How did we get here?
Looking back over the last two years, the answer feels both logical and aligned.
In 2024, I returned home. Home to the East Bay, the place I was born and raised. Home to the family I had lived apart from for nearly a decade. Home to my body and to understanding what regulation looked like on the far side of healing. Home to accepting my purpose as an Artist and dancer.
During that transition, I gained a deeper understanding of what home truly meant. Not just a place, but a feeling created wherever and with whoever fills your heart. By that summer, a new mission had unlocked itself for me: creating a life that continuously felt like Home.
The first place I chose to create that feeling was in my body. I have been a dancer since early childhood, and the body is where the soul lives. It only made sense to return to a space where dance had always resided for me, Shawl Anderson Dance Center, a place that stirred the Artist within me during my adolescence. I did not know then that this single decision would lead me to share an epic story like this one.
At A Home for Dance, I reconnected with a community that helped shape me into the multifaceted dancer I am today. Within that community were fast friends, incredible colleagues, and all-around beautiful humans. A few stood out almost immediately.
Noah and I connected through age-old accountability, the kind that says, I see your shine, and I will give you the push you need to be your brightest self. Noelle and I clicked through our many classes across the hall from one another, always sharing words of encouragement between full rooms of tweens.
We became fast friends. Individually and together, we found ourselves sharing joy and frustration as we navigated our own dance journeys. Somehow, we always ended up in the same rooms celebrating wins, entertaining slightly delusional dreams, and stepping into new opportunities. Always admiring the zest for life that seemed to pour out when one of us dreamed. Stories and visions aligned easily. It was that unmistakable feeling of finding your people, the ones who get it.
In November 2025, I turned 30 and invited Noah and Noelle to brunch alongside some of the community I had begun building since returning home. Around that table were people who, in less than a year, had started to feel like family. From that outing, a group chat was born. NNN. What started as a casual thread became a cohort, a space for like minds to connect, share, and enjoy one another.
If you are wondering how a dance company came out of all this, the answer is both simple and inevitable. First, we were three iconic and talented humans with N names. Then one day, Noah asked the group chat a question: Any thoughts on us collaborating on a residency together?
That was it. The spark. Suddenly, we were face-to-face with pure potential. Giddy at the thought of creating together, we set a lunch date. Being the epic people we are, we took it a step further.
What would eventually become N3D began there. Even then, it felt like something larger than the three of us, something quietly gathering form.
Each of us held deep admiration for how the others showed up, for our work, our communities, and the spaces we love. Out of that shared respect, N3D took shape as a dance company devoted to bringing movement back to the people, a vessel to honor stories begging to be told, to gather humans together, and to share the joy and healing that movement offers on a cellular level.
Rooted in rich and diverse backgrounds as dancers, performers, and educators, N3D holds space for many perspectives. Alignment and flow guide its path forward. Collaboration, with room for individual brilliance, became its foundation.
As conversations unfolded around how to reach the people who once fueled a love for movement, N3D’s intention became clear. It would share humanity through its very first art form across as many channels as possible. To move together, to explore openly, and to share not just the result, but the process and the lives involved every step of the way.
Like life, creating Art through dance is a journey that culminates in a moment shared with an audience. But what if the journey itself was the offering? Is that not where the most meaningful parts live? Why only share the end product when living is happening all along?
N3D was born on December 12, 2025, during a lunch date between three zealous friends. It emerged from a deep desire to return dance to where it belongs, in the hands and bodies of everyone. No pretenses. Just humanity guided by intuition.
It aims to create accessible ways to experience movement through community gatherings rooted in connection, a collective moving together, and experiencing music in motion.
When you think of N3D, think of a nexus, a point of convergence bringing the art of movement back into everyday moments.
N3D offers a three-dimensional experience of dance, highlighting not just the final performance, but the entire artistic process it calls life. What appears on stage tells only a fraction of the story. The relationships, labor, and human connection that carry a piece from conception to premiere are intentionally illuminated, and each layer deepens the Art’s impact.
Humans deepen bonds by sharing, and deep bonds cultivate belonging. Dance meets us in dark moments, helps us find ourselves within our bodies, and draws us closer to the people we share existence with. That, to me, feels like the essence of Home.
I invite you to join us in returning, discovering, and building a more connected world. One where humans do not just observe what is presented, but experience the life unfolding all around them.
May this journey inspire you to find a place where you, too, feel at Home.
Naila Joelle <3
