The dances you bring
Notes on my dancing life
When I was in high school, I was obsessed with learning to breakdance. I got countless bruises and even injuries along the way to master some cool power moves. Breakdance resonated with a phase of my life where I was obsessed with mastery and self-improvement. Life was about making progress.
Thanks goodness I burned out, injured my shoulder (“break” dance, right) and quit. I realized what I loved the most about dance was the sense of togetherness, which the solo pursuit of power moves didn’t satisfy.
Then came Contact Improvisation, a beautiful art form that I started getting into since last year. Contact Improv has no goal, and it requires listening to our body, our partner(s) as well as the floor. Its playful, open and non-goal orientation is vastly different from the mastery attitude of my younger self. Dancing also complements well with my introspective tendency of writing and reading. Very importantly, it teaches me about the pleasure of touch.
I also enjoyed going to Ecstatic Dance, a kind of free flow, expressive dance that often attracts hippies and spiritual tribes, which I love making fun of. Perhaps I do so because I do have some of those hippy spiritual blood in me too. That much for the transformation of this well-schooled, studious Vietnamese kid.
