I am a dancer and I love dancing. That’s one of the few things I want people to remember about me. What is it that's so great about dancing? Normally, we talk and listen to communicate with each other. In order to express ourselves correctly, we craft our words tone our voices. In dancing, a person could totally show off his thoughts and emotions without worrying about how people perceive his messages. He doesn’t have to sharpen his moves or styles and still, people appreciate him as a person. I have seen numbers of people that you could feel your natural joy and happiness being sucked up around them. However, I have never seen a dancer who gives away real negative vibes. To me, dancing is one of the best hobby and/or skill that one could adopt.
I started dancing (hip-hop to be specific) when I was a freshman in high school. The reason wasn’t anywhere near poetic. I simply thought if I know how to dance all the ladies would be more attracted to me. I would be one of the cool kids. That was the truth. As time goes on, hip-hop dancing, from being a tool to impress women, became something more to me. It became my way of express my feelings, personalities, characteristics. It became an essential part of me instead of a necessary tool for my way of life. I had wonderful moments and made a lot of friends through dance shows, battles, competition. Many of them still stay in touch after several years.
That’s a bit background, and today I want to tell you why I start learning ballroom dancing. Obviously, you wouldn’t care, but I feel like this is such an important factor that I want to share with my lovely fellow dancers. I had always been doing hip-hop exclusively. Not ballet, not dancesport, not jazz. Just hip-hop. At some point, I admit that I even looked down on other types of dancing because I thought they weren’t “cool.” I remembered how excited I was when I first came to the U.S., hoping to learn from other hip-hop dancers in the founding country of hip-hop dance. I was totally disappointed when it came to my knowledge that my school didn’t have a big community of hip-hop dance, and mostly dancers here were modern, jazz and ballet dancers. They were all great dancers, but I just never could really get along with them.
Two months ago, I moved to Boston for a summer internship. All the people I knew in Boston either went home or went on vacations. I was alone in a new city for a short while until I met up a guy on Quora.com -- an online question-and-answer forum. We originally wanted to work together on a marketing project, but knowing that I was new to the city of Boston, he invited me to a social gathering at his house. There, I met his roommate and a few other friends who’ve been doing West Coast Swing for a few years. After we all got drunk, some of them started to dance West Coast Swing. It was the first time I observed ballroom dancing that close. It was also the first time I knew I wanted to be able to dance like them. What is so awesome about ballroom dancing is that although it is partner-dancing (which means you need another person to dance with), there is so much room for improvisation. Two people who never met each other could totally dance together so perfectly that you thought it was choreographed beforehand. That’s something I could never find in hip-hop or any other kind of dance I tried.
The more I got into ballroom dancing, the harder I find it. One of the reasons I didn’t take any other dance serious because I always thought their moves are not as difficult and complex as hip-hop’s. I was totally wrong. Ballroom dancing steps are extremely hard to master, and the connection between two dancers couldn’t be compared with by anything else. It is a total challenge that I am very glad to take upon.
As a dancer, I encourage you all to throw yourself out there and try out new types of dancing. It opened my eyes, and I am sure it could open yours, too.
