In Pursuit of Nuances

What do I find sexy?

I find courage very sexy.

I find a sense of knowing who you are and what you want in life very sexy

I find determination (and a certain track record of achieving things) deeply compelling. Throw in an independent mind and heart and you’ve got me floored. 

And above all, I find a sense of relaxed openness, a tranquil sort of calm but steely demeanor, a certain richness in the authenticity of conversation oh so sexy and incredibly appealing.

What I don’t find sexy?

1. Extravagance. First dates have historically been a bitch for me because I’ve had to dress up and play into a part of some stupid socially constructed courtship protocol / fantasy. While I agree I don’t have to play into this, the reality is…once I’ve said yes to that sort of date, I’m compelled to perform my part. The performativity of first dates…hmm. I prefer a first date ‘experience’ vs a first date ‘extravagance’; the former is personally tailored and thus, is far more memorable. 

2. “Formulas”. Please oh please don’t play relationships out by GQ’s What To Do and What Not To Do. There’s no formula to courtship OR a relationship. What I HATE most? Those stupid “10 Signs that a Guy Likes You/ Wants to Bang You/Wants to Marry You/Wants to Break Up with You”.  You know it if the connection is real; you just do. Get in touch with YOU.

3. Clinginess. I’m not your life saver. I’m not your mom. I’m not that person who’s about to change your life for the better. You do that YOURSELF. Sharing your life with me and being completely unable to make ultra personal decisions about your own life are two totally separate things. I’m very aware of my own folly when it comes to “ultra-sharing” (thanks Twitter and Facebook and text message and my hyper email ADD). I’m very aware of the fact that most women do love to talk about their lives (me included) and try to include others in it as much as possible. I’ve swung between the cold, distant ice queen and the warm, huggy, “I want to be there for you!” partner.  But there is a fine line between inclusion and effectively disengaging with your partner because they’re in your life SOOOOOO much.

4. Labels. In my vision of a perfect world, there is “partner/significant other” and there’s everyone else. But relationships are complicated and  fluid and messy and racy and wholeheartedly difficult yet rewarding; hence we have to acknowledge each other as such. Labels also do, by their innate nature, force you to think about the relationship in a deeper level — the whole “what is this? what does this mean?” thing.  I suggest being completely honest about it and not ‘forcing’ the label. 

I’m emailing all of this to an advice columnist whose article I chanced upon today. I simply can’t stand half-baked relationship advice; really, writers for such beats/columns should really think thrice before they pen down such juvenile, poorly structured, barely legible thoughts.

“Dejected, raw, and undoubtedly cynical. I’ve had my naysayers in the past, colleagues who didn’t care, and people who ultimately thought I was a waste/misfit/not “good” enough/not going about it the “right” way etc. 

Go ahead. Don’t expect to help you when I’m at the top. Because I’m going to be there. I may not be the most talented person in the room but I’m the toughest and I’ll last the longest.”

Posted this on my FB wall today. Last night was so extremely long. I’ve worked shit hard to be in New York, to dance and to live in this city that inspires me so. I have 3 jobs and I work mad hard to make every moment count. Sometimes it’s unbearable. Sometimes I just want to laugh at the futility of it all and give in to temptation.

So I’m a big Tumblr fan. Over the past 3 years, I’ve used various services to create websites, for clients, friends, and personal projects alike. Nothing, in my opinion, came close to the amazing community and simple but beautiful theme offerings of Tumblr. But the team behind Virb caught my eye; they have truly created an amazing web service.

Gosh I feel like such a traitor writing this on my beloved Tumblr blog, but as I’m browsing the customizable themes (optimized for mobile too!), built in site hosting and custom domains (!!!!), even site analytics and store integration (AH!!!!)…all for just $10 a month. Cannot help but go a little goo-goo-ga-ga. 

