Dance was the one thing which I could never do since childhood, it was due to the chills it gave me to perform in front of public as I was under-confident in myself. However, in grade 11 CAS gave me a chance to take a stand and fight my fears by learning this art. I went thrice a week to learn contemporary dance. It was an amazing experience, I could express my feelings through the lyrics of the songs and also work on my flexibility. The classes improved my dancing skills as well as acted as rejuvenation. The learning outcomes that I achieved were LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4.
LO1 – Pondering upon my strengths, I came across that I could easily express my feelings and emotions through my expressions with or without dancing. Since dancing gracefully required constant changes in expressions, it was easy for me to show the same. Looking at my weaknesses, I had a lot of them. They included, stage fear, being less flexible, grasping the steps and completing the steps properly during fast songs. However, at the end of 3 months, I realised that my continuous effort and consistency has drastically improved my dancing skills, I improved my flexibility, I could dance easily on fast songs too.
LO2 -Â As I previously mentioned, I was very shy, had the stage fear and hence, danced very weirdly whenever it was a compulsion to do. It took me immense courage to start dance classes for the first time. There was a time when people laughed at me in my dance classes and I was asked to stand behind during video shooting. It took me time to accept the fact that it takes time to develop skills and hence, I did not quit. The fact that I continued going to the dance class despite all the insults has made me confident about myself. I have realised that presently, I can freely express myself without worrying about what people are going to say about me.
LO3 – Considering the fact that I went for basketball training everyday, my parents were against of my wish to join dance classes. They felt that it would affect my studies as well as I would get extremely tired everyday. Thus, I had to show them that I could physically and mentally take up so much load. For that, I made a dairy where I wrote my schedule. I tried to manage my time in a way that I did not compromise my studies, as well as do what I wanted to learn. This kind of organization created a trust within my parents, which led them to agree to my wish of joining dance classes.
LO4 – As I mentioned earlier, the dance classes were not so fun in the starting due to the attitude my classmates showed towards me, however, my strong wish of developing new skill made it easier for me to show consistency. Alongside, the constant submissions and different IA’s made it difficult for me to regularly attend my classes however, my habit of keeping a to-do dairy, made it easier for me to attend the classes as well as meet all IB deadlines.
To conclude, my final takeaway is that I should always do what I wish to do no matter what people say and doing something consistently will definitely help in improving the skills. Learning new things always helps the person one way or the other. I plan to continue dancing in the future.
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