Interview: Dena Kaplan

Ballet and I once had a brief relationship in the ‘90s, fraught with less than satisfactory plies and jokes in the change room that our teacher despised children. And yet, years later when I changed the channel to find Dance Academy, I became addicted. And when I say years later, I mean years later. A 20-year-old fangirling over a show that airs on ABC3 and is targeted at young teenagers? It may have seemed an odd mix, but I was completely sucked in.

It was the hugely popular Dance Academy that introduced me to Dena Kaplan, who played the brutally competitive Abigail Armstrong. Amongst showcasing her vast repertoire of skills, which included singing and dancing ballet and hip hop, Dena managed to create an extremely complex character that was simultaneously very frustrating and very likeable.

Set in Sydney, Dance Academy chronicled the lives of a group of young dancers studying at the National Academy of Ballet. Since its conclusion in 2013, Dena has been a part of various projects, including NBC’s drama/comedy Camp, in between which she has been making us all jealous via instagram with photos of festivals (Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival), her gorgeous and equally talented sisters and friends (Gemma-Ashley and Ariel Kaplan, Marny Kennedy, Lily Sullivan – look them up), and mouth watering clean meals (homemade raw pad thai).

I recently sat down with her in between training sessions and packing for L.A to talk about everything from her time on Dance Academy and Camp, to her secret DJ hobby and undying love for Adam Driver.

Carlie: Happy birthday for the other day!

Dena: Oh, thank you so much

How did you celebrate?

Well actually my best friends Issi, Keinyan and Jordan were here because we were teaching a dance workshop, and they took me out to a really cool bar on Chapel Street, we had some drinks on the rooftop, I went out to breakfast with my family, and I went to a Gold Class movie, so it was a pretty extravagant day.

It needs to be a bit extravagant, 25 is momentous!

Absolutely, I’m getting old I need to enjoy my younger years now!

Your family all seem really close with a common performing passion, were you all involved in dancing and performing from a young age?

Yeah pretty much, my parents were both in the arts; my Dad was a musician, and my Mum was a dancer. We grew up in a really artistic family, there was always lots of music and dancing, and I guess we were all really influenced by that. But I don’t know if any of us thought we would end up doing it professionally, it was more just a bit of fun, and then as we got older it was something we all just seemed to fall into, it wasn’t really pushed or encouraged. We all did a lot of dancing from a young age and we all just loved it, and I guess it just developed from there.

You moved to Australia in when you were about seven-years-old, do you have many memories of your life in South Africa?

Yeah I do have fond memories, in South Africa we did have a babysitter, a lady we called Nanna, an African woman who took care of us. Mum and Dad worked fulltime, and it wasn’t until we came to Australia that Mum stopped working and became a stay at home mother, so for most of my childhood growing up Nanna was pretty much my mum. I remember being absolutely devastated about leaving her, because she was kind of the closest thing I had. We still keep in touch with her and speak to her all the time, we flew her to Australia a couple of times to spend time with her. She was so funny, she got to Australia and she thought she had to work, she thought she had to clean and cook, and I was like, “No, you’re on holiday!”

You and Gemma and Ariel get on so well now, did you all get along when you were children?

I think Gemma and I have always gotten along, we’ve always been incredibly close. Gemma’s a very calm, angelic person. She’s very maternal. And Ari and I still to this day totally get on each other’s nerves, we’re very close but we definitely fight more. We’re both a bit feistier, and I guess a little similar in the sense that we both have a bit more attitude, so we definitely fight but it’s just kind of stupid stuff. We’re very good at calling each up on bullshit.

Yeah often there’s a lot of things that only your brothers or sisters would be able to get away with telling you.

Absolutely, absolutely that’s for sure.

Was acting or dancing your first love?

