Magyar tales 1: 20 years of training vs a bit more self-confidence?

Hi guys, sziasztok, hogy vagy? I am back from Budapest and it has been a fascinating learning experience. I would like to share some of my thoughts, though I have signed an NDA thus I cannot disclose any specifics about the ad (until it airs on the 3rd September, then I will post a link to the ad on my blog), but I can talk about other stuff without revealing any details of the brand or the ad. I missed blogging whilst working away, as it is such a good way for me to organize the many thoughts that pop into my head as I have these new experiences. I will have a series of stories to share with you and in part 1 of my Hungarian (Magyar) tales, I will talk about my brilliant choreographer and what she taught me.

At Korda Film Studios in Hungary

I was hired as a dancer for this advertisement shoot in Hungary and I was working with professional dancers, some of whom have had over twenty years experience. What that means is that they pick up dance routines really quickly and can memorize vast amounts of choreography. I'm a gymnast, not a dancer. None of the moves I had to learn were difficult (like say a one-arm handstand or a back somersault), but it was the sheer volume of it through the workshops and rehearsals that I struggled to pick up. We worked with one of the top choreographers from America (who used to dance for Lady Gaga - they had a massive budget for this shoot) and whilst she was one of the nicest, sweetest person in the industry, boy I must have driven her nuts. For example, she would say, "hmmm I don't like the look of what we have just done, why don't we change the ending so instead of finishing with raising your arms in the air, after the clap, you wait half a beat on six, then we're going to spin around to the right, face away from the camera, raising your right arm - drop your left arm to the side, almost holding it behind your back, then you hold that last pose. You guys got that? Let's go from the top with this new ending." Everyone else just nods and I have this look of blind panic on my face like, whaaaat? Oh shit. You lost me. Now imagine that happening over and over again all day. Aaargh.

To get through the audition for this part, I was given a routine to learn and I was able to practice for hours in my living room until it was totally perfect. But working with a professional choreographer on a project like this, I can only describe it as a moving goalpost all the time (like every few minutes I swear) as she would change her mind, try something different. Or the director would say, "I don't quite like that, they are all too close together, can you change the formation so they fill the space a bit more?" If you have had ten, twenty years of working in dance, then yeah, this kinda thing wouldn't faze you at all. But if you have never ever paid to take a dance class in your life before (that's me - I'm a gymnast, not a dancer), then the words blind panic and confusion come to mind. And of course, the more you mess up, the less confident you get and the more you panic. There was a moment on the first day of shoot around 11:30 am when it was 35 degrees, I was so hot and tired and I just kept messing up again and again - I couldn't have been more frustrated with myself. It sucks when everyone else is getting it right and you're the only one who messes up. It didn't help that some of the dancers were quite unkind when I messed up - yikes, it's not as if I did it deliberately!

Budapest is such a beautiful city

Our choreographer was such a wonderful teacher though, when I made a mistake, I would apologize profusely and she would be like,  "Alex, it's okay, don't worry about it, that's what I'm here for, to help you okay? Now let us go through it again together, you can do this yeah? You're doing so great today, everyone makes a mistake every now and then, it's perfectly fine." She was an inspiring teacher in the sense that she knew how to get the best out of people: she didn't once raise her voice at me no matter how terrible I was, no matter how many mistakes I made. Instead, she reassured me, gave me the confidence I needed and could break down the instructions in a way that I understood. She also did that with other dancers who made mistakes as well - she could have lost her temper with me so many times, but instead she did the complete opposite. The more I messed up, the nicer she became with me to reassure me and that pulled me out of my funk. Indeed, by day two of the shoot, I was filled with a new confidence, believing that I could dance just like the rest of the pros - who needs twenty years of training when I was working with one of the best choreographers in America? I swear, on day two, I was a completely different person - I barely put a foot wrong and was able to keep up with the others. I was amazed at how good I had become in a matter of one day.

