “I want people to understand what I’m standing for.”
Nick sees himself as separate from other students who, in his view, dress the same, talk the same and think the same. He raps about this frustration in a hip-hop song, “Mosh.”
“I wrote about people being stereotypical in their dress and how they’re supposed to act,” he says. “The song’s dedicated to people who don’t understand and to people who have free spirits.”
Nick wishes more of Columbia would embrace teen expression and wouldn’t cater so much to the college-age crowd.
“We need more walls to paint,” he says. “More spaces available for people to be creative. More places for people to play instruments. We need more showcases where people can come in and show off their talents.”
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