Dancing was my first love, and really my only love, it was all I wanted to do. I was probably the most ambitious, driven little dancer in the world. I moved to New York to study dance, and while I was there it was the first time I ever started doubting if it was really what I wanted to do, because I was dealing with a lot of injuries and I was starting to question if it was the career I really wanted, being in a company. So I started auditioning for musical theatre and I started getting a taste for other styles of art, and at that time Dance Academy the script came along. I’d done acting as a kid and it wasn’t ever really a big passion, but when I read that script I was like, “Oh my god I have to have this, this is my dream job”. It was the perfect job at the perfect time because I was really struggling with the idea of giving up dancing to act, but then I wasn’t sure if I just wanted to be a dancer. I fought really hard for the role, I really wanted it, and it’s really fortunate that they saw me for it.

I am sometimes envious of shows that have a young cast because it just looks like it would be so much fun to work on, was that the case with DA?

It was actually the best job ever. It was constant fun, mucking around, it was amazing, really really good.

You’ve spent a lot of time studying ballet and dance, do you think that Dance Academy accurately represented that life?

Yeah, absolutely, I think that was a really close comparison to what the real world is, and the writer and producer of Dance Academy were both ballet dancers.

Okay, so they had a bit of experience in that world.

Yeah they had experience in the real world and the characters were actually based on people they really knew. I mean the writer, the story of Tara is really her story, she was a dancer and then a teacher broke her back and she couldn’t dance anymore.

At the end of season two when Thom Green’s character Sammy died, I think it was a bit of a turning point in the show, would you agree with that? Do you think it opened up the show to a wider fan base?

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s why they did it as well, they wanted to explore what it would be like for a group of young friends to lose the glue of their group and how they would handle it and how they would deal with it. I think that really lifted the game when they had to deal with more adult themes and therefore teenagers and adults were able to really invest in these characters, while kids still loved it.

Your scene as Abigail in the shower after finding out that Sammy died is one that really sticks with me, was that scene, and the final two episodes of season two, challenging as an actor?

Yeah, yeah it was. You know a lot of people talk about Meryl Streep and they say, “Yes, she’s a genius, but she does the work”, and doing those scenes was the first time I realised how much work acting takes, how much research, homework and character development. You know it’s easy to rock up on set and play a role and be a little bit funny, but when you try to do 30 takes over and over again of highly emotional stuff, you’ve got to have techniques that you can access. For me it was just so important to portray it as real as I possibly could, and in order to do that, it did take a lot of work. It was really hard and we were all really emotional for about three weeks. We’d go home at the end of the day and we’d been crying all day, but it brought us closer because we all really supported each other through the performances. We couldn’t be mucking around on set or laughing we really had to help each other stay in the zone.

Dance Academy has finished now, was that a bit sad, finishing up after three seasons working with the same people?

Oh yeah it was more than a bit sad, we were all devastated! It was really sad, I mean we were ready to finish because we all worked so hard, but we all just loved the job so much. We were all really really close friends, and the idea of not seeing each other every day was really difficult.

I also wanted to ask about your friendship with Issi (Isabel Durant)...

(Laughs)

What?

I love her, she’s so cute. I miss her so much because she’s just moved to the Gold Coast. I dropped her at the airport two days ago and we were the biggest losers, we were both bawling our eyes out like, “I’ll miss you!”

Airports are such emotional places sometimes!

I know it was so embarrassing, the two of us were just looking at each other pissing ourselves laughing but crying at the same time.

You didn’t know each other before Dance Academy, but obviously you guys just clicked pretty quickly?

You know it wasn’t that quickly. When Issi started in the second season, she really kept to herself. She’s highly professional and had a really great work ethic and kind of kept to herself on set. Even during the rehearsal process we’d all go out for lunch together and Issi would often just be on her own reading her scripts, she’s really kind of in her own world. For a long time I didn’t really get to know her because of that, but towards the end of season two and all through season three we developed a really close friendship, and it’s just grown stronger and stronger. We always say if nothing else we can thank Dance Academy for our best friend!

And I guess it would be great to have such a close friend in the same business who understands the pressures and that kind of thing.

