A hurricane set Brandy Mimms on the path towards a dancing career.

Brandy, a professional deaf dancer who goes by Unique the Deaf Dancer, owns her own dance company, Listen With Your Eyes Dance Troupe, and teaches dance at Southwest Community Center in Little Rock.

But before Little Rock, before earning her degree in 2019 at the age of 39, she was living in New Orleans.

She was adopted as a child, and then her adoptive mother passed away in August of 1992, followed by her adoptive father in August of 1993. “I was 14,” Brandy explained. “Growing up without parents was the hardest. … I had an auntie, but she was a bit abusive.”

Even as a child, however, she took a look around and made choices based on what she saw. “I grew up saying what I didn’t want to do and what I wanted, and I based my life on that,” Brandy shared. “And just focused on being positive and fighting for what I want.”

In addition to challenges at home, she faced difficulties at school. “Being deaf was a real big challenge in school because It’s hard to get accepted,” Brandy said. “That’s my biggest thing – being accepted. I think that also falls back on being adopted.”

Others reacted to her deafness as though she were sick. “Growing up, my adopted parents didn’t want me to learn how to sign,” Brandy said. “Back then, maybe in the 1970s, it was, Oh my god, my child is deaf.’ When you say deaf, they think it’s a sickness. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry for you.’ I really thought it was a problem. They made me feel like I should be worried about being this way.”

Growing up in the hearing world, she didn’t realize for years that there was an entire other community she could participate in. “I grew up mostly in the hearing world,” Brandy explained. “So we have the deaf world and we have the hearing world. I grew up in the hearing world because my family wanted me to be hearing so badly. I appreciate them, thank you, but they never really exposed me to the deaf world as a kid.”

Still, she followed her interests, which included music. To listen, she simply has to feel it. “I have to feel the vibration,” she explained. “I can hear it a little bit in my hearing aids, yes, and I’m not saying it has to be rocking loud, but it has to be loud enough for me to really feel it where I can feel, okay, this is hard or this is soft. I need to feel that. If I don’t feel it, I feel like, ah I’m lost. I don’t know where I’m going. I feel very crazy. That’s how I listen to music — feeling the beat. And I have Bluetooth hearing aids, so music is always in my ears when I’m not talking to people. I’m always listening to music. The vibration is right there. I have a love for music and music helps me with my dancing and helps me to express myself.”

During college, she decided to try cheerleading. She simply wanted to perform, initially, but didn’t know anything about the audition process. “When I went to my first college audition for cheerleading, I was like, ‘Hi, I want to be a cheerleader and I don’t know anything about cheerleading.’ … The lady was like, ‘Well, you have to make your own choreography and your own cheer.’”

Brandy stayed up all night working on her cheer but ended up forgetting most of what she’d practiced. She wanted to leave, but they asked her to stay and she stood in the back, with the others who felt they hadn’t made the cut. “She got to the third name and called my name,” Brandy said. “I jumped up and said, ‘What?’ And ever since then, I focused and worked hard. I was determined. In the four years I did it, I became captain for the last two years because I worked so hard.”

She’d started watching the dance team during that time as well. She got married and had a baby. Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005.

Her son was 10 weeks old. “I was actually leaving my marriage the weekend of Hurricane Katrina,” Brandy explained. “When everyone was leaving out of town, I was moving out of my apartment.”

On Monday, with nowhere else to go, and the storm getting worse, Brandy joined her auntie, a nurse, at the hospital. Brandy’s grandmother was 96 years old and her auntie was taking care of her. “We were so used to hurricanes,” Brandy said. “Normally, we’d sleep through them sometimes. This one came through. Okay, we’re still standing and living and then we went to look outside and we noticed there was water. In the area where we were living, water had never flooded in that area, ever. So when we saw water, it was like, oh something’s wrong.”

An hour later, all of the cars parked at the hospital were submerged. Walmart started to disappear. They were cut off from the outside world, without television or news stations. And patients started dying.

By Thursday, a helicopter arrived to fly survivors out of the hospital. “I just see all of this water,” Brandy explained. “I got scared because I’m by myself with my baby. I got no money, no phone, what am I going to do? They drop us off at the airport, New Orleans airport. Got there, and I just walk, lost. I didn’t know what to do. I just cried, of course. Walking with my baby, crying, walking like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I tried to find somebody who let me use their phone. Of course, I called my ex-husband because that’s the only person I could think of.”

He had already left, and he wanted her to get on the bus and travel to him. “As much as I didn’t want to,” Brandy said. “But I was scared. So, get on the bus. Fine. But I didn’t have to do that because I looked up and saw one of my aunties.” 

By Friday, Brandy was on a military plane with her family, heading to Atlanta. Brandy’s godfather traveled overnight from Virginia to pick them up. But there weren’t as many resources to help survivors. “They weren’t helping us as much as the South was,” Brandy explained.

If an apartment was provided, only one month was included. Plus, her auntie’s old behavior had returned, making it difficult to stay. Brandy remembered the family of an ex-boyfriend, Dale. They’d relocated to Arkansas. She called his mother and ask if she could join them. “I bought this one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Arkansas and that’s how I ended up here,” Brandy said. “And when I came here, the next day, the pastor that helped them helped me, got me an apartment, furniture, food. I’m happy that it happened, … because if it didn’t happen, I would not have been a dancer. I would not have been who I am now, because now I have this new motto: everything happens for a reason. .. Because now, I’m doing what I love and I don’t think I would have ever done that if I’d been in New Orleans.”