NOTE: If you are a dancer, choreographer or musician friend of mine, it would be wise to go to Virb to set up a simple portfolio site. For $10 a month, it is so worth it, to have them do all the dirty code work for you. No more having to deal with ugly photos or videos cluttering your web pages! I’ve revived enough half-assed portfolio sites to give you an honest recommendation. #handsoverheart 

To be honest, I’ll probably still stick to Tumblr for a while. I love the community and the awesome diverse community of bloggers here. Tumblr has incredibly talented theme designers and have I also mentioned that I’m a big fan of David Karp??? :)

But Virb triumphs Wordpress, again from the world of my humble experience wrestling/attempting to make peace/customize in a hurry WP sites. They have definitely got my attention and I look forward to trying out their service for clients, friends, and future projects :)

the boo and i went out for dinner last night, albeit our very tired selves. i tried to explain to him why this ritual matters to me: jumping on a chair everyday at 9.36am. i do this everyday without fail; in fact i’ve been known to sleep in till 9.30am and grab a chair groggily to prepare myself to go through this. 

do i fall? all the time. do i hurt myself? yes. do i get scared and chicken out? yes. 

jumping on a chair from sitting on it is a movement i took from one of my favorite Batsheva dance pieces. i got to learn the piece last year from a guest artist/teacher in my department and fell completely in love with it. there was just one movement that i could not do; no matter how simple everyone reportedly made it to me.

jumping on a chair backwards.

astonishing how time flies, and how fleeting the memories seem to be. i can remember, very vaguely, parts of the piece, but the sheer terror, anxiety, and stress of doing this ritual everyday makes, also, the world of dancing, and all the fears and challenges that go with it, a little more real. and also, a little more alive.

this ritual is a reminder to myself that terror, fear and anxiety are very very real…and that going through it and staying present eases it. i have a very pleasant way of forgetting the things that make me me, especially in the midst of life busyness. i tend to forget also how much i do value challenge and how much i used to stray away from the things i loved. resistance is futile in this case :) in a strange way, i think the next chapter of my life will involve many chairs.

thank you uri shafir, the teacher who taught me how to move through resistance and to feel. to really truly feel. 

Recently, I decided to take up the challenge of learning Ruby. It’s a relatively new but robust programming language. The community of startups love it; I first heard about it 3-4 years ago — all of a sudden everyone seemed to be learning it and I found myself caught in my own curiosity.

Why learn this skill set so totally out of my realm of study? I asked myself that too, being that I have no aspirations to be a programmer. I remember studying HTML and CSS and absolutely detesting the markup language.

The pursuit of “bloody Ruby” (as I’d like to call it but my SO would be mortified) is my supplement to dancing. In a way, it helps keep me sane, to have something else to learn, to read up, and to be constantly working on. Being a year out of school, I find my learning curve has stunted somewhat. I get to constantly learning things about/on my job but I’m also no longer exposed to things completely outside of my field. I find while,  my dancing, teaching, and marketing skills have improved tremendously, I also rarely spend time outside of those pursuits.

The vigorous study of philosophy, math, environmental science, gender and sexuality, war theories that I used to commit myself to while being in school? Nada. Zilch.

I truly miss that. It was nice being out of school and having all this time to commit to my craft but it has also made things a little dull. I remember those late nights in the library studying things just to learn about them. And not just reading about them, but truly studying, critiquing, discussing, contributing, creating. That is what I miss. Being a  college student again — learning things for the sake of learning them.

“Bloody Ruby” took me almost 2 days to install (I had to do a bunch of other things just to prepare my good old mac for the programming environment Ruby required) and even then, I still only have Ruby, not Rails installed. I’ve pored all over the interwebs trying to understand why I can’t download 1.9.3 and can only get 1.8.7. 

This is so incredibly embarrassing…it’s actually refreshing. 

