Chase Across the Floor

Hammer and River bring Tibetan dance to a Jazz battle, May 2026, Nanjing

The Chase

By the last night I had developed preferences in my dance partners, and would try to get my favourites to dance with me. One way to do this would be to "chase" — noting where your mark is and to dance gradually closer and closer to them so that eventually when the song ends you can hop over next to them and proposition. I chased Shasha around the place but gave up when she succeeded in hunting down Elisha, our Coach, and danced two dances with him. 

I asked in a meditation if God was on the dance floor, I should be chasing him as hard as I tried to chase Shasha. My interior spiritual director interjected, "but wouldn't Jesus be chasing you instead?"

"How can I be chasing Jesus and have Jesus chasing me at the same time? Wouldn't we find each other trivially and have a straightforward placement in the very next dance?" and my brain smouldered from the overthinking.

The Good Dance

After failing to get a dance with Shasha, I redirected my chase to a classmate I met during the day's workshop, this was Cynthia, an exchange student from Philadelphia with whom I had amazing dances earlier. Her game was a low forward stance, intense eye contact, and a look on the face gleeful and almost to the point of frenzy.

Trisha asked me what made me decide if a dance was good. My answer to the second question was "emotional connection". Cynthia's strong eye contact game was reassuring to me, although it could be off-putting to another person. I hear it said very often by other dancers that they valued good technique and clear signals. For me, on the other hand, the best dances came with minimal technique and a whole lot of Silly, a shared lexicon of in-jokes and cultural touchstones of the depth and variety like one shared by siblings who grew up together in childhood.

Surrender

This is on the fabled point in an endeavour where you have reached the end point of your mojo, said "fuck it", and then performed better than you ever would have up to that point. In Vietnam I had hit a wall, but still carried on swimmingly with the marine biology theme. In Nanjing this week Marsha "surrendered to the music" in the middle of her solo competition. I found a new way to surrender which was to surrender to the follows. I have a new appreciation for follows who turn out not to be passive participants in a dance, but come with their own mojo stowed in the backpack and are not afraid to use it.

Good follows go as far as to volunteer to cover for my own fallen nature. At one point, after I almost trip over my own foot, the follow took over the controls — not switching, but leading the dance from the shotgun seat. I dug it, but I imagine they were quite pissed they had to do it!

There was a celebrity follow who hyped up my game at Shim Sham. Thank you! My ego liked it very much.

Hyeon and Jay — for the hype

Self-abandonment

That being said, a lot of whether a dance turns out good or bad depends a lot on the follow I happen to dance with. Together with the fact that my mojo vaporises once I am aware that someone (other than my dance partner) is watching me, these are reasons why I did not hit the floor as a competitor this round.

I came to realise that, just as I mirror my follows' energy in a partner dance, I do the very same in my romantic relationships, and it was unhealthy. I tell myself "I will go where you go" (Ruth 1:16) and "be all things to all people" (1 Corinthians 9:22) and land outside my comfort zone all of the time, when at the same time the exes did not do the same back to me. This was a fast way to lose myself in a relationship, over and over again.

Is there a way to simulate a more positive dynamic in a partner dance, for argument's sake?