Traveling to China last summer, I had no clue what to expect. The project I had joined was brand new. I taught two workshops as part of the trip. One was entitled "Movement Discovery," based on my dance composition class spring semester of my first year. The other was a basic jazz technique class. The trip was continually an inspiration. We were breaking down cultural barriers as we exchanged aspects of each our homelands.
Never had I led a dance camp before, let alone a dance camp to students who speak an entirely different language. To begin with, I have a hard time standing in front of people and speaking. This camp has been as much a task in me learning to face my fears as it is in trying to get these kids to feel comfortable moving in their own bodies. It has forced to me to step up and out of my comfort zone so much.
Rebecca, our fearless leader, showed a really good TED Talk during her workshop, which advocates "faking it until you become it." The speaker, Amy Cuddy, reveals that she was in a really bad accident that completely altered her life plan. She was forced to drop out of university. She worked her way back up the ladder, though, and would go on to be a profound speaker and professor. She describes how she felt like she didn’t deserve to be in the position she had earned, how she felt like she was faking it and that everyone around her would be able to tell. She was feeling so out of place that she almost quit. The lady who hired her wouldn’t allow it. She told her that she was going to face those students, suck it up and fake it. So Cuddy did.
She faked it until she realized she wasn’t faking it anymore.
Some of the other camp leaders and I tried to discuss the logic of the video in a conversation one day. One leader didn’t agree with the fact that the speaker was instructing the audience to be something other than their true selves. I definitely agreed with him, but I wanted more. I came to the conclusion that while we tell ourselves we’re faking it all along, it’s just a trick we play on our minds. Like a placebo effect in psychology where someone instructs you to do this fake thing and you really believe it’s the pill, drug or exercise that’s helping you when it’s really just your mind convincing you that the aid is helping you get over your ailment.
We inherently possess the power to do whatever we want, but we get in the way of ourselves and we overthink. So when asked to do something that is totally outside of our normal routine, we feel the need to “fake” it or not do it wholeheartedly. Then, we spend all this time pretending to not know what we’re doing when in actuality we are quite capable.
China is full of surprises. Never in my life had I envisioned myself in the middle of an avenue, leading international children in an impromptu dance flash mob in front of hundreds of strangers who have probably never been this close to a black man in their entire lives. But I did. I’ve learned to put on a brave face, overcompensate with confidence and pretend like these moments are the only ones in the world. If the students had seen us waver with fear and shyness, they would have completely lost faith in us and themselves. After, when we asked them about the experience, all of them had similar responses: “That was the craziest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I’m so happy.” Their worlds are so small. They know school and friends, and maybe an extracurricular activity. I loved our camp so much because we were giving these kids license to a kind of freedom they had never experienced. And what they create, what they take away from this camp when they leave each Saturday is theirs.
During one of the weeks of camp, I remember one of us asked the kids how they defined success. One answer was, “By being better than everyone else”. At first I thought it was an absurd answer, but after thinking about it, I realized that he was right. In America, successful people, more often than not, are the ones who have conditioned themselves to do everything more efficiently and effectively. Why must we measure our success in this way, though? Why isn’t success an intrinsic thing? The parents of these kids are teaching them that it must come from external source–wealth. We met a guy on the train in Hong Kong who told us that his mom made him quit university because it was giving him too many ideas. He was becoming too worldly and not focusing on what truly mattered in life. This conversation still sticks with me. It’s chilling to think about. I wish I could find the man on train again and convince him otherwise.
This summer taught me a lot of myself and it is still underlined by that great TED Talk. I find that what we never fathom is that nebulous moment Cuddy mentions–when our “faking” is no longer faking at all. It becomes habit and we become the thing we’ve been so afraid of. That is where I am right now. I am grateful. For every moment when Chinese and English communication failed us, but the power of dance persisted our synergy and connection. For every game played, every laugh, every meal. I am grateful.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.