Everyone was already in place. I could see them lined up through the full-length glass panes as I approached the door. Feet spaced shoulder-width apart and eyes to the front. The clock above the entrance to Absolute Ballroom read “6:40”. I was ten minutes late. The Indian music began to play. I quickly slipped off my shoes and navigated through the rows of people to a free space in the middle. The instructor, with knees and elbows bent, switched from heel to heel, moving her arms in tandem with the bass drum. “This is ‘basic’,” she said. The pace of the music picked up. She began leading us four steps to the right, four steps to the left, all while keeping up the her heel changes and arm sways. “Watch me,” she reminded us. She brought us back to the center, to continue the “basic” motions. She raised her arms and swayed them as she began to scoot forward pushing her hips out to the side with each step. Her movements slowed as the song ended. People walked quickly to and from the water fountain and the instructor walked over to me. “Hello, I don’t think we’ve met. This is your first time at the Bhangra class?” I answered ‘yes’ and explained that I had found out about the class from a friend. “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said through a wide smile. She turned to the class. “Alright. Is everyone watered and ready to go?” A faster song began to play. “Now it’s going to get complicated. Watch carefully.” Following the quickening drumbeat, she sprung up from the wooden floor, her knees fully tucked under. She turned to the side and went up again. As the drumbeat became more frequent she began saving time by twisting her body in the air in order to switch the side she was facing. “Come on! Get those knees up!” She looked toward the center of the room. “Rachel, get those knees up!”
By the end of the one-hour Bhangra session my ponytail was stuck to the back of my neck as if I had just gotten caught in a flash-Pittsburgh-rainstorm. I headed to the restroom to dry my face off. As I took care of my raccoon eyes, I realized I couldn’t stop smiling. The hour of Bhangra, though it was originally meant to be my workout for the day, did not feel like one. Many times during the hour it had felt as if I was back to being my uncoordinated 5-year-old self attempting to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. Many times during the hour I had looked up to see women and men, some three times my age, keeping up with every hip swing and heel touch. Many times I had to stop and restart my motions after realizing I was off beat. Somehow the fact that I was not an expert at Bhangra dancing made me feel elated.
During our time at CMU we are taught to be experts in our fields of study. We spend long hours in labs, studios and lecture halls honing our knowledge. Once we have passed the threshold of being a novice, adding to our acquired knowledge base often becomes easy and even comfortable. It is that first step of building a strong foundation that can sometimes be the most difficult.
Come August 3rd, we will be asked to be novices. Even those who have been through many a CA/RA training will be asked to discover something new and remember what it is like to not be the expert. This will be difficult for many of us. Especially considering that an expert is exactly what Carnegie Mellon has trained us to be. We must enter the situation humbly. As if it’s our first time learning a new dance.
I like this post for many reasons and I think it connects a lot of past posts. Likely many of us at CMU have been able to witness how Bhangra has been a powerful vehicle for people to not just learn new dance steps, but to actually gain new experiences. And ultimately it's not the motions that you take away from any situation, but its that feeling of elation that you get from realizing that you are a novice in many ways.
For me this connects me to what Holly wrote about GTY (greater than yourself). By putting yourself in a position where you are a novice, you are achieving the purpose of expanding yourself. We don't need to succumb to traditional ideas of what is power and success in order to be worthy of making an impact on others; trying new experiences is equally valuable and powerful.
Also the idea of giving yourself. Sharing yourself as a resource to others, not with the intention of helping them replace you, but to surpass you. I think as CAs, it can be difficult but also very real and powerful to acknowledge to our RA staffs when they are excelling and impacting others in ways that ourselves as past RAs had not done previously. I think one of the most important things I want to achieve this year is to instill the confidence in my staff to dream bigger, and have the drive to achieve more than what was done before. That way it's not that they are living up to past measures of what is an awesome dorm, but they instead will have ownership of what they create.
I like this post for many reasons and I think it connects a lot of past posts. Likely many of us at CMU have been able to witness how Bhangra has been a powerful vehicle for people to not just learn new dance steps, but to actually gain new experiences. And ultimately it's not the motions that you take away from any situation, but its that feeling of elation that you get from realizing that you are a novice in many ways.
ReplyDeleteFor me this connects me to what Holly wrote about GTY (greater than yourself). By putting yourself in a position where you are a novice, you are achieving the purpose of expanding yourself. We don't need to succumb to traditional ideas of what is power and success in order to be worthy of making an impact on others; trying new experiences is equally valuable and powerful.
Also the idea of giving yourself. Sharing yourself as a resource to others, not with the intention of helping them replace you, but to surpass you. I think as CAs, it can be difficult but also very real and powerful to acknowledge to our RA staffs when they are excelling and impacting others in ways that ourselves as past RAs had not done previously. I think one of the most important things I want to achieve this year is to instill the confidence in my staff to dream bigger, and have the drive to achieve more than what was done before. That way it's not that they are living up to past measures of what is an awesome dorm, but they instead will have ownership of what they create.