1. Visit the UNESCO heritage site in North Korea.

2. Dance everyday for 100 days.

3. Hike through the South of France

4. Perform on the Macky Auditorium stage.

5. Live in New York City.

6. Skydive. Just once.

7. Celebrate my sister’s 21st birthday with her in Turkey.

8. Get my Pilates certification

9. Study physical therapy & dance therapy

10. Take my dad to the Brazil World Cup 2014.

11. Pay off all my school debt.

12. Build a super useful product for the communities I care about

13. Teach at a public high school

14. Visit Indonesian volcanos.

15. Live in Shanghai, China

16. Live in Hong Kong

17. Visit Florence

18. Backpack through Eastern Europe

19. Roadtrip through the US with my Mom.

20. Volunteer/Dance/Teach in South Africa.

21. Draw up my family geneology

22. Make 6x the money I’m making now.

23. Go back to college for a Masters in Dance

so sore, and not the good kind.

this chair is now my nemesis. things back home have been…interesting, to say the least. my holiday diverged into a different form. suffice to say, family comes first.

i’ve never been so torn both leave and stay. i keep asking myself to search for clarity, and i find it, in those barely-woken-up sleepy fleeting moments. i am just now recognizing this very different form of wisdom and i’m asking it to help me, to guide me, to show me that i can go through with this.

getting another chair.

A dear friend picked me up from the Changi (Singapore) airport and drove me almost 124 miles/ 200 km home. Now, that is a friend.

For the record, I flew from : Denver —> New York —> Moscow —> Shanghai —> Singapore. Can you imagine my relief at seeing an ally, walking in the lightest summer dress in 80 degree weather, and my delight at discovering that home hasn’t really changed much at all??? 

The chili pan mee is far more delicious than I remember. The skyscrapers are still imposing but their tenants, a bit more wiry. The flirtatious looks KL is giving me is remarkable and my childhood home, sweet home, looks almostexactly the same! The plants are abundant but my mother has added some lovely new pictures; I’m thrilled to announce that she has also discarded much of the junk we’ve hoarded for almost 23 years. Albeit some interior renovations, it really does look like the home I partially grew up in. We’ve moved quite a lot around the city but I can safely say, this is the only home I’ve ever truly known. It may be poor and sparse, old and blemished, but it’s all mine.

The walls in my room still have paint peeling off! Some of the doors still don’t shut properly! I examined my house with quite some detail, going over every nook and cranny and saying hello. This is strange for one as jet lagged as myself. 

All in all, this has been an amazing first day back, far better than any first day back I’ve ever experienced. The rest of the night, I watched really awful canto drama and japanese game shows with my dad till 4am, just like the good old days :) and then gave this old blog a fresh coat of paint.

hmmm…contented is the sleep deprived me. my mom is awake and i hear breakfast!!!

it’s so nice to know that change is constant. i can embrace the same changes…and the new ones. 

home? .home.

it’s astonishing how much you miss when you’re not actively taking in a dance class. Or conversations for that matter. You easily miss that snippet of wisdom, the nuance of frustration, the hint of a dip in their tone of voice, muffled sigh, downward glance of sympathy…

i need to remind myself to listen. to always, always be open to corrections and input and casual bites of insight. ultimately, the insight and input serve as life lines and warning signs. they serve to remind me of how flawed and tangled my logic can be…and ultimately, how human i am.

recently, i’ve been toying with the idea of moving to new york city. that picture up there is hong kong, the city that i wouldn’t hesitate in a heartbeat to move to. but nyc represents something monumental to me — moving there is a rite of passage . i’d finally understand what some of my teachers have told me…and i’d finally be able to make up some of my own conclusions about the city instead of always relying on a passed down anecdote. my modern dance heritage certainly points towards nyc; it would be so good to see, live, and dance a piece of history vicariously through myself.

