Dance Your Feelings Away

PART.14 Dance Your Feelings Away

Performing and interacting with the audience taught me how to engage attention, which is something I often think about after I started working in the film industry. How do I tell this story to keep the audience engaged through all kinds of emotions, at the exact intensity, exact time, in the exact way I intended it to go. I like having that power, the power to influence their mood, their attention, and mess with their heads and hearts. I found it interesting that I could engage the audience in a way that tells a story, even with an unfamiliar medium, dance. 

I also enjoyed being feminine. I never felt very girly growing up. I used to have really thick eyebrows that kids would make fun of me and call me Crayon Shin-chan. I didn’t like that nickname, and I felt self-conscious about the way I looked for a long time. I still feel semi-self-conscious about it now from time to time, but I try to pull myself out of that spiral. 

When I danced, I felt comfortable, playful, happy, relaxed and sexy. Sexy, which was also a new thing that I learned from this journey of dancing. I enjoy being sexy, but only when I want to. I enjoy being provocative, also only when I want to. I was so entertained by how people came to my performance for the first time and would get mind blown by how happy and vibrant I could be. I guess you could say my frozen self started to warm up around then. I thought that self was dead, but it was just dormant. With the right environment, which apparently was the safe sandbox I had at Ohio State, the dormant self was growing into something beautiful.

PART.15 Attention High

It was sort of like this high you get from suddenly being exposed to too much attention, or in my case, anxiety, especially when their perception doesn't align with yours of yourself. I was starting to get confused and find myself in a position of always having to explain myself to people, but I didn’t want to. Where I’m from, where I went, what I’m majoring in, where I’m going after college. I did not enjoy college. It offered me an illusion of structure and a sense of direction. I was going nowhere, so I made it clear that I wasn’t. It reflected in my grades. 

After the anxiety, came the exhilaration. It’s like I finally gained the ability to speak, I couldn’t stop talking. I still can’t stop talking, since there are so many things I still want to try and experiment with. Different mediums, different presentations, same themes. I was running the dance team like I was in a school project. I took it very seriously, because I felt I wouldn’t have access to these opportunities to try and fail after I graduate. I felt I was already behind on figuring out myself, so I wanted to try even more, everything everything everything.

PART.16 Jisoo

I met Jisoo one of those days when I was walking down the hall on Morrison 4th floor to my room, which is at the end of the hall. I passed by Wooseung’s room, Danny’s room, and got to my room, and next door was Jisoo’s room. She lived with two other kids just like I did. I don’t remember who her roommates were, but I knew one of them was in ROTC. There was another girl Cassie Bacon who hated that ROTC girl, and always made fun of her when she wasn’t around. I never understood the beef, but I’d listen, since I’d get a good laugh out of it anyway. 

Just walking down that hallway alone was a disorientating experience. You have these Korean boys that went to the same high school in India, Korean girls who were going to high school in San Diego or Jakarta, Art people, language majors, ROTC, RA, me, and Jisoo.  She’s the only person that seemed normal on the whole floor (sorry guys). She made sense. I understood why she’d feel insecure about herself, and it had nothing to do with how she looks objectively in other people’s eyes. I understood that she’d like to break out of her mom’s self-fulfilling prophecy but wasn’t sure how. I understood she liked the RA Dom and even though he found her very attractive, she wouldn't let herself believe in it. 

I spent a lot of time going back and forth with her, answering her questions about her insecurities. Am I ugly? Am I fat? Am I stupid? Am I too much? I said, no. The answer is always, a solid, NO. But after a while, I did get tired of it. Then the topic of going back to Korea for a semester to see if she’d like to move back came up. She said she’d probably meet up with a plastic surgeon and get something done. I know I sounded like a boyfriend, but I was not. I was just being honest, and to be honest, I was not and will probably never will be, a patient person.