Looking back to this season, I started studying again, performed in only two productions, Don Quichotte last December and then Die Grosse Fuge by Keersmaeker in April, went through a few serious injuries.
We learn a lot no matter what kind of experience we go through, and I really learned SO MUCH this year. I learned a lot from my studies of course, but also as a dancer, how to deal with different injuries, how to take care of my body, how to manage fatigue (mental and physical), but the most important of all, how to be fair with myself, the importance of MYSELF.
Since I was a young kid in Hong Kong, I always thought that, since hard work pays off, the best way to achieve is to keep working hard. For me that was the only and best way. However, at this point of my life, I just realised that, yes hard work certainly pays off, but overworking is fatal too. It's not because you work harder that you will get better results. At a point, I have to be fair to myself, give myself some "me-time", and work little but intelligently. Overworking on my studies would drive me crazy and bring me to a burn-out and similarly, overworking on my body in ballet would not give me good results because my muscles will get saturated and can't let me perform correctly.
Another book that I read taught me a lot about how to deal with people. Indeed, it happens that it is a very important point to master, whatever we are doing in a society. As a perfectionist, way of being that partly comes from the ballet discipline, I wanted to satisfy everybody and hoped that everybody would like me. Today, I realised that no matter how hard I try, it's simply impossible. Not only this is impossible, every effort that I put to make the others like me leads me to failure. I believe that being kind is essential, it's not a matter of kindness, sincerity and other qualities that we all should keep. It's a matter of priority and reality. Reality is that no matter what you do, there will be people who hate you and that trying to satisfy them should not be our priority.
Never fear failure but rather fear not trying, because we'd always learn something.
I have one important project coming up. I don't have any expectations regarding the results, I feel excited to live it through and to learn from the experience.