4 years ago, if you had asked me to move there from kl, i’d give you a firm “NO”. but this time? i’m waning. i’m longing. i’m unsure. and i’ve never felt this reserved excitement before.

something tells me that i’ll decide on this very soon. and something tells me that my resistance towards moving there is not because of the dance scene or the city or my lack of a social circle… i have these strange reservations that i must dissolve/wrap up before i go. 

truthfully, moving is such a personal experience, especially if you’re still flying solo. whether i choose to move to nyc or not, it will be my decision alone. 4 years ago, i made a painful, selfish, but incredibly personal decision to move faraway from my family and community. whether i decide on nyc as my next resting place? it is no business of yours. strangely…now i’m feeling almost obliged to move there. but why? and gratify who?

i’m making this stance to be selfish once more. it’s unbearably difficult; this time, there is much more at stake. and there are much more whom i will hurt if this move does not go well. also this time? there is no safety net. a city is a city; it is a reflection of you as the person and it has no obligation to love you, no matter how much you lust after it. a city is a city. 

what if i don’t end up moving? i’ll decide on something else then. either way, i’ll find a path.

that said, i’d recommend we all experience moving to a completely different culture at least once in our lifetime. Battling the daily grind, struggling to climb up the ladder/make rent, figuring out relationships in relation to yourself: you can’t get that with merely traveling somewhere.

a dear aussie-bound friend reminded me today of how important the next year and the next 5 years are going to be for me. the next 5 years of my life is when i will truly start to define myself and carve my niche. some say that if you do your twenties “right”, you’ll really discover who you are and what is most important to you. i’ve been told i should take the biggest risks in my life now more than ever, or it’ll be too late.

Too late? 

living my twenties should be like living in the fire hazard zone*. i should be constantly asking myself: if my house/my life caught on fire today, whom and what would i want to save? if a fire were to burn me down tomorrow, what would i want to get accomplished today? 

*not the best analogy perhaps but you get my point. this humble author sheepishly asks for your feedback.

life for me seems to have been one gigantic puzzle, one after the other. i seem to be always spending my time solving puzzles. i can’t always say i’d figure out the solution, but looking back, i’ve come pretty darn close.

Why do I blind myself to sensation so readily sometimes? I have to keep reminding myself to feel alive, to be present, and to fully take in with every pore what is happening around me right now. Awareness is not the word I’m looking for; it’s a certain kind of clarity.

Once, I slept outdoors and opened my eyes at the break of dawn, rested with sleep and looked out at the vastness of pink shadows and orange glow above. I remember feeling so small, awestruck by the fact that this magnificent beauty exists and I could get/have this everyday.

My morbid self seems to think that my heart/brain/lungs will stop functioning at some point without warning me and let me pass away without a fight. These thoughts are morbid. You’ll probably quote me some statistic of how being young and moderately attuned to my health will prevent any sudden bodily death.

BUT. BUT. BUT. If there’s anything the recent cases of two dancer friends almost losing their lives before it was due have taught me, it is that morbidity is necessary. And warranted. 

The gravity of Awe helps me unnumb and relieve much needed sensation. 

Awe. What does that even mean….Awe. Awe. Awe. Awe. (Trying it on for mouth feel and size)

AWE.

That newness of looking out to the world I get everytime I open my eyes in the morning? I make myself take a really deep breath, especially on the days I feel especially panicky. I say a silent thank you to [insert something magnificent] for keeping me alive and able to do this thing called life again. 

Sensation commence. 

Nothing prepares you for a performance.

As a viewer, as a participant, as a performer, as a supporter…Nothing prepares you for a performance.

The past week, I’ve been inundated with thoughts of letting people down,not doing well enough, not living up to my potential, being the shittest dancer you’ve ever seen… I haven’t been enjoying myself performing at all. I’ve thrown up more times than I can count, kept down perhaps 10% of the little I can actually eat, cried at every little kindness shown….In a nutshell I’ve been a wreak. 

I’m not that girl. 

Ordinarily, I’d lap this show up. I’m a performer, to my core. I remember the exhilaration (which I still can not name) of performing in my very first dance exam…and getting a distinction for it. I remembered thinking that nothing else mattered more than just dancing in this very moment…and the grade can go dump itself in a French ditch. I remember my two most poignant solos to date and how earnest I felt, how much I soared, and how nothing at that moment could take me away from me.

