Caleaf: Remember to Bring the Love to the Cypher

Caleaf: Remember to Bring the Love to the Cypher

A Power Cord From a Brooklyn Window Caleaf Ramier Sellers does not begin his story in a studio. He begins at a window. He grew up in Brooklyn, on the border of Canarsie and East New York. Outside his home was a basketball court. People would knock on the window and ask if they could plug their sound system into his house. His mother would ask, “How long are they going to be out there?” He would say, “Until midnight.” Then a long extension cord would run from his home to the park, and music would fill the block. There were baby showers, birthdays, weddings, cookouts, and homecomings. Someone had returned from jail, and the neighborhood would celebrate. Before Caleaf knew the word “Hip Hop,” he knew the feeling: people gathering, music playing, bodies moving. His first teacher was his mother. She was not a professional dancer. She simply loved to dance. Music was always playing in the house. If she was cooking, cleaning, or moving through the day, she was dancing. She would grab him as a child, and he remembers looking up at her. Later, as he grew taller, he remembers looking down at her. Dance entered him not as a career, but as a way of being alive. “Hip Is to Know. Hop Is to Do.” For Caleaf, Hip Hop is not an abstract idea. It is something lived. He speaks of “peace, love, unity, and having fun” not as a slogan, but as an atmosphere he remembers. It did not mean the neighborhood was perfect. There were conflicts. There were nights when people knew it was time to leave. But most of the time, the jam was a space where people came together. There were no classes then. You learned by watching. Your eyes were the camera. Your brain stored the footage. You saw someone move their shoulders a certain way, catch the music a certain way, or step into a rhythm that touched you. Then you went home and replayed it in your head until your body could understand it. But copying was not the goal. Biting was a serious thing. You could be inspired by someone, but you had to make it your own. You had to turn influence into identity. That is why Caleaf’s generation carries something so unique. They were not manufactured by a system. They grew out of parties, parks, clubs, kitchens, and sidewalks. The Tunnel, Rosie Perez, and the Moment Dance Became a Career Caleaf did not plan to become a professional dancer. He was in college when his student loan situation changed, and he began thinking he might have to come home. Henry Link told him he needed to come to The Tunnel on a Wednesday night. It was there that Rosie Perez saw them. She was scouting dancers for a Diana Ross music video. Caleaf, Link, and their friends auditioned. They got the job. Afterward, Rosie took them out to eat and asked if this was something they wanted to do as a career. She did not ask for a percentage. She did not try to manage them. In Caleaf’s words, she simply “put them on.” She placed them in the light where other people could see them. From there came work with artists such as Heavy D, Doug E. Fresh, Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson. But when Caleaf is asked when he first felt he was truly “in the room,” he didn’t name the biggest star. He says it was when people came to see him. In 1993, he and Peter Paul were invited to Japan Dance Delight as guest judges and performers. There was no artist in front of them. They were the reason people were watching. For a dancer who had spent years behind artists, that changed everything. 36 Chambers: Start From the First Level Years later, Caleaf and Buddha Stretch created 36 Chambaz of Stylez. The idea came from a simple realization. They had traveled all over the world teaching and sharing the culture, yet New York itself did not have a true home base for this kind of training. People kept asking why there was no major camp in New York. Caleaf began to feel that something needed to be brought home. The name was inspired by the kung fu film The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. In the film, the main character wants to begin at the highest level, only to realize he must start from the first chamber. For Caleaf, that is the lesson. Many dancers want the most difficult material before they can do the most basic things. But the basics are not something to skip. They are where depth begins. At 36 Chambaz, a class may move through multiple teachers, multiple “chambers,” and multiple layers of training: footwork, foundation, technique, partner dance, floor work, freestyle, review, and history. The goal is not to hand students choreography and send them home. The goal is to give them something they can grow with. No Mirrors, No Recording, Just the Room Anyone who has taken 36 Chambaz remembers the setup. No mirrors. No filming. Two circles. People facing each other, not just facing a teacher. Caleaf says he wanted to bring the atmosphere of the club or the party into the classroom. A stage would have been easier. A teacher in front and students behind would have been more familiar. But that would not create the same connection. In the circle, people have to pay attention. They have to feel the energy around them. They have to remember with their minds and bodies, not just with their phones. In an age of endless scrolling, Caleaf is asking students to stay present. Do not rush to document the moment. Be in it first. A Cypher Is Not a Place to Prove Yourself Alone Again and again, Caleaf returns to the word love. He describes walking into parties today and