
This week we sit down with Carter MacDiarmid and talk about Cardistry, The Fontaine Trials, dance, music and self-expression. Beautifully illustrated by Mike.
Q: Every Carter move makes me feel enchanted; my eyes are trapped and moved together with each packet and motion. This style of yours is very unique and has definitely been developing and evolving with every video since 2013. What drew you to perform the way you do? What was the work ethic that went behind the scenes and brought you closer and closer to a more refined style that defines you?
I think the largest contributing factor to the way I interpret movement was thanks to my involvement with the dance community. Long before my interest in cards, if not at least adjacent to the time my interest began, I was in a studio learning 8-counts, going to conventions and competing, until I quit around age 13. While I dipped my toes into many different styles of dance in that timeline, my favorites were and always will be jazz and hip-hop.
This not only sparked my interest in the music of those genres, but also my journey of learning how to interpret the feelings music gave me into the visual arts as a whole. As I was falling more out of dance and more into Cardistry, I would still constantly find songs that I loved and make my own choreography for them. That was what I would’ve considered my rawest form of self-expression at the time, so I knew that I was always actively seeking a way to do that with Cardistry next.