From fear to tear— an almost-10-year dancing journey.
Tags: Journey, Dance, Psychology, Fear, Emotions

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

10 years ago, I had my mental fear that is seemingly simple but complicated. It feared me to know at first that I could not be free in expressing my own emotion. Human beings are born with a lot of talents and live with a lot of mistakes. Talents are optimised when you know to use it well, but when you make mistakes, it causes a lot of social risk. We live in a society where there’s a cultural boundary — when you do something deviated from the norm, you’ll be treated as you’re wrong and people will take a perspective on you.

My fear had me to be not so active at school and at home. I studied and I played, in my junior high school I was a candidate for the school organization then I turned myself down. I was encouraged to share my journey in front of class but I took my anxiety home and it even appeared in my dream few times. I was pushed to be the best while I always questioned whether being the best makes you the happiest person in the room. In every attempt of my step-up journey I always failed or did not have the drive to try.

I almost gave up and moved on with no change. I always thought structurally, if I try something and fail, I wouldn’t want to try again and fail again, because it doesn’t feel good. I couldn’t reward myself by failing. My life would be ordinary with what I thought I could do good and the society could accept me the way I am.

Until I befriended with dance.

Dance is not an activity I could thought of when I was at school, because I was initially exposed to a modern Christina Aguilera’s “Come on Over” type of dancing. I thought it was pretty girly and I was more comfortable into a cool, boyish type of lifestyle — I couldn’t see myself dancing as good as Christina. But I’m very thankful that I had a supportive environment that could lead me into hip hop, dance classes, dance performances, workshops, and all those exposure that can make me feel free of expressing myself.

I enrolled a dance class for a year, ended up with a performance. Everytime I come into the class, I feel free and I couldn’t think of any problems outside of class. Just the choreography, and the laugh, and the fun, and ways to memorize them. When the class is over, I didn’t go straightly home but still curious on how to polish the choreo better. At home, I usually did it again until 1–2am, something that my friends and family wouldn’t understand why but rather thought I was sleep deprived. When I performed, I got a role as a mime, which is completely ok, it felt better as a mime than to be a princess who’s going to do popping. These classes and journey of performing taught me on my responsibility of my own dancing capability. I tested out myself whether I’m capable to follow a class, enjoy the choreography, perform to the small and big audience, got graded by teachers, and on top of that, being myself on doing all of them— I nailed it all. I was able to acknowledge my emotion and freely express them through movements, and the surroundings tell me that I should keep moving.

(I felt cute in 2012)

Fast forward to more workshops, locally and internationally. I took myself to the international workshops in Jakarta and Singapore for 3 years, attending couples of classes from worldwide-known hip hop choreographers: Kinjaz (USA), Sienna Lalau (USA), Christopher Martin (USA), Sh*t Kingz (Japan), Royal Family (New Zealand), Rob Helferrich (Netherlands), Matt Stefanina (USA), Alexandra Carson (New Zealand), Yuki Shibuya (Japan) to name it. Additionally, I also appreciate the talent from the local dancers that brought fresh minds in choreographing. From those workshops, I learned how to face the cultural boundaries. Happiness and freedom outperform the fear, even when people are against my dancing, I smiled.

One day, when I had the chance to see the mindblowing performance of Choreo Cookies on their Project Home in Singapore, it become more and more clear to me that dancing is for everyone — not you, not them, not your mother alone, but everyone. Chris Martin as one of the choreographers, emphasised that “there are no people who are better at dancing, we’re here to share our happiness to you guys, and we thank YOU so much for coming here to see what we’ve made in 3 years.”

And that, I realised that dancing has no boundaries. Everyone can be a master in this case, or be a dance student forever.

Choreo Cookies — Project Home Performance, Mar 2018

That was a really a big exposure for me for years as I graduated from university and started my career journey in parallel. Until right now, still happening, I organise and coordinate a dance class in my office (sometimes I share as well). Thankfully, we have invited some of the local dancers sharing their piece to everyone in the class, so they can understand and know the feel of hip hop. We were also given a chance to perform to the internal events this year. This type of giving back that I wouldn’t have if I work elsewhere, but I know I’m just getting started. From this experience, I started to know the real life of a dancer in my homeland, as well as the emerging development of a dancing scene here. We can do so many things to optimise the informal industry, especially dance. Dancing ecosystem in Indonesia is still being built. It is not only a way of having fun, but also can be a proper source of income, or a medium to improve society’s well being — hence, improve the economy.

I am beyond blessed (and writing this brought me to tears) to have learned all of these insights within my dance journey for almost 10 years. From being insecure on controlling own’s emotion to knowing an ecosystem, which I may be able to contribute in the next 10 years. :)

From within, I still dance and be it forever.