Yeah it is, it’s really good and neither of us are very competitive people. Sometimes having a best friend who does the same thing as you can be a bit dangerous, but we both don’t really have that competitive streak in us so it’s really nice we’re just in support of each other’s work and proud of each other. I’m really lucky, she’s a great friend.

I really enjoyed Camp, it was a great show.

Thank you.

But I heard it’s not being signed on for a second season is that correct?

Yeah no it only got one season, but I think we all kind of had a feeling that would be the case. It was sold as a summer series, so we weren’t really expecting to get another season. It was a really fun experience but we weren’t overly disappointed.

The amount of Dance Academy actors on Camp was crazy! Was that planned at all?

(Laughs) No, it’s so funny. No one believes me when I tell them this but it was really quite coincidental. Basically what happened was Tim and Thom were in L.A, and I was in Australia, and we all auditioned for Camp, and they looked at Australians more so because it was filming in Australia. And then we all heard that we were on hold for characters so we were all Facebooking each other being like, “Have you heard anything? Have you heard anything?” And then when we got the roles and went out for dinner with the producers they joked that it was like we’d known each other forever. We told them about Dance Academy and they actually had no idea, they hadn’t watched it or anything. Then I think what happened is then they went and watched it and they really loved Jordan and Issi so they cast those two in some guest roles!

That is such a crazy coincidence.

I know! Although I did hear that one of the show writers was quite a big fan of the show, like she’s seen the show and they just thought it was the best at NBC and they wanted to meet all the Dance Academy kids. And when they were auditioning in Australia they asked a lot of directors who they should see for young Australian talent and a lot of directors had said well you should definitely look at the Dance Academy kids. I think that’s how it all came about, but it wasn’t like aw you’re in Dance Academy you can be in Camp (laughs).

It was so weird hearing you all with an American accent on the show! Was it hard to maintain, especially being in Australia filming, rather than in America?

Yeah it was. I think usually in the U.S if you were doing an American accent it would be great because you are surrounded by Americans; your crew’s American, and all the rest of the cast is American. But for us it was so hard because everyone was Australian so you couldn’t even really tell each other if you were stuffing up because none of us were experts. Fortunately we had a fantastic dialect coach that we worked really intensely with for about three weeks every day, hours a day just working on the accent. I knew my script back to front just from practising the dialect. For about the first two months of filming. from the minute we got on set until the minute we got home we all just stayed in American accents, we didn’t go in and out because it was too hard. That was really hard to get used to. I’d be on the makeup bus with all the Aussie make-up artists and they’d be talking to me and I’d be like (puts on an American accent), “Thank you, I’m trying to talk like this,” and I’d be like, “Oh my god, I don’t sound like me, I don’t sound real!” So I found that quite difficult.

From social media it seems you have a real passion for healthy living was there a catalyst for this or is it always something you’ve been conscious of?

I’ve always been passionate about fitness and really clean, healthy food, but I was quite sick about three years ago and I saw a naturopath and she kind of changed my world by teaching me a lot about how food can be medicine and how it can also be a poison. A lot of what I was eating was destroying my body. I was allergic to a lot of things, I had a lot of toxins in my body and it was just from eating processed food or food that I was allergic to, so I just became really aware of food then. I started reading a million different things about it, speaking to a lot of nutritionists and became really interested in it.

I try to promote it because when I teach I notice a lot of dancers who are in class all day and then they go and eat lunch and I see them eating a muesli bar and a piece of fruit, and they think that’s really healthy. There’s just no education about it and I think it’s so nice to say to people, read this book or check this out, or you can be eating double what you’re eating, but just eat the right things, you know just stuff like that.

Roughly, what would a normal day look like for you in terms of food and exercise?

