Dancing nerds

PINOY KASI

Dancing nerds
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 02:42am (Mla time) 01/26/2007

IT WAS a Christmas reunion and I thought I'd share the good news with Fr. Danny Huang, the Jesuit boss in the Philippines. “Did you hear?” I told him. “Xavier won first prize in a street dance competition.”

Father Danny was incredulous but his nephew Mikey, a high school junior at Xavier, confirmed the news.

I, too, could not believe the news when I first read about it in the papers. Xavier kids dancing, and dancing well? I studied at Xavier (as did Father Danny) and remember the ordeals of going through our high school soirees and proms. It was tough enough dealing with the female of the species, most of whom came from the school about 100 meters away from Xavier but who might as well have come from another galaxy. Even worse, we were told we had to do dance with these strange creatures, and that included fast ones as well as slow ones, the ones to which you counted one-two-three, one-two-three until you tripped on your own feet.

It just didn’t seem right for Xavier kids to dance. We romped off with awards in spelling bees and debating contests and typewriting competitions and we could boast about knowing how to diagram English sentences and using the abacus, but dance?

Eventually, we retreated into a comfortable, learned helplessness, feigning disdain, if not contempt, for such a mundane and banal activity. No, there were better things for Xavier people to do, like making money and making more money (except for a few silly ones who insist on teaching or writing columns). We were nerds, and we were proud of it.

Double shock

Mikey assured Father Danny and me that Xavier’s dancing kings weren’t airheads, as the stereotypes go, so what has happened is that they’re proving nerds can dance. Not only that, miracle of miracles, these are Chinese-Filipino nerds, running counter again to the stereotypes that Chinese genes produce two left feet.

There’s more to this dancing nerds phenomenon. A few nights after I read about Xavier’s victory, I happened to be surfing cable television when suddenly, on ETC, there it was, excerpts from the Skechers Streetdancing Battle II. Perfect, I thought, so maybe I’ll catch the Xavier kids dancing. Turned out there were quite a few schools competing, and they were dancing to a packed audience in what looked like the Araneta Coliseum. This was major league dancing.

In the college division, three campuses of the University of the Philippines (UP) had participated -- Los Baños, Manila and Diliman -- and they were all good. The high schools eventually got their turn and I caught the Xavier troupe catapulting and somersaulting and -- hey, did that look like dragon-dancing? I was watching only excerpts, not even a minute long, but what I saw was quite impressive.

Finally, they got around to announcing the winners. In the high school division, it was Colegio de Santa Rosa-Makati in 3rd place and Colegio de San Juan de Letran in 2nd place. To keep the audience in suspense, the hosts went on to announce the winners of the college division: UP Manila came in 3rd, and Mapua-Makati was 2nd.

With the audience’s adrenaline all revved up, it was time to announce the grand champions. For high school, yes, it was Xavier, and for college it was ... UP Diliman.

UP Diliman? And I heard, for the second year in a row? What’s the world coming to? It must be the effect of climate change, or instant noodles.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see these victories written up in the Collegian or the UP Newsletter. I don’t know, but for days I walked head high, wishing I could wear a T-shirt that said, in front, “Graduate of Xavier School ... Skechers Street Dance Champion” and at the back, “Faculty, UP Diliman, Skechers Street Dance Champion too.” I had visions of overcoming my learned helplessness, of choreographing a new number, with a Filipino-rock version of “UP Naming Mahal” (played of course by Edru Abraham and his Kontra Gapi), at the next graduation ceremony.

Seriously now. Confession time: The College of Social Sciences and Philosophy did allow a street dance number during our college recognition ceremonies some years back. It got mixed reviews. Some people thought it was inappropriate while others, myself included, found it a refreshing change.

I like this idea of dancing Xavier nerds and dancing UP "iskolar ng bayan" [people’s scholars]. It doesn’t have to be streetdancing; it can be any kind of body movement, any kind of letting go. It helps us to break stereotypes about good students being strait-laced bookworms. My Yna loves books, but she loves to dance as well, and I know my parents have mixed feelings about that.

As I wrote before in another column, Chinese-Filipino families don’t think too highly about dancing, and are horrified when they see other families calling their children out to dance for visitors. But I assure them it’s healthy for the kids to dance, and that someday they’ll probably get their Ph.D.s, and still enjoy dancing. I point to Dr. Mary Racelis, one of the country’s most respected social scientists and a member of our anthropology department, who at 75 still dances a mean tango.

What happens is that we force our children into pigeonholes: this one the athlete, the other the computer engineer, that one the surgeon, each with boundaries: “You’re good with books, but you’ll never be good at dancing or playing a musical instrument.”
Give me time to figure out what it is in Xavier and UP that produces good dancers. I thought of the Jesuit training in Xavier, but then Ateneo didn’t win in the high school or college competitions. And UP? I don’t think it’s the "iskolar ng bayan" bit. Ever the liberal, I’ve wondered if it’s simply giving space to young people, teaching them to defy stereotypes, to use their imagination, to dare to be different, even as we try to balance individual achievements with learning to work, creatively, in groups. It’s not surprising UP’s chorale groups are running off with awards in international competitions.

The challenge is to allow young people to develop “multiple intelligences.” It’s developing someone in a direction that they seem to be strong in, without suppressing their other potentials.

It’s a process we might want to start in our own homes, even with toddlers. Yes, we could have a bookworm who loves science experiments but who also dances, and maybe who dances even better than others precisely because, as a nerd, she sees details others don’t, or hears music in a way that produces a different rhythm, a different choreography.

Multiple intelligences amplify each other. Those good dancers just might become better physicists as well, or molecular biologists, or anthropologists. Free spirits mean free, bold minds that dare to be both inquisitive and imaginative -- essential ingredients for good, excellent, science.