#dance slump

My parents and friends think I love to dance. They know without me saying it. In fact, a conversation I had with two NH Medlinks (i.e. my Desmond friend and his H4 friend) went like this:

H4 friend: Oh how do you know (NH4 girl 1) and (NH4 girl 2)? Do you dance? My friend: Does she dance? All she does is dance. H4 friend: Oh cool! Are you in ADT?

Which I found very fonny. No I am not. But alas, for the past two years till now, I have always been dancing, and I really really enjoy it, and I want to get better, and I think I do really love it!

But sometimes, it's hard to love it.

Today I want to talk about a big thing I see in dancers at MIT around me, which is that they have a very stressful relationship with dance. "I might quit all dance next semester," and "The MIT dance community is so toxic," and "I don't know if I want to do <xyz advanced team> next semester or just quit" are phrases I hear often from friends who always end up dancing anywhere from 3-9 hours a week.

They love it, but they hate it. The feelings are so extreme, I think, because dance is a social activity. You make friends, close friends, through dance troupe, ADT, or teams. But with dance, you're also auditioning, getting evaluated and cut, watching yourself side by side with others, being recorded, being talked about, and talking about others. It's a social activity.

And if you start thinking about how good your other peers are compared to you, the deep deep blackhole of dance-is-the-devil is slippery and treacherous. Despite them coming in with more experience, or putting in more hours than you at the expense of grades, sleep, or social life, or having been an athlete before, etc. All of my fellow friends who started dance in college, we've talked about this shared anxiety, but yet. We're all still dancing.

Dance. Dance. Four total semesters now. Why?

My favorite semester ever dance-wise was sophomore fall. Coming back from Korea, where I took a class a week at the famous 1Million and JustJerk dance studios, I was made pretty well aware that MIT was just a spec in the dance world. Thus, I was on my own journey to enjoy the art form and become professional grade good, whether or not MIT's competitive teams wanted me as a dancer did not matter. So, in September, I joined MissBehavior, did a DT dance, and took an MIT Theater dept. class in Hip Hop Dance History and Practice.

McKersin, the lecturer, taught us the history, shared the culture, opened my eyes to the Boston scene. He became the first person ever to tell me... "you need to practice" in an objective but well-meaning way. Previously, choreo workshops and Dance Troupe were fun and good to me, but in the vacuum of no-feedback-ever, I remained convinced that I was great at dancing, and thus was so confused all the time when I got rejected from competitive auditions. Now I was beginning to know.

I practiced freestyle dance and learned choreo from videos on my own, late into the night at BC dance studio. Recording myself, and gritting my teeth as I watched my own recordings. Yuck. Dumpster trash on fire, the stench coming from those videos.

But the way my dance progress became my own? So valuable to me. Thus, I improved.

I'm on a team now, and slightly deeper in the "dance as a social activity" thing both in MIT and the Boston community. Many times, I also struggle. I think I suck, look at that guy who probably only started this year he's so much cleaner than me. And that puts me in the worst bottom of the barrel mood for an entire day. Literally, makes me feel physical pain. But I never hate on dance. It's usually myself that I hate, which is not any better.

I write this on a special day: my first day ever being picked by a choreog in a workshop. You know? As the first subgroup to record? It means you're good. It was an affirmation that I'm doing okay, after a recent wave of self-hatred, actually. Even if I don't hate dance, I struggle a lot with comparing myself, and thinking I'm actually trash and not getting better, which is the root of my friends' problems too. I'm trynna overcome this and share a positive view of dance, like the energy of today's choreographer: it's fun to do and it's safe here.