Post-dance high

I just went back from a very inspiring dance class by Monyett Crump. Stopped by a cute Japanese grocer to grab my onigiri, walked around midtown during sunset, drinking soy milk from H-mart. Life is so sweet.

Monyett was a master in all the senses I want to become. His understanding of music and texture: ughhh. Even the way he teaches: as the bass hits, he YELLED to wake us up from being “locked in” and “professional,” so that we can sync with the music. So dynamic!

But the most inspiring thing was how much this dude just loves dance. He does get booked for cool jobs like Childish Gambino etc, but he doesn’t seem to care much about how “cool” you are in class, just cheering up whoever is making interesting choices. His eyes sparkled, and his presence was relaxing. He conveyed all of this love while being very technical.

This has been the crux of my post-grad life: how do I get better at something while remaining in love with it? Without getting caught up in how good I am or getting to a certain place?

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced improvement without pain. Life up to last year was a series of tests. You go to school and you have tests. You try to get a job, and you have tests. You try to keep the job and climb the corporate ladder, and there are performance reviews. All tests function the same way: they have evaluation metrics, and someone to judge you, trying to figure out how good you are compared to the benchmark. The benchmark is an abstraction of the people around you. So your job is to get better than the rest. You do so by breaking down the evaluation metrics, getting quick feedback on what your strengths and weaknesses are, and doing drills to improve. It was simple. I happened to be good at tests, so that’s been the only thing I’ve done until recently.

So, for me, to study and improve at something meant being measured against other people. And no matter how many self-help books and YouTube videos said “as long as you are better than yourself yesterday, that’s enough,” I can’t help but feel a tightness of adrenaline when I walk into a dance studio. I want to be as good as, or even better than, those taking the class with me. Which …some of them even performed in Ariana Grande’s music video, so it’s almost impossible to feel good, at least at the rate I’m training lol.

Last year, I found art when things were dark and scary. I experienced grief larger than my body, yet when I picked up some creative project, I was soaked in joy. It was like touching magic. I knew deep deep in me that I need to keep doing this, whatever “this” is. And I felt a serious responsibility to keep this love alive, to not get caught up in turning these into skills into profit into the loss of love.

I don’t know how to do “skills” without eventually hating it. But teachers like Monyett are showing me possibilities, the alternative way of viewing improvement, and at large, life, without competition being the driving force of it. Of course, you still need to audition, get food on the table, provide value for other people, but that’s not the fundamental force of what you do. Your personhood is not pitted against your productivity and another person’s value. I’m just gonna quote him here so you can get some inspo too.

I asked him how he trains for texture. He said, “Trust the story, I feel like when you connect with the story or the choreographer’s head when they listened to the music, you will understand the execution. That’s why teachers use metaphors. If they say “whip and grab,” I will perform like two sharp movements, but if they say “whip-and-a-2,” that looks different, like sharp, then ba-ba soft, even though it’s the same move, the same count. So you have to let the music and the story dictate the expression. Sometimes, I love just waving my body, without any music. Because then you’re moving to your own accord, you’re not caught up by the music beats to be like ka-da-dum-dum-ba or looking cool or on time. You’re just exploring the range of your body. Dance for me is like a big scientific discovery. I like to put hypotheses and try out different things and see how my body reacts. And if it doesn’t work, who cares? Nothing bad happened.”

This really resonates with how I’m trying to move through life. Less about the frameworks and the should’s, but more about how my interior actually reacted to the stimuli, even when it’s cringy, cruel, insensitive, or twisted. To really listen and be curious about …me.

Even more ambitious, I want to get paid to be me. That means people will pay me to see how I react to things and create stuff that is peculiar to my interests. Of course, this transaction means there’s something valuable for them in my expression. But I want to say “fuck tests, I automatically pass all of them because you all just adore me that much.” haha. Idk, I want to contribute to the community as well, but not through passing tests, ie making it to senior level 10 at a financial technological giant.

Thing is, when I did connect with something, either music or internal, I ended up making cool shit that I still like. Back when I first took dance classes, I moved on pure instinct, and that was more captivating than all the professionals in that room, so much that the teacher called me up to demo. I’ve been trying to get back to that space of creative freedom ever since, this clarity unpolluted by “did I get this right?” Maybe learning the technicals is like extending the vocabulary, and the vocabulary should serve the story. It does help to have a wide range of expressions, but the complexity of the vocab doesn’t dictate the story or how good it is.

I will try to experiment. Feeling inspired.