During the time I injured my ankle, my high school had this event they were organizing wherein they needed dancers to perform. I wanted to dance so badly, but couldn't have possibly done that because of my condition, so I ended up being the choreographer/person-in-charge of the group of performers. The event went really well—the dancers were even requested to perform at another school—and they hugged me afterward and said, "Thank you so much, Jenn! We couldn't have done it without you!" and I had mixed feelings right at that moment. On one hand, I was so very proud of them for nailing the performance, but on the other hand, I couldn't help but think, "I should have been the one standing on stage. It should have been me who got invited to perform." I know I wasn't supposed to think that way, but my mood just dropped further when one of my favorite teachers asked me, "Jennifer! Why didn't you perform today?" and that was just.....................ugh.
However, I can proudly say that ever since I started working as a choreographer/dance instructor, I have been able to deal with those feelings of jealousy and non-acceptance of not being able to dance on stage all the time all thanks to one little incident that happened in Easter time.
So what happened was...
My high school teacher asked me to help her sons and a few of their friends prepare for an Easter dance competition, which was something I had never done as I only taught normal classes before. The first day of class wasn't all too good, as only one of the students attended, but we made it work. I'm not going to lie, teaching the kids was kind of tough and frustrating on my part—at one point my teacher even offered to raise my pay to keep training them—but I just squared my shoulders and did my best.
I always had this one thing in mind (and I still do to this day) that I got from my instructors back when I still attended a dance academy, which was "When it's time to dance, get serious or get lost; save the fun and games for when you're done with class." So when the students goofed off a lot during practice, I had such a hard time keeping my temper in check and taking control of myself, because as much as I was angry I had never ever laid a hand on any of my students and didn't ever want to do that, definitely not when their parents were watching the rehearsals—the most I did was raise my voice at them and made them practice over and over again, drilling them to get every single thing, down to the details, perfect.
By the third day or so of teaching the students, I had honestly given up all hopes of them winning the competition (again, I know I wasn't supposed to think that way, but you should've just gone to one session, and you'd understand how I felt), and I remember praying, "Lord, I don't even know what's going to happen to my students on the D-Day. I just want to pray to ask for strength to teach them, patience to deal with them, and most importantly, I want to ask to You to please watch over them on competition day so that they can do their best. It doesn't matter if they don't even reach the Top 5, please watch over them, Lord." because I was at such a loss.
Flash forward to competition day on Easter, I couldn't go see them because I had my own plans, so I spent the whole day thinking about how they did because none of them or their parents had notified me yet. By that point, I was still so hopeless, and I completely surrendered everything to God. Come nightfall, I received a text message from my teacher (shown above), that said, "Jennifer, thank you so much for helping the kids! They won first place at the competition! [she wrote something else that wasn't about the competition.]" and at that moment, I literally felt like I was high or something because my mind was all jumbled with the words "won," "competition," "first place." I was all "PRAISE AND REJOICE IN THE LORD! MY STUDENTS WON THE COMPETITION!" and I cannot even explain the feeling of immense joy I had because I was so proud of my students.
My teacher then told me that my students actually really liked the dance I choreographed for them, because she saw them practicing until late after I went home from every session. When she said that, I was all "Then why didn't the kids show that kind of enthusiasm when I was around?!" but I was also "I don't care if they didn't! They won the competition!" and that was honestly the first time I was able to accept not being able to perform all the time, and be totally fine with it!
What I'm trying to say is, I now realize that it sometimes feels so much better to be known as the choreographer who created a piece instead of always being recognized as a dancer on stage. It took me years to understand, but now I have no problem letting my students bask in the spotlight while I support them from backstage; I now see it as a way of letting them experience the exhilaration of dancing in front of tons of people, which was one of the many things that made me fall in love with dance in the first place. It's not such a bad thing, in my opinion. ;)
See you in the next post,
Jennifer W.
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