“Unlike my other students that receive proper dancing training, you guys seemed to be more open-minded and not afraid of trying new things that made me feel… wow.”

(not exactly the words that Professor Trajal said, but somehow close enough.)

After watching all the people who performed in the class today, Professor Trajal put this as his final comment. It may seem like a normal sentence that just randomly popped up, but I would definitely consider as a really big compliment to us.

As I am one of the professional dressage riders in my country, I feel exceptionally attached to these words. Any kind of sports, as in general, value the rule/principle a lot, since they are mostly competing on physical strength. However, there are a few of them, such as figure skating, gymnastics, and equestrian, involving “aesthetics” as a judging element on the overall performance. Among all the equestrian sports, there are two categories that match this requirement— vaulting and dressage. Of course, a certain number of the movements have been assigned to us for the course arrangement. But, the way how you combine and represent them, it is the your and your partner(horse)’s choice. It happened really often on dressage riders to not break the “rule,” and decided to go in a safe way. We are scared to add new things into our composition, and end up a result that the judge may not appreciate how we show and give us a low score. Because the score is the judgment of winning for us, I personally feel this kind of worry is somehow reasonable for the athletes.

How about dancing specifically (not to mention about the dance sport)? Yes, I believe there must be some rules to differentiate each category of dancing, but the standard of considering the dancing workpiece is good or bad? I don’t think so. People who have foundations about a particular type of dance, it seems easier for them to stick themselves in that dancing’s aspect, which somehow limits their potential if they need to elevate themselves to another level. Creativity should be the emphasis instead of the original principles while in art pieces. And since most of us in our class does not really have a strong background on dancing, we are not afraid of putting things that supposed to be outside of the box into our choreography. For Professor Trajal, it is really wonderful that he can see our work as an appreciation of “breaking the rules” and an opportunity to present each of uniqueness in front of others.