She married Dale in 2010 and they will be celebrating their 10th anniversary on April 10. “He’s been very supportive,” Brandy shared. “It’s been a struggle with me being in school and not really working the way I’m supposed to. I need to do this. This is my passion, my life, my dream. … Now he understands that dancing is more than a hobby.”

She’d been thinking about going back to school while she pursued cheerleading and then dance with a semi-professional basketball team. When she saw that the University of Arkansas at Little Rock had a dance program, she decided to apply. “I liked to dance but I didn’t know what I was getting into,” Brandy said. “I went and applied and told them I wanted to study dance. My first lesson of Ballet 1 was life-changing because I realized it was really harder than I thought it was.”

But Brandy had developed a habit over the years–she refused to give up. When she decided to try out for the UA Little Rock Dance Team, she had to audition three times before making the team. “I was trying to audition for these things, but I didn’t make them,” she explained. “In my mind, I was like, I can do these things.”

As to where it comes from, Brandy believes her drive is fueled by passion. “I don’t allow someone else to tell me, ‘You can’t,’” Brandy said. “Because I’ve heard that all my life as a kid, especially being deaf. When you’re saying, ‘We can’t do these things,’ I’m like, ‘Really? I’m going to keep trying.’ And I kept trying. I think that’s what it is. It’s just being told I couldn’t do it for a long time as a kid. And by the time I got to college, I just tried. My motto after trying out for cheerleading was you never know until you try. And when I did that, I was like great. But then when I kept failing, I was like, ‘I know I can do this. I have what it takes.’ I went back and I trained and was in dance school studying so I was getting better and better at my technique. And I go back with better and better confidence. I think I just don’t let other people tell me what I can’t do.”

Classes had their challenges, however.

Then she discovered Antoine Hunter. Based in San Francisco, Antoine is a deaf choreographer and dancer who founded Urban Jazz Dance Company. He also started a festival that brings deaf dancers from all over the world to San Francisco. In 2016, Brandy reached out to say hello. He invited her to attend the festival. “When I moved here to Arkansas, I didn’t have any deaf friends,” Brandy said. “I’ve been here for 14 years. I really started stepping into the deaf culture three years ago.”

When she went to the festival in 2017, she found a whole new culture that included dancing. “And then my world changed,” Brandy said. “Because I met other deaf dancers from all over the world. … I was still in school. My school supported me. I told them that I’m going to San Francisco. They helped pay for my flight because they really wanted to encourage me and maybe thought that that would help me because before then, I was very negative in class and felt down because I felt like I was struggling and I’m watching all of the other kids who have danced longer than me, were doing better than I was. If I made a mistake, I was beating myself down. I didn’t have that confidence. But, after San Francisco the first year, I want back to school, and my teacher’s like, ‘Brandy, what happened?’ It’s like I did a 360. I walked in there like a different person.”

She continues to regularly attend the festival, where she’s met other deaf dancers from all over the world. “Without them, I don’t think I would have found my identity,” Brandy shared. “Because they helped me find my identity. Now I know it’s okay to be deaf. Now I know it’s okay to be a deaf dancer. It’s okay to say, ‘Hi, yeah, I’m deaf.’ At first, it was like, hmm, hide my hearing aids. I didn’t want anybody to know. Now, I just want deaf awareness, help people understand that we are cool people. We can talk and communicate, yes, differently, but If you really want to know how to communicate with a deaf person, just ask them.”

And there’s no impairment in the culture. “We’re hard of hearing or we’re deaf, but we’re not impaired,” Brandy explained. “If they really looked up the different terms, they would see that hearing impairment is not a good word. We don’t realize that word. … It’s not their fault that they don’t know. That’s why we’re trying to do more deaf awareness.”

She graduated from college and started her dance troupe, Listening with Your Eyes, in June of 2019. She had originally thought she’d go to Broadway or join a dance company. But there were age requirements and she realized that Arkansas didn’t have much in terms of modern dance techniques. Her next step is to finalize her nonprofit paperwork and continue raising funds for the troupe that she designed to cross between the hearing and deaf worlds. “If you listen with your eyes, you’ll fully understand,” Brandy said. “That’s the whole point of the company. When we’re dancing on the stage, you’re listening. Yeah, you might hear some talking, but actually watching me and my dancers dance. You’re trying to figure out, what are we trying to tell you? We’re telling you the stories with our bodies. You can’t hear it, but you’re listening, you’re engaged with your eyes, trying to see. … When I came up with that title, I wanted it to fit me.”

Brandy’s advice to other creatives is to begin simply. “Start doing the simplest thing,” she said.

She also recommends finding someone to confide in. “Find someone that you really, really, truly trust to talk to because we spend a lot of time keeping a lot of stuff in and that is what makes us feel trapped and lost because we don’t know how to get it out,” Brandy shared. “Also, find something that they enjoy that will help them in that time to get it out. It doesn’t have to be dancing. It can be art. It can be writing. It can be anything to help them to be able to express who they are. Because we all have different tastes and feelings. Maybe cooking is their thing. You get that fire and just want to keep going. Just find something that you love that will make you feel like I can wake up and do this every day. Yeah, I might have to go to my 9-5 but then I’m looking forward to doing some cooking or drawing or whatever. And just know that life is short, and everything happens for a reason. Think about where you want to be in the future.”

As always, there’s a lot more in the podcast episode! Follow Brandy on Facebook personally, as Unique the Deaf Dancer, or through Listen with Your Eyes Dance Troupe. She’s also on Instagram. Visit her website here. Sidenote: I was unable to find the GoFundMe link, but will update with the link if possible.