I'm still not really sure what made me decide to move to
Singapore. It was a mixture of boredom and the anticipation of adventure, I
suppose. I had nothing better to do, my prospects of finding a job
post-graduation in the USA seemed slim, and Singapore sounded romantic and
exotic in comparison to where I was in the drab desert of South Texas. So
almost on a whim, I packed my life into two suitcases and moved to other side
of the world - never imagining the heady highs and despondent lows that I would
experience here – all of which would form part of what I now consider to be one
of the greatest learning experiences of my life.
What I encountered in
Singapore left me saddened. It is a culture that still does not fully accept
the arts as a viable career and has yet to grasp the concept of the time,
effort, discipline, and beauty that goes into becoming an artist. I found
myself teaching class after class to students whose parents only allowed them
to attend ballet class once a week. Some of them were painfully talented,
others disgruntled and disrespectful precisely because they didn't want to take
dance classes. Very shortly after my arrival, I fell into a deep depression. I
felt that what I was doing was irrelevant; I was not forming artists, nor was I
choreographing, I was simply teaching classes to children who generally took it
as a hobby or were pressured to do just well enough to pass the annual ballet
exam. I gave the best of myself daily but began to question my purpose and what
I could take from the job as well.
About three months
into my time in Singapore, I was approached by a mother who had sat through her
daughter's first Pre-primary ballet lesson. She had watched me struggle to get
the little girl to make eye contact and to understand my movements. The mother
was intensely apologetic: her little four year- old had autism and experienced
issues with making eye contact and forming sentences. The mother - a young
woman not much older than me - apologized again and again, mortified that her
daughter had disrupted my class. I didn't know much about autism, but I sensed
that taking dance lessons was probably good for the little girl no matter what.
I asked that she bring her daughter back the next week and we would try again.
In the few weeks that followed, I was initially hesitant and nervous because I
wasn't quite sure how to adequately instruct a child in these special
circumstances. However, her mother sat quietly in on every class and helped me
along. I learned to use masking tape to help the tiny dancer find her place in
the room, to snap my fingers when I needed her to focus her eyes, to pick up on
signals which indicated that she felt lost in the studio space and needed
guidance to her spot. Her mother firmly made her practice simple sentences on a
weekly basis: "Hello, Teacher Katherine.", "I want the blue
sticker.", "Good-bye, Teacher Katherine." Suddenly, without
realizing how or why, this little girl has become the highlight of my week. As
the tiniest dancer in the class, she is looked after by the taller girls who
have all fallen in love with her. She is generally the last dancer to arrive
after all my other ballerinas have already taken their places on the studio
floor, but the minute she walks into the room in her tiny pink leotard, skirt,
tights, and shoes, with her hair pulled back into a neat bun on the top of her
head, and an enormous smile on her face, the entire class calls out her name in
excited unison.
Another
learning experience for me began when I was asked to teach one on one classes
to two little three year old sisters. It was an odd request, as at that age one
on one classes are not necessary, but for some reason I agreed. My first lesson
with the two little sisters created a deep impression on me. One of them was
your typical three year- old: she didn't take the class seriously, enjoyed
playing the games, and had her moments of distraction. The other little sister,
however, was the complete opposite. She never made a joke out of my class, but
watched me with luminous, serious brown eyes and copied with precision my every
movement. She had a raw 2 inch scar on her upper right chest and a head of
peach fuzz hair - I discovered that she was fighting leukemia and for fear of
infection her mother didn't want her in a regular class of three year olds. The
scar was a constant reminder of the surgeries and treatments she was suffering
through at a time in her life which should have been made up of innocence and
joy. Perhaps this is why she seemed so mature - she innately understood
something that I probably never would. Not even she knew that she possessed
this wisdom. Every day was a battle and a struggle yet she seemed to live life
to a much fuller extent than any of my other three year old students. She
seemed determined to squeeze each moment out of each ballet class she took and
to never take a single second of it for granted. There were difficult days:
days where her mother would call and say that she was too sick to come to
class, or days where she would be crying uncontrollably throughout the entire
class because (as her mother would explain to me) she had just changed
medications and it was wreaking havoc on her emotions and her tiny body. But
even days like these have been few and far in between. Mostly she seems sturdy
and wise beyond her years and yet terrifyingly fragile at the same time. She
loves the same things that other little girls love: the color pink, monkeys,
smiley face stickers, and twirling on tip-toe, and yet she remains in a league
of her own - completely different from every other little girl.
So I can't
say that these days I feel as if my life and my career have any more of a
purpose, but I can say with certainty that I am discovering the gems and life
lessons that I am humbled to learn from the tiniest of human beings. After all,
if my little students can keep their chins up while going through the
unimaginable, I'm sure I can do the same! :)
