dance, dance... dance.

i had a wonderful dance class last tuesday evening... leaving me buzzing in my head as i cycled home to a nice refreshing shower... and a great feeling of... oooh i love dancing!

i will never forget the first dancing debut i premiered as a wee toddler at the kindergarten (german spelling here) that me brothers and i went to... a bunch of toddlers from the 3-4yr-old class were (probably randomly?!) selected to dance a waltz-like set-dance in couples probably for the Christmas concert at the Church which ran the kindergarten ... the whole affair of the waltzing seems, in retrospect, slightly pompy (like austrians; my act of stereotypy) and civilized for such tenderness... and to bring in a comparison, my 2nd-elder brother was dressed up as a red-indian in his class dance in the same fanfare, which i think was probably a lot of fun, if not more... in fact, i never got to see him in his performance, and i wondered if he, mine! but mummy made papa take photos of us, and so we have evidence to prove i am not making this up! =C)

what i fondly remembered was that there was a pair of twins in my dance and they both wore pink ballet slippers in the actual performance, which completely intrigued me from the moment i took notice of their perculiarity... i was instantly fascinated by the slippers... partly because i kinda thought i liked the colour pink, and partly because i thought they made you dance even more sweetly... i honestly don't remember who my tolerant partner was... but i presume (hahah!) he must have been rather dashing... we all looked beautiful in the pictures... and i had a lovely new white (or was it yellow?!) dress and black (?) mary-janes to match... and i have no doubt that i absolutely enjoyed myself in the performance... it's great being 3! you don't really care who's watching... as long as your parents are out there witnessing your spectacular display of some potentially budding talent! OR just simply supporting you in making a fool of your poor self at such a tender age!

what i came out of the experience was that i found dancing or prancing about very fun, probably because it's great having an equally good-dancing partner... and i SO wanted a pair of ballet slippers and to LEARN how TO DANCE in them!

that wish eventually came true, if only quite a few years later... after trying to move like a cat and tinkering bits of Pink-Panther theme with my fellow Yamaha mates in the annual music-school concert, and after some years doing what they called "Chinese Dancing" at the primary school, an extra-curricular activity, which was run by two very scary chinese women, one of whom was also my Chinese teacher, who HIT you with a WOODEN ruler or THREW the chalk-board DUSTER at you for not remembering how to write your newly learnt character (those were days when hitting was acceptable as a form of punishment -- many adults thought it was okay... but i, and other sensible beings, thought it was ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING and inhumane!)... all these traumatic experiences, and you wonder why i hate school and rote learning (and a particularly evil piano teacher i had)?!... and finally after we relocated to another home closer to the ballet school i got acquainted with the Royal Academy of Dancing syllabus and what would be my first introduction to the FRENCH language from a wonderful dance teacher.

to be honest, i didn't realise how difficult classical ballet would be... despite seeming effortless! i entered the whole ballet-thing very very late compared to my peers who have either got themselves out of it, or stayed on with their weekly classes, and as such, i had a lot (like YEARS!) to catch up... and a new vocabulary in a new language to learn, and that's not as if i wasn't having enough trouble with English and Mandarin Chinese...

starting directly at the middle of grade 3, i advanced on to senior levels, got to dance 2 roles in the Nutcracker production one year, and finally got chosen to take the board exams when i was still at secondary school. at Sylvia McCully's you don't simply take exams; she kinda picks you, and you are asked to consider if you will embark in the preparatory classes... it is little wonder that it meant a lot to me...

this whole exam-procedure was very different from my experience with music lessons... which has left me with a big emotional scar and is an experience that i am still trying to cope with after all these years. suffice to say, it certainly helped mould the inner being i have become... and i am glad for standing up to what i think is right... and thankfully, my passion for all things musical was not dampened in the process...

it took me rather long to decide about the exam... i ABHORE exams... and my awful experiences with attaining certificates of musical aptitude have made me weary of such pursuits... and then, there was school, gym-training, and music lessons -- which i might have stopped taking (by then) as a very naughty but necessary rebellious act of will; i shall call it self-preservation... the amazing thing was, once i'd made up my mind, i even paid for the whole endeavour with my modest red-packet savings (money one gets from Lunar New Year as children) ... and i worked real hard on it... and on making sure i didn't neglect the other bits of my school-life.

unlike my dance partner who took the exam with me, i was a complete amateur in such formal dance critique... she was very confident... and technically much stronger, but i guess i excelled in areas which were less classically constrained... the free-expression parts in the new syllabus; where one got to listen to some 32-bars of music and you were to express yourself in your own way throughout and end up in your own kind of a pose... i absolutely loved it. so, despite being new to the whole thing, i did better than anyone expected... scoring a few marks lower than my partner, who ended up with the best score that year, yet, i got to join her in receiving the highest grade... i couldn't believe it!

although that was the very first and the only dance exam i've taken and though i had a couple of serious ankle injuries from gymnastics... i didn't really stop dancing... even if i had to say goodbye to my dance teacher and head offshore to experience life in another part of the world... in a way, the whole dancing episode i had while i was growing up in singapore was probably an experience which marked a few significant changes in my life!

while away from home, i danced at the college in wales in international evenings put up by students, i embraced scottish ceilidhs, and sought ballet classes like the ones i had at Ms McCully's even though i have never found any quite like hers... i even tried modern dance in germany despite being very hopeless with the language... but none of them was quite like the dance classes i grew up knowing... and appreciated while i was away.

it wasn't till i came to the usa, and spotted dancers rehearsing in the floor above a hardware store in the Saint Paul City Ballet one evening in early winter (while i was walking towards the bus stop with my groceries from WholeFoods, along Grand) when it occured to me that maybe they might have open adult classes i could go to and meet new people... it was also a place i could get to without a car!

and so i discovered to my happiness, that the adult classes were very similar to those i had bade goodbye to a decade ago... and in addition, i learnt too, that these classes have a long history and tradition that dated back to the old russian school of dancing which is nearly as old as the history of ballet itself... in fact, the ballet school in st. paul has it's roots in the Ballet Russes, which is a ballet company set up by Diaghilev in 1909 who with his choreographers, kept the art of dance alive in times of revolution, and whose vision and passion in the arts revived ballet in the western european cities, linked many musicians and artists together in the creation of his ballet productions, and is one of the main persons who introduced classical ballet to the new world.

thanks to divine happenstance, i recently watched the documentary of the surviving prima-ballerinas/nos of the Ballets Russes, released as a zeitgeist film on my flight back to the UK, and was amazed by the challenging experiences that these talented dancers had gone through... and how they could survive on so little; fuelled primarily by their passion for dance...

but perhaps there is, in everyone, an innate need to be challenged and to want to dance and express themselves through movement... whether or not you think you are good at it. indeed, i do think it would be wonderful if everyone, and i mean everyone... could simply "Dance as though no one is watching you... (Souza)" ... so go on, i am *not* watching!

posted by ~overacuppa~ on Saturday, 19 August, 2006 at 21:46 hrs