In one year I went from a kid dancing in my room with absolutely no connection to the dance community to battling on the World of Dance stage, and it’s all because my brother chose to download Instagram. My parents have a history of being super protective over social platforms or anything dealing with the internet. In middle school, it took over a year to convince my parents to allow me a private YouTube channel. So when they found out that my brother had secretly downloaded Instagram without telling anyone, he was definitely in trouble. However, what happened next was surprising, because shortly after, they told me “It wouldn’t be fair if my brother had it all this time and I still wouldn’t be allowed to have it at all”.
So there I was a sophomore in high school, scrolling through Instagram when a certain post caught my eye. World of Dance had just announced their event happening March 27th in Anaheim at the House of Blues. I remember watching viral videos made by World of Dance as a kid, seeing my favorite dancers on stage, doing moves I had never seen before or even thought were possible. World of Dance has been a huge inspiration for me since elementary! Despite my initial excitement, I almost didn’t go to the event because I noticed a lot of the performances that were being featured were team routines and I was more interested in freestyle dancing. However, before I had a chance to decide, my dad had already bought the family tickets.
The day of the event I wasn’t sure what to expect. I could see the rich blue background displaying the words “World of Dance” highlighted by the grand stage lights. Illuminated from underneath, were these teams embodying the space, who hit every beat, and whose movements were so sharply coordinated that you could easily tell they’d been practicing on this one performance for months! I wasn’t amused. It was only when I saw this small dim room on the left side of the main theatre wall that my interest peaked. There was a significantly smaller crowd, together they formed a circle, and their attention was all drawn to the center. It was a cypher! People took turns dancing in the middle to freestyle to random songs played by the DJ. The key here is that you must freestyle and adapt to the beat that is being played. It’s the true expression of yourself and your own mind through the medium of the music and movement rather than just following a script or copying a move invented by someone else. It’s this freeness that interests me so much in freestyle dance, but you must unlock it first.
I was someone who hadn’t unlocked it. True freedom means you are expressing yourself, not changing yourself for the crowd. Even though my movement quality was decent, 90% of freestyle dance is beyond the moves. The real challenge is mental. When I walked into that room I already knew I wanted to dance in the middle. I saw these great dancers I’d never seen before throw out these amazing freestyles in the middle, but the more I saw how good everyone else was, the more my self-consciousness overflooded my determination. I started to overthink everything. Suddenly I caught at the corner of my eye someone who looked familiar. His afro is what immediately stood out from the crowd, it had highlights at the top to make an outline of yellow around his original black hair, and directly underneath was a white bandana wrapped around his forehead. He wore yellow-tinted glasses, blue leather Nike shoes that could’ve been brand new, and a t-shirt that was coincidentally the same as mine. Then it struck me! He was CJ Rey! During quarantine when I binged dance battle videos, I saw him battle dancers like Velo and Fikshun in Battlefest and he is one of the big reasons I decided to take dance seriously. Although most people you ask wouldn’t know who CJ Rey is, to me he was a celebrity.
If that original mental pressure wasn’t enough I now had a celebrity in the room with me that could watch me mess up at any moment if I danced in the middle. There was no shot I was going to perform in front of all that, in fact, I was too shy to even say hi to CJ, so I pretended I didn’t know him, that I didn’t know how to dance, and I just stood there watching as opportunity faded away. My mom had other plans though. When she saw that I wasn’t going to talk to CJ she pushed her way through the crowd and forced me to take a picture with him. I was so embarrassed, but it helped me realize something. After actually talking to CJ and seeing how chill he was, I was less nervous. There was something about taking that first step to do something I was uncomfortable with, that created this momentum within me that called for me to keep going. My mom had made that first step for me but the next one called upon my own courage.
Quite literally I just took a step forward from the back of the crowd telling myself I didn’t have to dance but at least walk one step forward. One step led me into the next step and then into the next and before I knew it I was standing right in the middle of the cypher. The wall of strangers now surrounded my every direction and as if I hadn’t been dancing for 8 years, my body became drunk with nervousness. This feeling was way different from dancing in your room. I’d forgotten everything I knew, I almost fell at some point, and my movement had a mind of its own that I couldn’t control. When I was done I knew it wasn’t my best work but I was proud for overcoming that mental barrier that seemed so tall before. As the day went on I spent the whole time in that small room not paying attention to any of the main performances. I got to dance many more times in the center, meet new people who danced just like me, and felt for the first time what it was like to be a part of the dance community.
While I was sitting in the car on the way home that night I was still so hyped to have been there. This was the first dance event I’ve ever been to and it was such a impactful experience that it forever changed me to chase more moments like that. The next day while I was posting some of the footage I had collected from last night, I got a notification. I checked to see who had messaged me and it was CJ Rey! I was geeking out because this was the equivalent of a celebrity messaging me through my eyes. I clicked on the message, and read his text, and my heart dropped. He was asking me if I had a teacher. Was he implying that he was willing to become my teacher? I texted back that I was self-taught and then just as I had anticipated, he asked if he could be my teacher!
I’ve only ever been to World of Dance twice and the second time was on stage. After CJ became my teacher he had many connections to the dance community that allowed me to keep pushing my dance forward. CJ had hooked me up with two dance battles and my second one had caught the attention of someone who worked for World of Dance. Since CJ had a connection to World of Dance they asked if he could host a rematch of my second battle on the main stage. In the time span of a year, I transformed from an audience member gazing at the World of Dance stage to the one actually dancing on it!
I’m so grateful for having been given such plentiful opportunities all of which I could’ve never planned for. Reflecting back, I was quite literally just a kid dancing in my room, training every day with such passion and determination to become the best version of myself. Keep in mind that if my brother had never secretly downloaded Instagram, my parents would’ve never let me download it myself. If I never downloaded Instagram, I would’ve never seen the post about World of Dance. If I had never seen that post, my Dad would’ve never bought tickets. If my Dad never bought tickets, my mom would’ve never forced me to take pictures with CJ. If my Mom never forced me to take pictures with CJ, I would’ve never found the momentum to take my first step. And if I had never taken that first step, I would’ve never ended up dancing at the center of the cypher that night, CJ wouldn’t have seen me dance, he wouldn’t have become my teacher, and I wouldn’t have battled a single person up to this day, especially on the World of Dance stage.
I prayed every day about how badly I wanted to achieve this dream and without me knowing, God had created that path for me. To achieve a dream that seems out of reach, does it take luck or hard work? Both; and if you don’t have any luck it takes a relationship with God for a path to be made.
Pstttt… If you’re curious, this was my battle at World of Dance: https://youtu.be/PfguRkYFjm0?si=EaZr56Zwnj00ATg1
Also, this is my Instagram… I’m curious as to how I’ve progressed to the future generations who read this: @singular8y_dance_
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