In any new situation, I think one of the most important things to remember to do is to pause, think, and reflect about what just happened. Here are some of the biggest takeaways I’ve gotten out of our events so far. At the end, I have some ways that I think this program could improve next year and perhaps for the two weeks of the program after IDEAS.
Beijing No. 4 Workshops
These workshops were definitely the highlights of our experience here so far. The opportunity to teach and hang out with ~12 very impressive, warm-hearted, and happy high school students is something I will never forget. Even though we only had a short four days with these students, we were able to create this safe space for each student to express themselves through dance while learning about how to connect it with other passions in their lives. United by a common passion of dance, I think each person truly saw how interdisciplinary the arts can be, which was our main purpose throughout the workshops.
After each day, we would gather around with the students in a circle and reflect on the entire day. To demonstrate what the students felt about the workshops, I created a wordle of their reflections and impressions of Dancers Without Borders.
Our friend, Bibi, also recorded video responses from the students right after the workshops ended and we will upload those here once we have them.
Collaboration with local Beijing dancers and artists
This past Sunday, we performed a dance at the Beijing Times Art Museum that we put together with three local Beijing dancers and artists: Nancy, Bibi, and Susu. We danced to the song, “Daylight” by Maroon 5 and let me tell you, it is crazy how we pulled it off (video coming soon). Amazing professional dancer Nancy pulled us all together with a vision and choreography after we struggled to find our footing in the first two practices. Although we performed a piece, It was quite stressful and tiring to put together this dance in four days, especially when we would go through our workshops during the week 9 AM – 3 PM and then work on the dance 3:30-5:30 PM, struggle to find a good place for dinner until 8 PM and then work on the next day’s workshop from 9 PM – midnight or 1 AM.
While I understand the appeal of having workshops and dance collaborations packed into four days and have it be done quickly and efficiently, it is very, very stressful. I am not sure I would recommend this process for next year’s students. Personally, I need much more time to be able to create a piece of artwork that I am proud of. This collaboration was less of a group effort vs. a scrambling to put together whatever we could in order to produce a piece for an unclear audience. Yes, the dance looked okay, but only because one person took charge and we followed. In my opinion, that is less like being put into a collaboration and more like being thrown into a pressure cooker to produce something unnaturally. Despite my happiness of the performance and the fact that I was able to dance, my memories of this collaboration are slightly clouded by the conditions under which we were working.
Speakers
For the most part, I have learned from listening to the speakers of this program. We have listened to people like the head of UNESCO, a Stanford business professor, a UChicago researcher, a law professor from Yale, and many more. Of course, it is difficult to enjoy all speakers. Most are interesting and have great insights into China’s strengths and weaknesses, especially addressing our Western point of view. Others very little relevance to what we are interested in…for example one might not speak at all on arts education/entrepreneurship in China but might spend 2 hours speaking about economic principles and policies that are hard to digest and comprehend over a table when kids are screaming in the corner and music is playing from two areas of the room. Although I can respect a person’s breadth of knowledge, it is ultimately very difficult to have a discussion with someone who lectures over a lunch table.
Additional stresses that occur are 1) the inability to prepare for a speaker when readings are sent out the day before 2) the money associated with these lunch talks (usually a meal can cost 6-15 RMB…while these lunches can be hosted at places 10x that amount from 60-80 RMB). When you only have ~100 yuan per day to spend, an 80 RMB meal is not something you can realistically order and so you might order the smallest, cheapest item on the menu. Understandably, this is a pilot program so nothing will be smooth or perfect and I am continuing to expect bumps along the way. Hopefully things that weren’t accounted for in our original budget (like lunch with speakers and public transportation) can be reimbursed in the future.
Improvements
The biggest things I would say need improvement are budgeting and logistics.
With budgeting, we simply did not take into account how much money these lunches with speakers would take, nor did we factor in the cost of using the bus and subway multiple times per day. Additionally, living in Nanluoguxiang, one of the most central but tourist-y places in Beijing, comes with higher prices for everything.
With logistics, the biggest stress for us is probably the scheduling and quantity of events. From the beginning, we had full days of events planned with no time to get over our jet lag, which made the first 3-4 days exhausting…then we had maybe one free Sunday afternoon to work on our workshops and then immediately started them, as well as the Beijing dancer collaboration, on Monday. Being new teachers who want to do our best to prepare these quality workshops, it is difficult to concentrate on performing a collaboration and also putting together 3-4 extra pieces for a show with no extra time or space. Having more time to put together a piece we could really invest in and connect with and more time to spend with the students in the workshops would have made a more lasting impact on everyone involved.
To be frank, these past two weeks have been so condensed that it is hard to find a spare moment to reflect. Sometimes, we do not know when our next moment of free time will be, since weekends also contain activities, events, speakers, or performances. As a result, we barely knew anything around Beijing besides our hostel in Nanluoguxiang in our first two weeks and could not explore other arts/dance related things happening, like seeing a performance during the Nanluoguxiang Performing Arts Festival or taking classes on traditional/contemporary Chinese dance. It is sad that we seem to have so much to do and such little time to explore/learn for ourselves. However, when we do get pockets of free time, we often just use it to catch up rest/prepare for the next day.
Personally, a better, less stressful situation would simply be to have 1) more time 2) less random events and speakers and 3) more events tailored to the students’ arts entrepreneurial endeavors. We came into this program as all dancers looking to share our passion for dance through interdisciplinary dance workshops across Beijing…and did not expect this program to be so broad. I would have enjoyed much more dance exposure and immersion into Beijing’s dance culture vs. learning about a broad array of subjects like Chinese economics, public policy, experimental music, Shakespeare theater, improvisational acting, and musical production. While I might make connections with Beijing dancers through collaborations like the one we had for our performance, there is simply no time to follow up on them when we have so many of events and speakers of different subjects already planned.
Although it is exposure to different areas of the arts, it is very difficult to get people interested in every area if they have already honed in their passion for one art form. Objectively speaking, yes I can appreciate many of the events that we go to, however, a large part of me wonders if I’ll ever understand more about the field of arts entrepreneurship I am interested in when we have such little time to explore and even less time for our independent projects (~2-3 days) at the very end of the program.