At the beginning of my junior year, I started to pick up zumba dancing. I've always been in love with latin american dance culture since the first time I watched "Dancing with the stars" on the telly.
Albeit no expert at it, dancing has always been a great source of joy for me. Just like singing, it helps me to express myself through the arts.
On march 31st, i was lucky enough to be hosting a public event "a night with vietabroader club" with other club members. VietAbroader club is an organisation of young vietnamese teenagers who plan and carry out projects that benefit the vietnamese students in educational ways. The purpose of the event was to engage traditional vietnamese student to various cultural activities such as Indian hand painting, japanese origami, world arts... I was in charge of the zumba workshop, which represents latin american culture. My job was to dance and try to get the audience to follow my lead.
In order to prepare for this event, I had to learn the choreography to 8 spanish dance songs, record my practice and send it to members in the club who are interested in learning the moves.
During the actual event, the hardest thing I experienced was to get people up on stage to dance. Most of the audience are pretty shy, which is quite understandable. However, I made a point that zumba is not about making the right moves, but taking the effort to follow just for the sake of fun! I managed to get 3 people on stage for the first song, and the number escalated to about seven by the third, with more people hopping up along the way. Finally, the evening was wrapped up with an exciting zumba performance of a full stage!
It was such a nice feeling being able to connect with a totally new community. I guess that's the power of music, it brings people together in the most natural way.
After this event, I feel quite proud about myself and what I have accomplished in the end. I'd performed quite a lot on stage before, but this was my first time dancing, and not only that, leading. It has struck me that just because one is novice to a field doesn't mean one cannot ace it. Thus, I believe that I should test my ability more in areas that are out of my comfort zone to constantly challenge myself towards the better!
