Working on Myself and Others at the Same Time

As a dancer in a competitive world you have conflicting thoughts when you think of practice. You have so much to work on but the concept of competition means that you kind of want to isolate in order for others not to learn your secrets. Sometimes we have to look at things in general instead of within. It's always tough to do this when you have a goal but I would say it's actually a rewarding thing. I learned this over the years.

In competition we never want to give out our secrets. We want to be in first place and we want to have any edge we can to top our opponents. It's kind of human nature to be competitive with one another. Why else is everyone feeling horrible on social media. We're constantly in competition with one another.

The problem with this is that it kind of ruins the progress of evolution. In human history a ton of the big innovations that we recognize are stemmed from pre-existing ideas and objects. We fine tune them so that they're new and original. What's original is another article but the point is that we have to share to grow.

When I first got into dance practice I always thought I could come up with original ideas of my own. I would have hated to have worked on some move for months or years and someone simply taking the movie. There were a ton of people that didn't want this as well so they would isolate themselves until a big show. We'd be mortified if someone would pull our move out first at an event and get credit for something that we worked hard for.

So practice had always been invite only. Public practices were extremely rare. The problem is that practicing alone is a mental hurdle for many of us. I believe all dances are in a way social no matter what it is. There's this sense of community and energy that comes with all sorts of dance that you get. Practicing alone will kind of kill this energy and mindset from you after a while.

One day I just opted to start open practices that would be open for everyone. I didn't think it would work out that well considering no one wants to share their moves. It was a tough thing to do because you have to open yourself to everyone. It's a sense of vulnerability to open practices like this because you have to choose a public place and you're telling everyone you'll be doing it. Not only might you be practicing alone still but now you're practicing by yourself in a public space. You get the stares and the gawking.

I did this for a while and little by little more and more people would join the practices. A little while became months and then months became years. I think it would have been close to over 15 years of doing this and how my body doesn't work quite as well as it did in the past.

However I did learn many important lessons doing this. I learned that the community and energy was more important than me. Competitions come and go but the sense of community is way more rewarding than any individual award.

I've met so many people from different countries because they knew that there was a consistent practice in my city. I was a representative of my city and made people feel welcome in a dance that was originally very standoffish. More people were able to gain interest in the dance because it was readily available to them.

From this I've seen kids grow up and become great. I've seen how the dance has changed people and moved them away from way more unhealthier ways of dealing with their problems. The sense of accomplishment in people's faces when they figure out moves has always been a delight to me and it's been a blast.

My only worry is that I hope that people don't take the open practices for granted. I've organized these practices for so long that I worry that when I'm not there anymore people won't step up to take my place and keep the community alive. It's a large responsibility and everyone has so much on their plates already. I can understand why no one else would want to take on the responsibility.

In the end, I truly feel blessed for the amount of joy this dance has brought me not because of my accomplishments with the dance because I have few. The joy comes from the people I've met and the energy that we've all shared over the years. I felt connected to every single one of them through our energy we shared dancing with one another. It's very difficult to describe but you must try open street dance practices with strangers to understand. I'll forever be grateful for my time with everyone. I don't regret spending all of those years organizing those practices.