Now, there was a lot of intensive training throughout our workshops, rehearsals and the shoot days itself - but did I suddenly become a better dancer in a matter of weeks? Perhaps a little - but it was amazing the transformation between day one and day two: it was mostly down to the change of my attitude, that little bit more self-confidence and self-belief that my choreographer gave me as she held my hand and gave me the permission to believe in myself again despite having had a bad morning. Really, that was the only difference, Am I perhaps simplifying the matter? Somewhat, I can't imagine the athletes who are going to win gold medals at the Rio Olympics are going to triumph simply after an motivating pep talk and a hug from their coaches - no it takes a lot more than that, they need to have a huge amount of talent, physical ability and have worked very hard to become brilliant enough to deliver the goods when it matters. However, I have realized the huge difference a choreographer/teacher/coach can make to the situation: if I had the kind of choreographer who scolded me or yelled at me whenever I made a mistake, I would have fallen to pieces by lunchtime on day one of the shoot. It is so important to address one's emotional needs as well.

My choreographer knew exactly how to get the best out of me.

At the end of the shoot, I thanked her for what she did for me and being me of course, I apologized again for not having been good enough. She was like, "what are you talking about, you were brilliant, you were all brilliant and we all had fun together yeah? It was a pleasure to work with you." Gosh, is it my upbringing in Singapore that denied me this permission to believe in myself when it really mattered? I remember my Singaporean piano teacher when I was kid - she was scream at me, calling me everything from stupid to lazy during the lesson, she found every insult to break my confidence and wouldn't hesitate to hit me if I messed up.Then she would go to my mother to tell her how talented I was at piano, that I was a child prodigy (so that my mother would keep paying her for lessons, but in fairness, I skipped a few grades) - what a nasty two face bitch my piano teacher was. When I finally stopped my piano lessons at the age of 13, I swore to my mother that I would never ever touch the piano ever again and I would do everything I could to forget how to play the piano. That's how bitter I was - and indeed, I never touched the keys of a piano since 1989. Was I any good at it? Probably - I couldn't have passed all those grade exams if I was totally useless. But imagine if I actually had a good teacher instead of a shitty Asian one, who knows what I could have achieved?

Perhaps working with this brilliant American choreographer has made me think, "American culture rocks, Asian culture is so totally fucked up, I fucking hate being Asian" again. Was my choreographer an incredibly nice person? Of course she was, no doubt about that, but she was also a highly paid professional who knew how to get things done. If I had totally disintegrated on set, then it would have delayed the whole shoot. Indeed, I was not the only dancer who had problems on this shoot - a few others did have a range of problems as well with the challenging choreography and our choreographer did whatever she had to do to get us to deliver the product the director needed. It is an incredible skill, a gift she has: she is so good with people, she knows how to get the best out of them. I hate to say this, but it seems that only people in the West have this kind of people skill and it is extremely rare to find anyone in East Asia who would be able do this. My choreographer had two key skills: she was brilliant at dance choreography of course, but she also knew precisely how to get people to do what she wanted them to do. All too often in East Asian culture, we assumed that just because someone is good at something, they would naturally be a good teacher - but as I've witnessed in Budapest, my awesome American choreographer gave us a master class in how to be the best teacher in the world.

Do you know how TV ads are created?

I think my family do realize the errors of their ways when I was brought up in far less enlightened times in Singapore all those years ago. Today, they go out of their way to heap praises on my nephew - I held my face in disbelief when my mother once praised him for eating a bowl of fruit that she had prepared for him. And I'm like, that's not good parenting - that's creating a spoilt brat with a sense of entitlement - like I have always said, Asian parenting is seriously fucked up. You've gone way too far the other way, nothing good can be achieved for praising a child for doing mundane crap like eating a bowl of fruit. Duh. Praise, encouragement and motivation should be used effectively to get the best out of an individual, to make them achieve their full potential, to help them believe in themselves and give them the confidence to do what they are capable of. Don't get me started, I'm just the uncle who lives 8 time zones away. Mind you, I am 40 years old, I'm a rather old man today - I'm not a child, but we're all human at the end of the day and we have feelings that need to be taken care of. My choreographer realized that - she could probably see just how frustrated I was with myself and how that was eating me up instead, causing me to fall apart, affecting my performance and so she was able to address that and fix it. I feel so incredibly fortunate to have had that experience because I can take this away and remember this the next time I face a frustrating experience.

So that's it from me on this. In part 2, I will talk about the pleasures of learning Hungarian vs the horror of learning dance routines. You can probably guess which one I found a lot easier than the other. Thanks for reading, sziasztok!