Ephrat Asherie chose not to major in dance because she knew dance would be a part of her life regardless. Her love of languages, along with fond memories of her childhood in Italy, inspired her to major in Italian at Barnard College. “I wanted to reconnect with that part of my life,” she says.

Since Barnard is in NYC, Asherie had plenty of dance class options. “I took some classes in the dance department, but I mainly trained in the city,” she says. She also spent a year abroad in Italy studying literature and linguistics, which helped her speed through many of the requirements for her Italian major.

Seeing Rennie Harris’ hip-hop opus Rome and Jewels after her sophomore year of college marked a turning point. “I grew up dancing hip hop, but when I saw this piece, I knew I had to get into breaking,” she says. “In that moment, I decided I wanted to graduate early and get to dancing as soon as possible.”

Asherie ended up earning her Italian degree in three and a half years, after which she began her career as a dancer and choreographer immersed in the breaking and underground dance community. As founder and artistic director of Ephrat Asherie Dance in NYC, Asherie has found that her knowledge of language helps deepen her understanding of various hip-hop styles. “I’ve always been drawn to finding ways to communicate with people,” she says. “Learning someone else’s language helps you connect with them on a different level. Different languages have different modalities, and I try to look at different forms of dance in a similar way. House dance, breaking, hip hop—they’re all qualitatively different modes of human expression.”