Like a lot of teenagers, Juli\u00e1n Omar Morales \u201912 \u201917 didn\u2019t have a clear direction for his life. But that was before September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt a calling,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI knew I needed to do something, and that something was to join the U.S. Marine Corps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morales completed three deployments in Iraq, from 2004 to 2006. He knew what it was like to be near explosions, to feel the shockwave. During his third and final deployment, however, he was wounded in an IED (improvised explosive device) blast. Returning home, the Purple Heart honoree was faced with recovering from the mental and emotional effects of war, as well as physical injuries. And once again, he would ask \u201cNow what?\u201d<\/p>\n
He needed to find a new direction for his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started taking classes at Union County College,\u201d he says. \u201cI always wanted to dance but at that point, I thought I was too old to make that a career goal. Still, I went ahead and enrolled in the only dance class offered at UCC.\u201d Morales saw the class as a way to cope with trauma and pain \u2013 and the recent death of one of his Marine Corp buddies. The instructor, Evy Zavolas, saw Morales\u2019 talent, and his potential. She offered him a scholarship to her dance school. \u201cIt was as if fate stepped in at a time of great need,\u201d he says. \u201cI could see a future in dance.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Morales mentioned his new life\u2019s mission to his UCC dance instructor, she suggested he consider Montclair. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about Montclair, let alone that the University offered a dance major,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He was thinking it over during a visit to California, where he had lived for a time. \u201cA friend there gave me a pile of mail that had been delivered to my old address,\u201d he says. \u201cAs I sifted through it, a return address on one of the pieces caught my eye \u2013 it was from a city called Montclair, in California. A different Montclair, but it still felt like a sign.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morales returned to New Jersey to enroll at Montclair and to live with his family \u2013 he wanted to make up for the time he was away in the military \u2013 but the commute was challenging. After a year he moved into the dorms, where he began building a new circle of friends and engaging more fully in his studies, choreographing and dancing in numerous campus productions. One such project brought him closer to fellow student and dancer Jazmine Thompson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was choreographing a dance in remembrance of my late aunt,\u201d he says. \u201cJazmine captured the emotion so beautifully.\u201d She also captured his heart, and the two have been a couple ever since.<\/p>\n
By the time he graduated in 2012 with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Theater, Morales was performing repertory for Freespace Dance, a New Jersey-based contemporary dance company.<\/p>\n
A year later Morales was back at Montclair studying Spanish, his parents\u2019 native language. \u201cI am passionate about expanding my horizons through language,\u201d he explains. \u201cI learned that the groundbreaking modern dance choreographer Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n, who created beautiful dances from poems, was also a veteran. I wanted to follow in his footsteps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creative opportunities began to find Morales. \u201cI was asked to choreograph a dance to celebrate the retirement of one of the Spanish Department\u2019s faculty members,\u201d He says. \u201cI was awarded a scholarship to study abroad in Chile, where I was able to incorporate dance into my course work. When one of my professors formed a theater company, I was invited to act in one of their productions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morales soon added a minor in Asian Studies to his second round of undergraduate studies. \u201cStudies show that people who speak multiple languages are more marketable,\u201d he notes, adding that he is focusing on theater techniques that are rooted in Japanese culture. He joined the Unified Asian American Student Organization as well, serving as Dance Chair for a time and choreographing dances for homecoming events.<\/p>\n
These days Morales can be found working on choreography \u2013 and an acting role \u2013 for a production of Anna in the Tropics, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Nilo Cruz. He is also researching graduate creative writing programs and is getting ready tell his own story through a play.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2019, I won first place for dance at the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival,\u201d he says with pride. \u201cThis year I submitted an excerpt of a play about my life. I am following in a long tradition of playwrights \u2013 going all the way back to Sophocles \u2013 who served in the military.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Morales\u2019 list of accomplishments continues to grow, he sees the journey as one of healing, of reconnecting with my humanity again after living through wartime service. \u201cMontclair has given me the tools to share my story by dancing on the stage, and by making words dance on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a teen, Juli\u00e1n Omar Morales \u201912 \u201917 couldn\u2019t fathom where his future would take him. By listening to his heart and following his calling one step at a time, he is choreographing a fascinating, at times painful but always meaningful, journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":212174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-76_alumni-news-and-events","category-77_alumni-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212173,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212171\/revisions\/212173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}