seeing cyphers where people stand around waiting for their turn. Someone dances in the middle, and the circle watches silently. Each person seems to be preparing their own statement rather than feeding the person inside. But to him, a cypher is about building on top of each other. The person in the middle needs energy. The people around them have a responsibility. If you give energy, they give more back. Then the next person enters with more power. Everyone rises. The circle is not a courtroom. It is a structure of support. Caleaf says the circle is life. It begins at zero and returns to zero. In that shape, we look out for one another, witness one another, and push one another higher. From Battle to Contest: Did We Lose the Party? Caleaf makes a distinction between a battle and a contest. A battle, in his understanding, is continuous. Whenever you see the person, it is “on”, until one person concedes. A contest is structured. It has rounds, judges, brackets, and time limits. Many young dancers today encounter street dance through contests first. They learn to dance AT each other before they learn to dance WITH each other. That is why 36 Chambaz includes partner dance. It is not only about learning hustle, stepping, or other partner forms. It is about learning how to see another person. In house, Caleaf remembers “stalking,” a way of shadowing and responding to someone all night. You follow me. I follow you. We build something together. Dance began as a social act. Without connection, it becomes only movement. Freedom Begins When You Stop Judging Yourself Young dancers often ask Caleaf how to freestyle. His answer begins with a song. “Find a song you love. Not a song you like. A song you love so much that when it comes on, your body starts moving before your mind can interfere.” Adults, he says, judge themselves too quickly. Before they move, they have already decided they are wrong, awkward, or not cool enough. Children do not do that. Children see something, like it, and try it. So perhaps freestyle begins by returning to the inner child. Start with one basic step. Change it. Change the level, the shape, the timing, the direction. Make variations until the step fits your body like a shoe you can walk in. Individuality is not magic. It is the result of transforming the basics until they become undeniably yours. Leaving Dance Made Him Realize He Had to Return The hardest time in Caleaf’s career was not a dance job. It was the period when he left dance. He stepped away for about two years to raise his family and worked a regular job for five dollars an hour. Later, he worked at a hospital with benefits, insurance, a pension, and the possibility of going back to school. He left anyway. He came back to dance in 1997 with purpose. He and Shan S stopped waiting to be invited to Japan and decided to fly themselves there. They collected studio cards, built their own network, and created a route through Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Nagasaki. He remembers something Skeeter Rabbit said: 60 percent of the time, people will call you. The other 40 percent, you have to create opportunities for yourself. Caleaf’s life is a testament to that 40 percent. Maybe Dancers Should Have a Seat at the UN Near the end of the conversation, Caleaf says something that sounds like a joke until it does not: dancers should have a seat at the United Nations. Dancers know how to sit in a room with people from different countries, languages, and histories. They know how to disagree, compete, exchange, shake hands, and go home with respect. Music and dance keep people in the same room for four hours, six hours, sometimes ten. In a world that keeps teaching us separation, dance insists on connection. That may be the deepest message of this episode. Street dance is not only movement. It is memory, responsibility, transmission, and relationship. What you receive from the culture, you pass on. Whoever lit something in you, you honor by lighting something in someone else. And after all the steps, stories, techniques, tours, injuries, and rooms around the world, Caleaf leaves us with the simplest word: Love. Do it for the love. Follow 🔗 Caleaf: ins@caleafsellers [https://www.instagram.com/caleafsellers/?hl=en#] 36ChambazofStylz: ins@36chambazofstylz [https://www.instagram.com/36chambazofstylz/?hl=en#]36ChambazofStylz Summer Camp: registration [https://www.36chambazofstylz.org/events-1]Host: ins@ruijingshu [https://www.instagram.com/ruijingshu/?hl=en#] rednote @theTryGirlPodcast: apple podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/dance-chat/id1801858332] 小宇宙 [https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/podcast/67ca90ecb18cd39295435fef] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetrygirl.substack.com [https://thetrygirl.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Henry Link: I Don't Dance for My Reflection in the Mirror

