Whether it is choreographing or putting together a presentation, watching other people’s works has always had an interesting influence on my work. I am quite ambivalent about it; sometimes it brings inspirations but also often an unpleasant guest, insecurity.

Owing to the supportive class environment, I did not feel much of the latter sentiment today while I watched Daniel, Anna, and Eliza’s works. However, while Eliza’s work inspired me to actively use mirrors as a prop, Daniel’s work allowed me to see a different interpretation of the assignment, the proposition. He oscillated between the two extremes of voguing and postmodernism throughout the entire dance, but for the most part of the dance, his movements were a hybrid of those two, notably his minimalized duck walks. At that point, I had almost separated voguing and minimalism into two sections in my choreography, which I utilized as an embodiment of Medea’s emotional dilemma between animalistic rage and morality/common sense. I didn’t necessarily feel like my work is wrong, but their various takes on the assignment lent me the eyes to review my own work with a refreshed look. Why was I really trying to separate voguing and postmodernism, and why did I choose each style to represent the two polar feelings of Medea?

Then, I began to lose confidence in my work, in a way that is totally unrelated to how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it is. I was unsure whether the connections I made between Medea’s inner chaos and the dichotomy of voguing and minimalism made sense. With so much knowledge I have absorbed in the past few days, I am yet to conclude to an answer. Some connections are obvious whereas some aren’t, as the complex layers hidden underneath reveal. But, I will figure it out as I continue working on my piece. Although it made my choreographing process more complicated, I am glad that I have had the opportunity to question myself and consider what have voguing culture and postmodernism movement meant in a historical sense, beyond mere stylistic differences in their movements.