January: Juwan Alston

POST: What are your goals/New Year's Resolutions for yourself as a dancer /student?

New Year, New Me!

One of the things I hear way too often during the New Year is the quote, “New Year, new me!” And while I am all about making changes to ourselves and within our lives, I don’t not believe the New Year is a time to do it. Too many people profess this statement and follow it by things like, “I will lose weight,” or if you are like me, “I will stretch more.” While claims and goals that we set for ourselves is a wonderful thing, the fact that it is a New Year is not a good enough excuse to maintain the motivation needed to fulfill these goals. We should create goals for ourselves the moment we realize that we want to change something, along with reasoning that will actually keep us motivated.

With that being established, my goals for this particular period in my life are to remain unchanged. I am currently a student. One of my main goals for myself is to just continue being a sponge, allowing myself to just learn and absorb everything I can while I am in this stage of life. I am also focusing on expanding my repertoire as well as truly becoming a more versatile dancer. Currently, I am working on a ballet called Birthday Offering by Sir Fredrick Ashton and well as a world premier contemporary ballet choreographed by Susan Jaffe. Both pieces provide me with a challenge technically and allow me the opportunity to push the boundaries in stepping outside of my comfort zone. Now is the time to really work and prepare myself for what is to come once I step into the professional world.

As an adult, I am simply looking to gain more information. I want to continue to make sure that I am getting everything that I can out of my classes and finding some way and opportunity to apply that within my real life. I feel that it is an important part of being an adult, because even as an adult, you don’t know everything. Learning is a part of life and everyone should look to learn something new every single day! This year is nothing special, because every day should be treated as a new start for discovery and personal growth.