For breakfast I usually have an egg-white omelette with spinach, tomato and sometimes I have a little bit of avocado with it. And then for lunch I usually have a huge salad with tuna or grilled chicken, and sometimes I’ll put a bit of sweet potato in that, or quinoa. Dinner I usually have some grilled fish and heaps of vegetables. Then throughout the day I usually snack on almonds, greek yoghurt or a piece of fruit. That’s pretty much my basic diet, and then I like using raw food a lot, I like to make raw pasta using zucchini noodles and I love Japanese food. With exercise I just try to do something every day and change it up. I never just go to the gym on my own, I’m not very good at that, so I usually do some sort of a class like a circuit class, a personal training session, go with a running group or I’ll do a pilates or dance class. I change it up all the time, and then on Sundays I usually just have a day off.

I know that you’re a DJ on the side, what sparked your interest in that?

(Laughs) You know everything! No one knows about that, I’m a bedroom DJ, it’s my secret.

Sorry, I’m exposing you!

I’m obsessed with music, all I do all day is listen to music. It started when I was dancing and choreographing and I’d be like, “You have to listen to this song!” and I just didn’t realise for a long time that no one else cared. I’m a lot more passionate about discovering music and listening to music than other people are. And then like two years ago my boyfriend at the time bought me a lesson, like a DJ lesson.

I didn’t even know such a thing existed.

Yeah, I went to the DJ academy and got my… I don’t know what you’d call it, I got my certificate, I learnt how to do it, and I just fell in love with it. Now I do it all the time in my bedroom and I’ve done a few gigs, but I don’t really have time to commit to it or promote myself in any way so it’s more of a hobby. A dream one day is to be able to act, and then on the side go and DJ at festivals. It’s so random, I’m like this little goody-two-shoes ballerina who goes to the gym, eats clean food and then I love to DJ, it’s the weirdest thing ever. I don’t even like partying or clubs, I don’t know where it comes from, my family thinks it is hilarious, they tease me all the time, “Aw, DJ DK!”

What are your favourite bands/musicians/DJs at the moment?

I really love Alison Wonderland, an Aussie DJ, I think she’s amazing. I love Hermitude, I just saw them at a festival, they were amazing, and ah… Oh god this is a very hard question, I could give you a list of a billion. I like Alt-J, they were probably my favourite album of last year. And I like Rufus, I saw them play recently, they were great.

So what are your plans in America when you head over?

I don’t really have any plans yet, it’s kind of the first time in my life where I haven’t known what’s coming up. After Camp I decided I needed some time off, because I hadn’t really stopped since I was about sixteen. So I took some time off and really chilled out, just pulled back everything a bit and spent a lot of time with family. Now I’m feeling ready to go over and work really hard. I’d love to do some American television work, and ultimately my dream is definitely to do film work, so yeah I think I’ll just go over and work really hard and try to get something and all else fails I’ll be a DJ.

Well it’s a pretty awesome back up.

Yeah, I’m pretty happy with that, so it’s a good plan either way.

To finish up, if you could have dinner with any two people, alive or dead, who would they be and why?

The first one would be Lena Dunham, because I just think she is the most inspirational, amazing, intelligent woman. There’s no one like her, I mean she’s directed, produced and starred in her own TV show, in her early 20s and I just think that’s remarkable. She would probably be my number one, and number two would be my grandfather because I would really have loved to have met him. He was a director and artist and he just sounded like the most amazing man, but he died very young, so that would be a dream to be able to have a meal and meet him.

And it sounds like Lena and your grandfather would have a bit in common as well.

Oh yeah they’ totally hit it off, they’d probably come up with some new HBO series.

And you could star in it, it would be perfect.

Absolutely!

Also it just made me think of it when you spoke of Lena Dunham, but through your instagram I’ve noticed that you really like Adam, from Girls.

Oh, the love of my life Adam Driver!

What’s the appeal?

Everything! Everything! Oh my god I would die for him, he is my number one crush, I love him so much. I just think he is the most incredible actor, and he’s so unique and different and obscure and I love how much he uses his individuality and his weirdness and quirkiness when he acts. I just think he’s totally hot and intelligent. Him and Paul Rudd, they’re my favourite. I don’t like the typical Johnny Depps, ah it’s so boring. Give me a funny man any time.