Olivia Burgess

Open­ing Image: Body­suit The Atti­co neck­laces Icarus + Co.

“I arrived in NY 11 years ago to attend the Ailey/Fordham BFA pro­gram and fur­ther pur­sue a pro­fes­sion­al dance career. I guess you could say that things didn’t quite go as planned. After bare­ly being able to fin­ish the sec­ond term of my junior year I learned that I was going to need knee surgery. After near­ly a year and a half of not danc­ing, I was final­ly able to return to the stu­dio and com­plete my degree but phys­i­cal­ly I was still recov­er­ing and unable to audi­tion for the com­pa­nies I want­ed. Nev­er think­ing it would amount to much that’s when I start­ed mod­el­ing. As an inter­im occu­pa­tion until I was able to reach a full recov­ery. To my sur­prise, mod­el­ing offered me a new and unex­pect­ed stage to con­tin­ue danc­ing. 

Pho­tog­ra­phy real­ly became a pas­sion of mine after surgery. At the time I was des­per­ate for a cre­ative out­let to fill the artis­tic void left from me not being able to dance. But my pho­to­graph­ic pas­sion only grew once I was back on my feet. These days I’m tak­ing more care in cul­ti­vat­ing my artis­tic voice both through pho­to and video. I would say that dance and move­ment are inte­gral to how I express myself through both. I think that years of being cen­ter stage or in front of the cam­era have inspired me to be my own cre­ator. 

The last cou­ple years have moti­vat­ed a lot of change in my life. I will soon be relo­cat­ing to Lon­don to return to school and study inter­ac­tive design. It’s always been my dream to meld my pas­sions togeth­er. Dance, the­ater, pho­to, video, music, art… I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to begin­ning this new chap­ter and div­ing fur­ther into my cre­ative explo­ration.” — Olivia Burgess

Mod­el Olivia Burgess @Wil­helmi­na Mod­els
Pho­tog­ra­phy Stephen & Rebec­ca @WiB Agency
Make­up Ryo Kuramo­to
Stylist Krys­tle De Mau­ro
On set styl­ist Anna Reece