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Max Wang

@mxawng

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community-shaker, note-taker, party-crasher, stuff-sayer, engineer, writer, musician, baker, dancer [@mx.d.wng], doer of things

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last dance post on main for the year so i guess i'll pretend it's new year's !

i think sometimes i downplay my effort, not bc i'm a humble guy (i am not) but just bc like. i have no goals here. i have no objectives. i have no grand project for myself and idk that i ever have. i am simply alive and trying to enjoy it.

but i think i put a lot of time and effort and sweat in this year. in february i started going to sessions and parties regularly for the first time to start learning to dance and not just executing moves. it remains the most mentally and physically challenging thing i've ever done. improvisation at my skill level feels like squeezing myself like a tube of toothpaste and then some sand chokes out.

in the summer i started learning from a lot more teachers, and for a while i was probably doing over 30hrs a week of movement (tho that includes my stretching and PT routines which are… substantial). i slowed down in the fall and it feels like i'm still recovering. my brain is jammed full. my body is constantly jumbled up, relearning how to coordinate. sometimes i forget how i walk.

yet so many folks in this community dance way more than i do, have somehow been training at this for years while working full-time or doing gigs much more exhausting than anything i've lived thru, and are going at it every gd night. the tenacity of people around me is staggering. truly i don't understand how anyone has the energy. even getting rest is tiring. feels like i have to leave the whole country to take a breath.

getting good, fluent, expressive; it doesn't seem possible. but at least i'm improving all the time.

thanks to @cebonxgn, @tweetboogie, and @tonyvmcgregor for sharing so much material with me, and of course to @ejoewilson and @huurock as always. ty also to @jung.el for the one-on-ones.

special thanks to @laura.b.williamson and @brando.marlin for so regularly teaching me thru exchange. i'm sure sometimes your eyes must bleed to watch me flail and flop, bc mine certainly do.

and extra special thanks to @shannon__healey. what you've taught me abt basic movement mechanics and turns and weight and floor has helped me improve more than anything else this year. by @mxawng

living up to the "party crasher" in my bio by @mxawng

been meaning to post a few photos from banff & jasper but i've been putting off processing video footage and instagram's aspect ratio hegemony is aesthetically uncivilized so instead here is my single favorite shot. by @mxawng

i am doing exposure therapy! what i am exposing is my house session footage! i am exposing it to myself also, which is just as painful as exposing it to anyone else! and that is also painful!!!

this is from almost three months ago at this point which is also how long it's been since i've done any freestyle practice. most of that was bc i was traveling and then afterwards was sick for a whole month. but part of it was because i really didn't want to look at this footage, confront how far it was from what i want, or suffer thru the process of building back up even to this point that i am not satisfied with.

i don't consider myself a perfectionist but i do know that i have exacting standards for myself specifically, and anyone who has collaborated or worked with me on anything has found that i want things done to my standard and i will stubbornly plow ahead until it gets there pretty much no matter what. so. it's pretty rough when i simply don't have the capability to meet my own standard!

i am always saying i've never done anything as challenging to me, or which i was simply so unskilled at, as dance. boy does that continue to be true! 🤣🥸😭😳🫠🫥😵‍💫🤧🎃 by @mxawng

Just Max and Xiaolan being adorable by @mxawng

been here and there recently so i've had all these pauses in my dance practice. i find i never want to go, but i always enjoy wherever i've gone. i love dance and it seems i also love everything else i'm up to. it is a luxury to live well in this way.

sometimes i look back to peek at the improvement. when i'm not liking my movement at the moment, this just makes me frown at old videos. but recently i've been doing so much that every few weeks, my dance feels totally new. videos of me freestyling even exist now. we're not looking at those yet.

instead here's two classes i took a year apart. it's another luxury: to learn and dance and practice every day, and not care where i'm going or how good i can get; to just do the thing again and again.

thanks to my teachers @ejoewilson, @huurock, and @cebonxgn and to everyone i see every week in class and at sessions, i'm not gonna spam all the tags here.

unrelated thanks to tom and nat for the wedding invite; see unrelated third slide of our current dwelling.

