Nadia Abji: Freelancing…and Dancing…around the Big Apple

Ever since Nadia Abji’s dancing led her to a Julliard summer program after her junior year of high school, she knew New York was the city for her. Relocating from her hometown of Toronto, Canada, she began her dance and journalism studies at NYU in 1997.

Finishing up her Dance major at Tisch in three years, she stayed on an extra semester to complete her Broadcast Journalism major and Art and Culture minor in Fall 2000. During this final semester, she took on an internship at MTV, stayed on following graduation, and has been with the pop-culture cable network ever since. Two years in, Nadia has few complaints.

“MTV is a great place to get your hands dirty and learn a lot,” Nadia says.

As a freelance associate producer, Nadia has worked on MTV news specials ranging in topics from heroin addiction, to hip-hop history, to the Sept. 11th anniversary. She has also worked on the cable network’s “Fight for Your Rights” documentaries, which is comprised of six to nine shows aired throughout the year all focused on a single social issue. She worked on last year’s “Protect Yourself” documentary series about sexual health and is currently busy on the next series focused on gender issues, which she says will tackle stereotypes and gender gaps.

Overall, Nadia says she enjoys going out and “getting the story,” which involves arming herself with a digital video camera and interviewing experts and celebrities. She admits that getting to interview the rich and famous is a major job perk.

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t cool to interview celebrities,” Nadia says, although she doesn’t like to “name names.”

Ultimately though, she says the best part has been “learning the process of putting segments together and finding that it isn’t as hard as I thought it was.” From casting the characters, to doing the filming, and finally seeing it come to air, Nadia says she finds the entire “behind-the-scenes” production process a rewarding one. Currently, she works with others to cut segments and build reels, but Nadia hopes to soon be a segment producer, where she’d be solely responsible for getting several reels together.

Nadia admits that working as a freelancer allows her to pursue a second career of sorts in the dance world.

In fact, since graduating from Tisch, Nadia has danced in Aretha Franklin’s benefit concert tour and become a performing member of both the Nathan Trice/Rituals modern dance company and Umoja, a modern and African-based dance company. In March, Umoja held a 10th anniversary gala at Aaron Davis Hall, giving Nadia the opportunity to dance with many of her Tisch friends. She has also taken on film performances, including a lead role in an NYU graduate thesis film and had a cameo in “Empire,” a movie shown at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

While Nadia even toys with the idea of taking time off to do a Broadway show, ultimately, she would someday like put her performing and journalism skills to use in front of the camera. She maintains, however, that she will never “just read from the teleprompter.”

“I always want to go get the story and put it together myself,” she says, but insists that moving to a small market like Alabama to start out is out of the question. “I definitely want to stay in New York.”

– Pamela Stuart Jones, G’04