my growth through dance

Coalescence 2020 @ James Madison University

I only started dancing during my senior year of high school and I only consider it a hobby of mine, but the more I think about it the more I realize that dance has supported my personal growth in numerous ways.

self-consciousness → self-confidence

I decided to join our high school’s urban dance club because I felt self conscious at school dances not really knowing how to dance. Through the process of drilling technique and practicing choreography, I slowly got to know my body and intuitively knowing how to control myself, and as a result, I already felt less awkward.

However I struggle with constantly believing that I’m still being a beginner dancer, and therefore constantly still feeling self-conscious about my skills. Over time, I have found that the only good solution to this is just to dance a lot. The more I dance, the easier I can break out of this negative loop, and gain confidence.

Now, three years after I officially started dancing, dancing is now only a little bit daunting, but mostly just fun. :)

mental awareness

Being on a dance crew meant I was frequently encouraged to attend dance workshops that were outside of my comfort zone. Since the choreography was often, more advanced than I was capable of, I found myself struggling to keep up, which resulted in self-doubt and self-consciousness all over again. After attending enough workshops, I found a number of ways to stop dreading workshops, and always be able to gain something positive out of them.

1. focus: If I don’t make a conscious effort to focus on learning the choreo for myself, I find that I start wasting my brain’s energy on worrying about stupid things like if other people are judging me when I make mistakes. Or sometimes my mind just wanders and isn’t fully committed. Instead, if I make a conscious effort to focus on just learning to the best of my abilities, then I have a much easier time staying on track.
2. making it my own: Sometimes the choreography would simply be too difficult for me to follow, even if I gave it my 100%. Acknowledging this fact meant developing the skill to modify choreography and making it my own. This way, even if certain things were beyond my skills, I could still learn and have a good time.
3. self-encouragement: I judge myself too harshly. When I notice I’m doing that, I encourage myself and notice the things I’m doing well. With a boost of positivity, I can keep going.
4. mental awareness: Each of the above factors contributed to my new ability to be hyper-aware of my mental state throughout the course of a workshop. I became very good at catching myself when I was losing focus, or when I was focused but struggling to keep up, and I would be able to adjust accordingly.
5. mindset: ultimately the most important thing is to remember that I’m not at a dance workshop to be critiqued by other people or to do a perfect job at learning and executing the choreography. It’s a chance for me enjoy learning something new, and enjoy the experience of dancing with other people who share a similar passion. With this in mind, I can let go of self-judgements, and just enjoy, even if I don’t “do a good job”.

While these skills were developed under a very specific environment, I have found myself applying them to numerous other scenarios throughout life.

changed how I listen to music

One aspect of what makes a choreography good is its musicality. Musicality is a term that describes how well a choreography reflects the sonic elements and characteristics in a piece of music. The more I learn dance, the more I see how certain movements reflect the tiniest of details in music. Without even knowing it, I subconsciously started picking up on all these little details in listening to music casually. I’m naturally able to pick out the syncopation of the bass-line, or the rhythm of the background vocals.

Dancing improved my ability to hear and appreciate details in music, which has allowed me to enjoy music more. I had no idea this would be a side effect of dancing more, but I’m not the only one — listening to music differently is a well known phenomenon amongst dancers.

what I learned from being on a dance crew

There’s enough content for this section for another full blog post so I’ll save it for later.

Dance has allowed me to grow in multiple ways as a person, and I’m grateful for having picked up valuable lessons along the way while just exploring a fun creative outlet.