I could not stop wondering the first time I watched this video. What an incredible work of art. What a beautiful display of mastery. And I thought, this couldn’t have started just a couple of years ago, there must have been an expression of this talent and gifts in the pioneers of this unique dance style – Human Geometric with a group name Geometrie Variable.
Geometrie Variable is a group of three members—Kanon Ghetto-Style, Sadeck Waff Berrabah, and Ammar Benbouzid. You can check out their highly entertaining and masterful dances.
Here was the thought that came to mind while I watched this a couple of times. Can you imagine when they individually were growing up and performing to themselves or in front of the mirror, making these funny moves? Trying to bring to life what they saw in their mind’s eyes? Imagine if they had been shut down by parents, teachers or guardians. Imagine this happening because it felt weird at the time as these people have never seen anything like it before.
Let me paint the picture that came to mind, using my experience as an African child. I could just imagine a little boy or girl tying out these moves with their bodies as they played and observing parents and guardians watching and questioning what sort of weirdness is this? From where I come from they might have thought this child is not normal, why does he or she always make wired body movements? And they might go ahead and stop the child at that age thereby killing the vision from that tender age.
The same way they shut us up while we were kids who spoke with confidence and asked a lot of questions. But we would hear things like, “keep quiet, when adults are speaking you don’t talk”, “you talk too much” “are you a parrot?” And continuously doing this gradually kills the confidence in such a child so much that they start to question their own intellect and ideas. And eventually shut up, losing the ability to express themselves accurately or even having the confidence to air their opinions.
I hope you get my point? I wrote in the group where this was shared that “no gift or talent is too wired”. As parents, guardians and adults with kids around us displaying all sorts of weirdness we must pay attention to know which one is to nature and which one is truly worth shutting down.
I am however glad that things are no longer the way they used to be. We are now more open to newness and a little bit of weirdness and I don’t mean that in a negative light. All I am saying is, even in this day and age, some of us parents, teachers and guardians are still very rigid and too busy to observe the beautiful and sometimes novel talents that our wards and kids display so that we can be their first coach and help them nurture these talents.
Let’s do better. Even if you are not related to someone who displays a gift that you find interesting, play your little part by encouraging that person and they don’t even have to be younger they can be your peers or even older, but let’s learn to appreciate people’s special gifts, it gives them life.
Happy last day of February I hope you have a super productive one and I look forward to marching victoriously into MARCH with you tomorrow.
To your growth and success
The Energetic EJ.
May God continue to help us raise these champions right.
Well said sis
Amen and Amen.