Back to the Stage.

Yet another year has passed in my life. This year my birthday weekend was made of three great dance nights with many amazing dances, a win in a dance competition, performing a Zouk choreo, birthday brunch with dancer friends, good work-outs, surprise flower delivery, lazy mornings, wonderful Australian birthday-dinner, legendary AFL match, and much more.

Photos by Alex James Jackson and Min Wye Chan. Video by Alex James Jackson.

Going back to the stage with our Zouk choreography was again an exciting experience. It has been five months since last time we did the choreo with Michaelo and it was great to notice how much both of us have been going forward with our dancing. It was so much easier to get the flowy feeling we were trying to achieve last time. Even though during the performance I felt like my technique was failing pretty badly (especially because I couldn't spin in the sticky floor), it didn't really show that much outside and I was happy to the extent I was able to bring my real emotions into my performance. Showing genuine emotions in a dance performance is apparently something new here. Some in the audience were quite confused seeing me cry, but many came to tell me how much our emotions touched them.

I think there are two sides in performing: the technique and the feelings. If one of those are missing, its only half way there. Many dance performances are about showing some cool and exciting moves, tricks or lifts. Those are sometimes impressive to watch, but the best and most inspiring performances are about telling a story and making the audience feel something. Those are the kind of performances that give me the chills and reach my heart. I couldn't imagine myself performing a choreo that was emotionally 'flat'. In every performance I want not only to act the emotions, but really feel and live them through. I smile because I feel the happiest person in the world, and I cry because I feel heart-broken. I don't like putting on a fake smile nor can I force myself cry. The extreme emotions are one of the best, though sometimes the toughest, things in performing.

One dancer told me the other day that it is not Brisbane dance scene that has spoiled me, as I wrote in my previous post, but that I have spoiled the dance scene here. I know that I dance differently, more open, with my feelings and emotions attached, and that is not something dancers usually do here in social dancing. It would be amazing if I was able to leave some kind of influence here; that dancing is something more than figures and moves. On top of technique and rules, dancing is about connection and feelings, and this goes to dancing socially as well in the stage.