Dancing is the one place I know. There is nothing that I instinctively love more than movement and there is no place in the world where I feel more alive. Dancing with other bodies in space is magnificent — there’s nothing like that energy.

Performing though…it’s different than just dancing. It commands so much more commitment, so much more resilience, and so much more love.

Nothing prepares you for the nerves, anxiety, excitement, jitters, collisions, fits, and the sheer stress of performing. If I had to equate it, performing is like demo-ing a product that you can’t ever test 100% ever in front of all your investors and customers. The stakes are high. 

But to be fair, my amazing therapist says (BLESS YOU BROOKE!!!): performers have an edge. The show is already done. All those hours and hours of performance..the work is done. I’ve already gone through the trauma, the joy, the bloody melancholy… triumph… regret, grief, and fear.

The show is in the space right now ( HI SHOW!!!!!) and it’s going to be so amazing and tear jerking, I can just feel it!!!!!

It is 2pm, 5.5 hours before the show. I know at this point, I’ve done every little/medium/grande sized thing I can to make this show a wonderful one. I know at this point, brute strength is only going to take me so far. I’ve invested wayyy too much in this and not enjoying myself would be a plain shame.

So, when I walk in there tonight, I’m just going to participate in every moment fully. I am going to breathe. So very deeply. Allow every movement to be preempted by breath. I am going to remember that no matter what I do tonight (throwing up on stage in public included) I will walk out of there and still love and accept myself. I can promise you I am going to do my best, I am going to be incredibly present, I am going to give and receive so much love from my fellow performers, and everyone I know will get the biggest hugs!!!

Dancing in my Skin is going to be magnificent.

Who the fuck is kidding. Love is fucking tasty. Not like Crisco tasty - though that is…damn..tasty - but like “fuck is that Raw & Organic ? Damn I should have some of that everyday” tasty. No Matter where it comes from, love makes you say fuck with passion, and anything that adds some spice to my Fucks is fine by me. And no, love isn’t complicated. Flying internationally is complicated. Tearing open heat sealed clamshell packaging without getting Wrap Rage is complicated. Love is a fact, like gravity. The first time you fall you say “FUCK that hurt but okay cool… good to know that’s there”. 
You fall, you get back up and guess what, you master gravity by learning to walk. Don’t treat love any differently. Don’t complicate it and don’t put it on a pedestal. It isn’t etherial, it is like soil. And that is what makes it so fucking special. 
So the next time someone says they love you, fucking get over it, they are just stating facts. And facts are fucking tasty.

- Credits to Jadd. 

Today marks a new chapter. 

photo credit here

inexplicably overwhelmed by sadness now. enough nostalgia for city lights and familiar faces has been gnawing at my skin. picking the dry crackery skin off the edges of my toes and fingers with my fingernails until it bleeds; reading tash aw or any kind of books about home make me go to an edge. 

i don’t recognize loneliness until it’s too late. perhaps that’s why i’ve never been tempted to discard gifts or mementos that remind me strongly of a person. these artifacts hold memories, they are place holders for memories and they safeguard those few seconds of when i connect my soul to yours. i don’t think i could ever be that sort of person who has but 15 items in the world to their possession. what about letters? what about coin purses that hold your grandmother’s scent? what about your grandfather’s worn out eye glasses that are still sturdying on although they are no longer being used daily? what about the carefully treaded pages of a book from a friend you haven’t and won’t see for a very long time? 