Henry Link did not first meet music in a battle, a cypher, or a club. He met it at home. Every Sunday, his mother and grandmothers played old-school rhythm and blues while the house was being cleaned. As a child, Link mopped floors, wiped walls, and cleaned windows to songs he did not yet understand. At first, he hated that music. Then he saw his family dancing to it, laughing with it, living inside it. For many people, street dance begins with the street.For Link, it began with family. New Year’s, Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, picnics — music was not a performance. It was how people gathered. Dance was not a career plan. It was not a strategy. It was simply what happened when people felt good together. That belief has stayed with him. He does not dance to be famous.He does not dance to be the best.He dances, he says, to connect people. Art brings people together. For Henry Link, that is not a slogan. It is the root. Mother’s Lesson: Stop Dancing With Yourself Link’s first dance was not hip hop. Not locking. Not popping. It was hustle. He was about five years old, standing on his mother’s feet as she held his hands and moved him around. His first dance lesson was not about isolations or technique. It was about dancing with another person. Years later, when he was practicing in front of a mirror, his mother saw him and asked what he was doing. “I’m dancing,” he said. She asked, in essence: Why are you dancing with yourself? From that day on, Link stopped relying on the mirror. Unless he was rehearsing for a show, a video, or teaching a class, he did not dance to look at himself. Even as a teacher, he says, he is not only teaching students — he is watching them, learning from them. When a student does not do a move exactly the way he showed it, he does not immediately see a mistake. He sees another way to do the same thing. In his view, the biggest teacher in the room is often the student. Katrina’s Gift: Dance for Yourself After his mother, Link’s second teacher was his sister Katrina. She was not a professional dancer. But she taught him almost everything: how to ride a bike, how to drive, how to DJ, how to fight, and how to move through life. What she gave him in dance was not a list of steps. It was a principle. Dance for yourself. If someone likes it, say thank you.If someone does not like it, say thank you. For Link, criticism is not something to fear. It is material. A dancer who cannot receive criticism cannot grow. But a dancer who knows why they dance can hear criticism without losing themselves. The Night at The Tunnel That Changed Everything In 1989, Link was dancing house at The Tunnel in New York. A woman sat next to him and told him he danced well. She said she was working on a music video and wanted him to come in. Link thought she was just trying to pick him up. A few days later, the call came through at the law office where he worked. The woman was Rosie Perez.The video was Diana Ross’s “Working Overtime.” At first, Link was hired as an extra. During a break, a director saw him dancing on the stairs and asked him to do it again. Suddenly, he was no longer an extra. He was a principal dancer. His pay changed from $250 to $1,500. That job led to an opportunity to dance with Diana Ross in London. To get his passport, Link needed his father’s help. His father agreed, but only after asking for one promise: If you are going to do this, do it 100 percent. Link says he has kept that promise ever since. Every show. Every performance. Every time. Start at 100. Elite Force: A Name Said in a Hurry, Then Written Into History The name Elite Force was born almost by accident. A Japanese organizer wanted to bring Link to Japan to perform and judge a dance competition. Link did not want to go alone, so he said he would bring Stretch and Loose Joint. The organizer asked for the crew’s name. They did not have one. Link said the first thing that came to him: Elite Force. This random name stayed in history. But the idea of “elite” had already appeared in his life. On the set of Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time,” Link was sick with the flu but still auditioned. When he was asked to solo, he gave everything he had. Director John Singleton was so struck by the performance that he wanted to use him more prominently. During rehearsal, Link was placed in the back. He kept thinking: I belong in the front. I belong with the elite. Eventually, parts of his movement ideas were added to the choreography, and he was moved forward. For Link, the front line was never just a spot.It was a responsibility. A Real Battle Does Not End With a Score Link draws a sharp line between a dance competition and a battle. A competition has judges, rounds, and results.A battle is about respect. He talks about battling Rock Steady for years. It did not end after one round. It did not end because someone won that night. Every time they saw each other, it continued. Only when the other side finally said, “We respect y’all,” was it over. That is what battle means to Link. It is not simply about defeating someone. It is a conversation. One dancer asks questions through movement. The other answers. Floorwork is a question.A wave is a question.A glide is a question.A groove is a question. The point is not to copy the other person and do it bigger. The point is to answer in your own language. Warning to Today’s Dancers: Do Not Copy One of Link’s strongest critiques of today’s dance culture is copying. He sees dancers watch winners of major events and then imitate whatever helped that person win. If someone wins by going to the floor, suddenly everyone goes to the floor. If someone’s style becomes popular, everyone starts moving like that. But to Link, that was not “the formula.”That was one person’s moment. There is a difference between inspiration and biting. Inspiration transforms. Biting repeats. His generation was strict about that. You could be inspired by someone, but if you copied their exact move, their exact combination, their signature, you would be called out. For Link, the future of dance depends on people having the courage to remain individual. “A Lot of Class, But No Teaching” Link also speaks