Even though I have been dancing my entire life, I did not have dailiness in creating a process. The facts of being the youngest and the fewer life experiences as a dance artist in the cohort are definitely standing a huge wall in front of me. I do not regret my choice and I am excited to see how much I can absorb and grow through the program. Though, I have to admit that coming to the MFA program straight from the undergraduate program would be a challenge. I have to remind myself that this challenge is getting inspirations from amazing, talented cohorts, not take into recognizing my immatureness and fall into self-criticism.

When I look back on my choreography progress, I tend to use choreography as embodying internal struggles so that I always wait to proceed with the process until the ideas come into my mind. It takes a long time to ferment them. However, when I have ideas to work on, I am very spontaneous and open-mind trying them all to find the ‘fit’ in the context. Also, I am lean into concrete presentation than abstract.

In the Choreography Workshop lead by Susan Petry, we are assigned to create 8 pieces (at least!) in about 14 weeks. This is a huge challenge for me. I believe this course will force me to generate ideas within my daily life by keeping my eyes open to every possibility and allow myself to explore, investigate, analyze, and fail them. Because there is no time to ferment the ideas!

It would be great to have a “plan” to tackle this huge assignment, although holding on to the authority to make the task right and using space and time efficiently along with a plan might limit myself. I have to keep going and let the decision to make, not me deciding what to do. Letting go of the control and allow the freedom to play which I will get messy and repeat trials and errors. To learn how to make the balance to manage myself in this short period of time would be one my goal.

Also, this is related to my habit of controlling, I am always scared to show the work in progress which is raw and vulnerable. For me, I’m very affected by others’ eyes, opinions, thoughts. What if the audience did not get the intention of my work? What if they take it as offensive? What if they think my art is worthless? So many what-ifs. I get scared to show my works because most of them are sharing the private experiences. However, I would like to practice to trust the community and let the fear go.

I hope this journey through the program will help me develop and obtain a deep understanding of my identity of art-making. Let’s do a trust fall to the MFA program!!