On this evening, I was on my way to a rehearsal for a performance this weekend at Pride event. After weeks of practicing a mashup of a pop dance routine (Janet Jackson/Britney Spears routine, of all things), I am going to bite the bullet and perform. I normally don’t like to perform after the last fiasco where I backed out at the last minute. However, this time I felt more comfortable with the idea. I’ve had some time to think of the reasons. I think a large part is knowing the audience. It will be part of Pride weekend, which is all about acceptance and celebration of LGBT community. So, from that perspective, I already felt comfortable that the audience will be joyous, positive, non-judgmental and accepting, especially if I mess up, and I invariably will. The event is pretty much free. Usually, when the event is free, people tend to be less judgmental. The last performance where I backed off (since the person who could replace me is the actual choreographer who was really good) was a fundraiser benefit event where people paid a lot of money, so I assumed their expectations were high. Also the actress from the original film, Flower Drum Song, Nancy Kwan, was going to be in attendance, and I just felt so inadequate to perform in front of these people and in front of her. There were other reasons why I didn’t want to participate in that performance, but meeting expectations was a major one.
