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Stop Doing the Hollywood Thing!
Thursday, Jul 26, 2007 3:15PM / Standard Entry / Members only
4 comments

"Stop doing the Hollywood thing!" yelled my hip hop instructor at the Edge today. He mocked our half-hearted applause at the our fellow students. Clap like you feel it, he meant, and stop being such a fake.

If there's anything I've learned from class today, it would be being sincere.

Stop faking the moves, just do them and feel the music... I kept telling myself.

No matter what a bad or shitty day I have, going to a good hip hop class always makes my day.

I started at the Edge with my friend Adrian who dragged me to class over three years ago. I was like... I had no idea what I was doing. I could barely even do the first eight count. But because it was so hard, I kept going back. I used to sometimes get scared sitting in the car and afraid of going to class.

Since then, I've also fallen in love with dance classes and have surveyed hip hop classes everywhere I've traveled to: Vancouver, Hong Kong, San Francisco, New York... but really... there's nothing like the Edge where you dance with the best students and learn from the best instructors. It's damn hard and intimidating... but it's totally worth it.

The way I see it is that I always prefer to be the worst among the best. That's how you learn right? And that's probably why I'm in LA too.

I started off in Phi's beginning class which still sometimes kicked my ass and eventually made it into the other classes. You're saying like why is this 36-year-old learning hip hop?

I've seen 12 year-olds dance better than me. I've seen 40-something-year-olds dance better than me. I've seen even 50-year-olds dance better than me... so what am I doing here?

For those moments where I can really do it... do it sincerely... and feel the music... it feels so great. And the more I learn, the more I have respect for dancers. I've never realized dancing could be so hard... but so rewarding at the same time.

The instructors that I've taken and recommend: Steven Butler, Dante, Leslie Scott, Phi Nguyen, Napoleon & Tabitha, Nolan Padilla

Yeh for hip hop!

Entry comments (4)

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Terence Yin
posted on Tuesday, Aug 14, 2007 11:30PM [Report]

That's cool you are taking hip-hop classes! I did modern dance in college for a year and I am definitely the worst dancer in the history of that program. I loved it though and since then have always had lots of respect for people that can move and express themselves with movement.
yulien
posted on Thursday, Jul 26, 2007 10:57PM [Report]

haha!! tht's how i'm when i dance. don't care bout how i look, just MOVE!!! :P silly silly move but i just can't resist the beats of music!!! i jump like a kid, and swing turn like crazy!

dancing is fun! :)
rottendoubt
posted on Thursday, Jul 26, 2007 7:19PM [Report]

pretty cool! i think it would be interesting to learn to dance. i just have fun and not worry about how dumb i look! =)
elavndrc
posted on Thursday, Jul 26, 2007 3:24PM [Report]

it's really cool that you've found something you love to do. I'm a pretty bad dancer...won't catch me going to dance classes anytime soon.

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Quentin Lee

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Quentin Lee is a producer, writer and director based in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Hong Kong...
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Quentin Lee is a producer, writer and director based in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Hong Kong. He grew up in Hong Kong, immigrated to Montreal as a teenager and went to UC Berkeley for college where he received a B.A. in English. He then went to Yale and UCLA for his M.A. in English and M.F.A. in Film Directing respectively while he was hustling the film festival circuit with a feature collection of his shorts called Flow.

Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, Quentin Lee’s first feature Shopping for Fangs opened to critical acclaim during its limited theatrical release in the U.S. Quentin wrote, co-directed (with Justin Lin), produced and self-distributed Shopping for Fangs through Margin Films. The success of Fangs paved way for Quentin's second feature Drift and Justin Lin's 2002 Sundance hit Better Luck Tomorrow.

Following Fangs, Quentin returned to a more personal realm; he produced, wrote and directed Drift, a drama that became a hit in the gay and lesbian film festival circuit and was sold to Wellspring Media. It was also released theatrically to rave reviews in Los Angeles.

Ethan Mao is Quentin's third feature as a writer/director. Premiered at the AFI Film Festival 2003, it also won the Audience Award at the Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and was sold worldwide.

0506HK is Quentin's first feature documentary about his emotional attachment to Hong Kong. It features Hong Kong cultural icon Kam Kwok Leung, filmmakers Peter Chan and Teddy Chen, documentary director Tammy Cheung, and animator Raman Hui. The feature world premiered as part of Vancouver International Film Festival's "Hong Kong Stories."

Quentin is currently at work on several features such as The People I've Slept With, Chink, and a documentary short titled "Chinese Class."

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Occupation: Director
Gender: Male
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