Something New A Week #44 - Dance Training@Vessel

The posted date was the first day I started learning. But this is written after a month.
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I loved dancing. I entered competitions and did performances. But that day was my very first dance class in Church. It's a programme to prepare us for future productions.

It opened up my eyes to the real dance world. 
Previously I was focusing on techniques, and just going hip hop and free style. But it was such an honor to be able to be mentored by Michael aka MXV. He is a great dance teacher. He taught us the importance of the journey of dancing. He stressed how important it is to make your mind, your heart, your body and your soul to be all in one to perform a great dance, to perform not for fame, not for the glory, but for the Lord. We call it pray-formance instead of performance.

Understanding ourselves
We didn't go into awesome dance moves or copied choreos like how normal dance class used to do. Instead, we went through the basics of understanding our own bodies and feeling ourselves and being in the present. We went through the history of dance and tried out different moves as well to grasp a gist of how dance evolved - Chelston, Waltz, Cha Cha, Twist, Jive, Disco etc. Our warm ups were always ballet-style, lots of plies which made my thigh screamed like mad but am used to it now. We did all kinds of mirroring exercise where we practise emotions, speed, levels etc which made me realised how such simple activity can pull me into a focused zone and to try to understand what the other is thinking, feeling, or trying to tell me.

Putting the pieces together
The favourite part is how MXV empowered us to choreo our own dance moves for 1 same song and helped compiled it to make up a dance for that whole song. It's amazing to see how every single pieces of the jigsaw will in the end fit in nicely to form a nice picture :)

It's the journey that matters
I believe throughout this whole journey one important thing I learned is that everything takes great hard work, laser-like focus, and strong passion to pull you through the journey and grow as you reach destination by destination. Be it in the business world or in the arts world, these same rules apply as it's the core foundation in life if you want to succeed in anything. :)

"One important thing I learned is that everything takes great hard work, laser-like focus, and strong passion to pull you through the journey and grow as you reach destination by destination"