Dance Your Feelings Away
Performing and interacting with the audience taught me how to engage attention, which is something I often think about after I started working in the film industry. How do I tell this story to keep the audience engaged through all kinds of emotions, at the exact intensity, exact time, in the exact way I intended it to go. I like having that power, the power to influence their mood, their attention, and mess with their heads and hearts. I found it interesting that I could engage the audience in a way that tells a story, even with an unfamiliar medium, dance.
I also enjoyed being feminine. I never felt very girly growing up. I used to have really thick eyebrows that kids would make fun of me and call me Crayon Shin-chan. I didn’t like that nickname, and I felt self-conscious about the way I looked for a long time. I still feel semi-self-conscious about it now from time to time, but I try to pull myself out of that spiral.
When I danced, I felt comfortable, playful, happy, relaxed and sexy. Sexy, which was also a new thing that I learned from this journey of dancing. I enjoy being sexy, but only when I want to. I enjoy being provocative, also only when I want to. I was so entertained by how people came to my performance for the first time and would get mind blown by how happy and vibrant I could be. I guess you could say my frozen self started to warm up around then. I thought that self was dead, but it was just dormant. With the right environment, which apparently was the safe sandbox I had at Ohio State, the dormant self was growing into something beautiful.
ChatGPT 翻译：
表演和与观众互动教会了我如何吸引注意力，这是我进入电影行业后经常会思考的事情。我要怎么讲这个故事，才能让观众在各种情绪中持续被吸引，情绪的强度、时间点和方式都刚刚好，完全按照我设想的节奏推进。我喜欢那种掌控感，能够影响他们的情绪、注意力，甚至搅乱他们的头脑和内心。我觉得很有趣，我可以用一种陌生的媒介——舞蹈——去吸引观众，用它来讲一个故事。
我也很享受变得女性化的感觉。我小时候从没觉得自己很“女孩”。我以前眉毛很浓，总被同龄人笑话叫我蜡笔小新。我不喜欢那个绰号，也因此对自己的外貌感到不安很久。现在我偶尔还是会对自己的外貌有点不安，但我会努力把自己从那个情绪漩涡里拉出来。
当我跳舞时，我感到自在、调皮、开心、放松，也感到性感。性感，这也是我在跳舞这段旅程中学到的新东西。我喜欢性感，但前提是当我想性感的时候。我喜欢挑逗，也只在我自己愿意的时候。我觉得特别有趣的是，很多人第一次来看我表演，都会对我那种开心和鲜活的状态感到震惊。我想可以这么说吧，我原本那个被冻结的自我，是从那时候开始慢慢融化的。我以前以为那个自我已经死了，但其实它只是沉睡着。在对的环境下——也就是我在俄亥俄州立大学那个安全的沙盒里——那个沉睡的自我正悄悄长成一些很美的东西。