URGGGHHGHGHGHGHGH. i can be such a childish jerk sometimes. but really, it’s somewhat pleasant to know you’ve haven’t changed, at least not that much. i still note the important events of my life with songs and i still can’t imagine life without dancing. but gosh, it feels as if i’ve grown up far too fast, far too keenly…the simultaneous piercing anxieties about childhood and adulthood. 

sentiment is again, a feeling i don’t see coming until it starts to overwhelm my entire body. it shifts into first gear, resides in my bone marrow and white blood cells. like antibodies, it releases, shudders and trenchantly shoves me that truth that something is wrong and that i have to grieve for it right now because it is wailing (god awful) for attention that only private heaving sobs in the dark can temper. URGGGHGHGHGH. 

still, farewells are always temporary; i do believe the people you love will always come back into your life. they have to; how else can we say goodbye with assurance? they say 90% of the present is influenced by your past. i think sometimes i just need to learn how to let go in a less of a heartwrenching fashion. they say our bodies are trusting, full of love - ready to give and receive.  but you won’t know your body’s full capacity until you leave home. 

photo credit here. 

for my fellow kl lang. with all my love. 

Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. 

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love. 

Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.

- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving.

For all those I’ve been so lucky to love and be loved by today. 

(Photo credit: The amazing Drew Levin! I’m not the Asian in this photo btw)

My dance company has 12 days to raise money more for our dance performance in November!!! I hate mass emails myself but we are almost there to our goal of $6500.

Every bit helps! I do want to emphasize that I don’t normally do this and that I understand the impersonality, financial constraints, and abrasiveness of “donate to xyz” campaigns.

Our Fundraising campaign: http://www.indiegogo.com/evolvingdoorsdance2012

The Facts

• Unless you’re in the top 1%, dancers earn less than minimum wage for their art.

• It takes a minimum of $20,000 to put on 1 evening of a dance performance and (on average) 1400 hours of 1 dancer’s time. 

• That’s a lot of money and effort for just 3-4 hours of stage time, at most.

Photo credit: Photography by Heather Gray

 So why do I Dance?

I dance because it’s the only time I feel truly 110% alive. 

• Dance makes me blessed, human, and so so loved. For me, dance is that tangible bit of nirvana, bathed in honey, salt, mint and light. 

• Performing allows me to viscerally touch and connect deep down with someone else — this spark I feel no where else. 

• My dance family! 

• I’m a terrible communicator, probably the shyest fat child you ever saw. Got 100x better at life after dancing.  

Why Dance Matters

• This would take days.

• Suffice to say: Dance matters because it is an agent for social, political, and cultural change. The Arts are CHANGE AGENTS. I seriously could yak your ear off about this (I took a dance degree, trust me when I say I’ve never thought of a better investment for almost $500,000) but check out this video instead. 

So Why Support My Dance Company?

• Evolving Doors Dance is an athletic and very physically virtuosic company that doesn’t compromise on being ‘real’ . 

• It is very very challenging to dance in this company; I’m being pushed everyday to a level of vulnerability (both physically and emotionally) that is almost too painfully revealing of my own flaws at times. But by doing this, we take our art to a higher level. 

• We work our asses off! And balance a gazzilion jobs just to fund our love of dance.

Please support the Arts (and me!) !!! I’d be extremely grateful if you could contribute to our fundraising campaign. 

Right here : http://www.indiegogo.com/evolvingdoorsdance2012

• We won’t disappoint!

• I’ll give you the BIGGEST BEAR HUG EVER. 

• Also, there’s a good chance that this is my last performance in the States. I’ll be returning home for personal reasons soon. Come? Say yes?

• This is just ONE FOURTH of our performance costs. 

Okay, now, to leave you with a quote that encourages me to live my life to the fullest:

‎”Make Art. Make Art fearlessly and marvelously on behalf of all those who’ve been deprived of any future. By doing so, we ensure our own.” 

- I paraphrased that from Jonathan Keifer :) 

Phew. This is bloody difficult for me. But thank you so so much for reading and listening.

To donate to our IndieGogo campaign, go to this link: http://www.indiegogo.com/evolvingdoorsdance2012

melancholy drifts in the mornings where i wake up alone and long to be held. smiles are one of the best things a camera can capture. immortal, and lucrative in its rights. and sometimes, the picture of his smile is the next best thing.