I just finished the Gatsby Styling Dance Malaysian Finals. The dancers are college students that win a chance to represent Malaysia at the Grand Finals in Japan this February.
For me the arts are amazing. Whether I deal with music, dance, art, fashion, acting or anything that deals with the creative industry it always opens your eyes and teaches you something. Sometimes when I sit back and observe what is happening around me I catch a glimpse of something that I always knew and understood but actually seeing the life lesson happen right before your eyes just cements the fact and drives it home.
The kids that participated in the dance competition had one goal and that was to win. No one enters a competition to lose. In their warm up, preparation and rehearsal I watched how each of the eleven teams handled themselves. They each had to prepared 2 x 3 minute dance routines.
As they sat and waited for rehearsal some of the teams still had not completely figured out their choreography, others sat cooly talking among themselves and one of them was sat listening intently to music and obviously running the routine through his head, every once in a while doing intricate hand movements.
During rehearsals on stage I watched them go through their routines. Some just walked through preferring to keep their best moves for later (somehow we Asians love to do the hiding-the-best-for-last thing), some fumbled their way through and one powered his whole routine intimidating and impressing his audience.
After that it was the wait for the show. Backstage some were doing warm-ups, some were still touching up their routines and one after warm-up sat still listening intently going through his dance routine in his mind, oblivious to anything around him, staring straight ahead doing the same hand routines.
Well it was pretty obvious who won. Jackson Chua (the ONE person in my story) had every intention to win this competition. He came prepared with routines that had obviously been rehearsed a few hundred (if not thousand) times. Hand movement and facial impressions perfected to an art. Impeccable timing. His drive and focus were predominant throughout. Some of the others tried their best but I guess their best wasn’t good enough.
We all have different expectations and “best levels”. But if you go through life saying, “ok, that’s good enough” or “nevermind it’s ok” you won’t win, you won’t achieve your highest potential. Just ok is never enough. Your success is determined by how much effort you put in, how focused you are and how much YOU want it.
Like I’ve always appreciated that creative talent is God-given. You can try to sing, dance, draw all you want but if you don’t have it ,YOU DON’T HAVE IT. You can’t buy it, you can learn it to a certain extent and you definitely cannot force it. The arts are about feeling things around you, small observations magnified, then taking all this and being delivering it so that the audience feels it, believes it, relates to it. So it has to be perfection or no one will understand what you are trying to impart whether it be dancing, playing music, singing, acting, drawing, writing or anything else that communicates.
That is why when you watch a dancer with conviction, a passionate singer, a television program that moves you, a painting that takes you breath away you know that these are people who have taken the effort to practice, focused on what they have to do and successfully reached out and touched you.
God gives you the talent, what you do with it is up to you. You can put in the effort and hone the talent or don’t do anything and waste it. Magic happens when you make it.
Peace, Love and Respect
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