also remember to rank @zohrankmamdani first in the nyc mayoral primary this week!!! by @mxawng

i'm always reluctant to post on main. the dance log account is for holding myself accountable to reviewing my vids in time. posting on main feels like diving into the weird social media attention economy with the tags and the likes and it makes me feel uncomfy. and i've got nothing to pub here y'know. but anyway.

my body and headspace have felt kinda off this past week. i felt weaker and more tense against the ground, and i haven't felt as relaxed or as energized or as focused. since the beginning of february, i've nearly doubled the amt of dance i do every week. it's exhausting, but after every class or session, i always feel better.

dance is the hardest thing i've ever done in my life. almost everything else i've spent time on was something i started as a tiny child when my brain was soft and miraculous. nothing else i've tried has come close in how much it challenged me. but also, little else gives me that same feeling, of everything being alright, that house dance does.

i was looking thru vids from the last few months (as i do every once in a while to collect my thoughts for growth for myself) and realized: it was just *two weeks ago* that i was dancing the best i ever have. and even this week, when my body felt so fluffy and my mind so foggy, i have grown so much in feeling and in execution since even a month ago.

i am so grateful that i get to do this. i am grateful to live a completely different life than the one i had two, three, four years ago. it is the privilege of a lifetime, and it feels like i've gotten to live more than one.

thanks always to @huurock for your time and boundless movement and to @shannon__healey, @msm_sk, @sallykismet, @nicoleeung, and @lili_miluz for sharing so many classes and sessions with me recently (even tho i kno some of u were not here for these two in particular).

[2025.02.25-huu-4, 2025.02.27-huu-3] by @mxawng

sharing my favorite run from the end of 2024. i think more than in any other class this fall/winter season, here i really feel like i'm starting to dance like myself. there's this tidal kind of push and pull that feels right in my body; there's twists rolling up and down along my spine. my flow comes from my teachers but i'm starting to figure out what comes from me. looking forward to a lot more freestyling and sessions and parties in 2025.

special thanks to @lili_miluz for dancing this one with me and to @shannon__healey and @marianamontillag for always joining me in class. and of course thanks to @huurock for his neverending flow and inspiration. by @mxawng

bit of new year's posting with @xlanyy ~ 🥰

some shopping at @standardandstrange, nye dinner at @luthunnyc, and first meal of the new year at @chefjaejung's @kjunnyc. last pic is a bottle of body wash i finished on the morning of the last day of 2024. by @mxawng

best i've danced any combo and the most free i've ever felt in my movement. i'm using my arms authentically for an entire routine for the first time in my life. plus even the pre-count freestyling feels comfy and right even tho i'm just chillin in a cross step.

thanks to @huurock for over a year of constant practice 🫡🫡 and shoutout to @orcadances and @lynneyun and gabe and @msm_sk offscreen and the side of ahrian's leg for joining me in this run. by @mxawng

so on wednesday night i went to bed super late for no good reason. i had a dream where @huurock was teaching a beginner choreo class in a stadium-sized venue. at some point during the class i end up dozing off on the floor—the only time ever that i can recall feeling sleepy and then going to sleep in a dream. anyway one of huu's assistants for this massive class, a blond-haired guy in a blue t-shirt, wakes me up and asks if i could sleep off to the side so people taking the class can use the floor space. i tell him my bad, and continue dancing, but i find myself unable to remember even the choreo from when i was awake—kinda awkward, since i made the choreo myself, by dreaming it.

i wake up irl still feeling super sleepy, but decide to go to class anyway. i think this class was the most i've ever relaxed into a routine and into the music. i can still see places where i'm dancing kinda hesitant because i'm trying not to mess up execution of a move. but i feel like i'm actually dancing and not just "trying to dance".

anyway hi friends by @mxawng

time for an update to all these super old house vids at the top of my grid! here's my favorite run i danced from before i left for japan in march this year. peep the improvement 🫨😌

2024.02.20
🫡: @huurock
ft. @marianamontillag @bevontherocks and @__sarugorira__ before she went home 🥲 by @mxawng