My long hiatus...

The year of 2011 was an eventful year for me as a performer and as a person. It was the year I had pushed myself to take more dance courses and perform more publicly.

Short+Sweet 2011 - Her Story: A Conversation

I did the ASWARA Short Course, tango, attended workshops by Lee Swee Keong, Michael Xavier Voon, and others, created a few new works - The Time Traveller, The White Scarf, and Her Story: A Conversation. I performed at a few small events, took part in Short+Sweet, which is the most exhausting, did PenangPAC opening ceremony and Pebbles, both with Rivergrass.

Myself and Angeline in a moment of truth...

At the same time, I was also working hard on the school concert. Despite handling such a large team of performers, I knew I reallly wanted to polish the performance quality in my students, where I dug deep into each and everyone of my dancers to get the best of them onto the stage.

It was also the year that I felt I have grown the most, facing myself, my weaknesses and building up my strengths. I had realigned my body, my mind, and my emotions.

Needless to say, the year left me exhausted. My juice was sucked dry. But more than that, all that realignment has left me with a strange new me. I didn't know what to do or how to dance with this new me. I stopped all existing dance activities and decided to go back to basics. I took ballet classes. But then I stopped, and I went back to contemporary. All in all, I have not been able to create anything for myself since the beginning of the year.

I needed the time to reflect, to settle in to my new body, learn about it, to tell new stories about myself, my life - a happier one, definately.

After so many month, I'm beginning to get some glimpses of new possibilities. I am looking forward to more dances to come, reflecting a freshed, newer me!

So, what does your creativity mean to you? How have your growth changed the works you produced? How do you come back from a long dry spell? Feel free to share your thoughts...

Till then, happy creating!

How to Really Jazz It Up...

Speaking of jazz, tap, broadway musicals and the like...

Do you love watching them? They surely are enjoyable, and a good show never fails to put a smile on your face!

But what makes a great jazz dancer?

You probably have a few jazz/musical dance performance you have in mind that was memorable and enjoyable, and if you are a dance student, may have tried doing.

In a lively number, the dancers would carry a disposition of happiness, joyousness, playfulness, showing how carefree they are with wide-open arms, opening their hearts with big smiles on their faces.

With the ladies, it's always with at least abit more sassy-sauciness, hinting how naughty and playful they are, teasing both the audience and the performing counterparts confidently, leaving everyone hanging on to their fingertips.

When I needed to choreograph a Singing In The Rain piece for my school concert, I started by watching the movie clip from youtube, and I instantly fell in love with the song, the dance, but most of all, Gene Kelly's charm and enthusiasm. Needless to say, it instantly puts a smile on my face. I knew that I would love to choreograph it, and that the kids would enjoy dancing to it.

Gene Kelly singing in the rain...

In a dance that requires movements to be BIG and expressions are BIG, it is easy to go overboard with doing too much, (although in musicals, the levels of acceptance are pushed a little further than others, as expressions are occasionally exaggerated for effect).

But a how does a good performer do BIG, without going overboard?

it stays true to emotions - meaning, instead of just a "blown up" kind of expression, it is instead an honest form of expression, like how a child or a baby would act, when overcame with glee.

But you might notice as well, that good performers are able to act out very subtly, those genuine moments of ease and calm, amist the all excitement - using a day-to-day gesture, a wink, an eyebrow raised, a smile - but secretly impregnanting the moment with anticipation, bulding up the pace for that one high point.

When I showed my student's this video, the saw a whole new level of enthusiasm! They noticed how playful he was and how he happy he is, finding new love and all. It truly conveys the meaning of "the joy of dance."

So, if you wanna do jazz, perhaps, you may ask yourselves these questions:
1. Do you dare to be BIG and stand out?
2. Do you dare to be different, be brave and be playful?
3. Can you embody that happy disposition, put on a smile on your face that is as bright as the sun?
4. Are you a happy person? Can you be happy in your mind, in your core, all through your hands and feet, and in all the muscles on your face, from your heart and through your eyes?

C'mon with the rain,

I've a smile on my face...

 

Until next time, happy dancing... :)

Fear.

Everybody has fears.

Most of us were taught to fear our fears, growing up. Fear is used to hold us back from doing what society doesn't want us to do... such as making alot of noise, or being naughty.

As an adult, I still feel overwhelmed with fear, wherever that came from. And if you are familiar with fear, you would know that it's very, very crippling. (such as the fear of success)

The most pressing fear I am having now is the fear sharing information with the world. I didn't like socialising as much as most people do. I was afraid that the more informaiton I reveal about myself, the more I would be "found out". Found out about what? Is there really something to hide?

Upon introspection, I find that my fear of success stem from my school days, over the course of my primary years through my university days.

Back in my lower primary years, I was a high-achiever - always aiming to be at the top of the class, not content with 98% marks, aiming for the hundreds - and constantly living with the pressure of falling, of being called "sombong" or arrogant in Malay, by my classmates. I was afraid of making mistakes in my exam papers, and at the same time, I don't want to be judged that way, because I am certainly not an arrogant child nor one who likes to show off. But ofcourse, that level of perfectionism is sometimes perceived as arrogance by some, or perhaps I had unintentionally done so.

Inevitably, one has to give way to pressure. My grades starts to drop. And by the time I entered secondary school, I am one of those hanging on at the last position of the top class (that I have always been in), just praying that I wont get kicked into the second class or so. There, I hanged on for the rest of my schooling years. I was glad I made it through with grades good enough to enroll in a reasonably good course in a good university.

After finishing secondary year 5, I was admitted to MMU (Multimedia University) and started my foundation course to a degree in Creative Multimedia.

During my first term there, I was pretty exited. It was like getting a second chance in life - moving in to the hostel, studying a course that I am more interested in than all that mumble-jumble stuffs in school, new friends, new environment; I wanted to recreate a life like how it was back in my primary days - being a high achiever instead of a slacker, I wanted to be successful again!

But soon, the temptations of uni life proofed to be too hard to resist - Broadband internet, mmorpg, boyfriend, late-nite chats - by the time I entered my First Year, I was back to a slacker. By the end of my Second Year, I already felt the need to hide and run from alot of people - friends, class mates and lecturers, keep a low profile, fly below the radar - just so not to draw so much attention to my failures, my truancy, late submissions and the like. I have always stuggled with procrastination (and eventually learned from this productivity enthusiast) and along the way, discovered some strange, self-sabotaging behaviours; e.g. if I tell people about my progress, my work will simply stall there, without further progress. Therefore, I start to avoid talking about my work.

All those year, I constantly carry this overwhelming sense of guilt and shame, that when I meet people face to face, they would judge me for my weaknesses. So I avoided meeting people. I went on friend-hopping, knowing them only long or deeply enough to complete assignments and group works, but avoiding intimacy. I didn't want them to know how weak I really am.

Interestingly, when I did my final-year-project in Virtual Reality, I started a blog to log my progress. I temporarily overcame my procrastinating tendencies by fully immersing myself in the process and allowing myself to be vulnerable by reporting even the blunder or mistake I've made. Being a perfectionist, I had to tell myself to "post it up no matter how ugly I think it is." It seemed to work.

So here I am, posting it up, embracing my fear (like this guy here), even though it's ugly. What do you think?