directly about the studio world. Street dance was not always welcomed in dance studios. Today, it is popular. But popularity, he warns, has created another problem: many classes, not enough teaching. Too often, a class begins immediately with choreography. Students count steps, memorize a routine, film the ending, and leave. But they may not have learned bounce, rock, groove, foundation, history, attitude, or meaning. Link’s own approach is different. He does not like to build a full routine before entering the room. He creates in class, with the students, in real time. That keeps the class alive. It also means everyone is learning together. A real teacher, he says, must be able to break the hardest step down to its simplest form. A real teacher must be able to explain not only how a movement works, but why it exists. The “why” changes the body. Musicality Is Not Memory Many dancers think musicality means hitting every sound. Link disagrees. That, he says, is often music memory. You know the song. You remember the breaks. You hit the accents because you already know they are coming. Real musicality is different. It means understanding texture. On tour with Mariah Carey, Link spent time watching musicians warm up. He studied the drummer’s touch, the pianist’s fingers, the bassist’s minimal groove. He noticed that the same instrument could produce different weight, tone, and feeling depending on how it was played. That changed the way he danced. He does not only follow music. He enters it. Sometimes, when he does not like what is missing in a song, he says he dances to another rhythm in his head and layers it into what is playing. Musicality, for him, is not just hearing music. It is becoming part of the band. In China, He Looks for Grandmothers and Grandfathers Dancing Outside One of the most touching moments in the interview comes when Link talks about traveling. When he visits another country, he does not only want to see that country’s hip hop. He wants to see its cultural dance. In China, he says, he looks for older people dancing in public spaces. He watches them, joins them, and learns from them. Why older people? Because they are not dancing to win.They are not dancing to prove something.They are dancing to enjoy time with one another. He encourages dancers outside the United States not to simply imitate American hip hop. Bring your own culture in. Start with the dance, rhythm, and movement that come from where you are from. Then add hip hop foundation to it. That is how a dancer stops copying culture and starts creating language. His Message to Young Dancers: Get Out of Your Own Way At the end of the conversation, Link’s advice is simple: Get out of your way. Look in the mirror and ask yourself why you dance. What is the point? What is the purpose? If the attention, jobs, stages, and applause disappeared, would you still dance? If the answer is not for yourself, he says, you may not survive. That is what makes Henry Link so compelling. He has worked with icons. He has witnessed the evolution of hip hop, house, club culture, battles, studios, music videos, and the dance industry itself. But when he speaks about dance, he keeps returning to something older and more intimate. A house being cleaned on Sunday.A mother’s feet.A sister’s advice.A club full of strangers.Elders dancing in the street.A moment when music brings people together. In this episode of Dance Chat, Henry Link is not only telling stories from dance history. He is asking a question that still matters: Why do you dance? Follow 🔗 Link: ins@linkefc [https://www.instagram.com/linkefc/?hl=en#] 36ChambazofStylz: ins@36chambazofstylz [https://www.instagram.com/36chambazofstylz/?hl=en#]36ChambazofStylz Summer Camp: registration [https://www.36chambazofstylz.org/events-1]Host: ins@ruijingshu [https://www.instagram.com/ruijingshu/?hl=en#] rednote @theTryGirlPodcast: apple podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/dance-chat/id1801858332] 小宇宙 [https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/podcast/67ca90ecb18cd39295435fef] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetrygirl.substack.com [https://thetrygirl.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Leaving Dance Team, Leaving Google, and Launching a Dance Platform

In New York’s dance community, Peter’s path is a familiar one—starting from a high school dance team, moving through crews, choreography, directing, and competitions, eventually becoming a director of Project D. But what truly changed his relationship with dance didn’t happen during those years—it happened after he walked away from all of it. A Dream Without a Roadmap Peter didn’t grow up in the kind of environment that guarantees a path into dance. Born in Korea, raised between Michigan and New York, his early relationship with movement wasn’t formalized—it was more of a quiet, distant pull. “I think I always had an interest,” he recalls. “Like a dream… maybe auditioning for YG or something. But when you’re a kid, you don’t really know how to pursue that.” There was no clear entry point, no roadmap. Just fragments of influence, glimpses of possibility. So, like many dancers of his generation, he found his way in through something almost accidental. A high school audition. A performance team. A style that, at the time, didn’t even quite know what to call itself. Over the next decade, dance became less of an experiment and more of a commitment. Teams replaced classrooms. Rehearsals replaced casual interest. Eventually, Peter stepped into leadership, directing Project D. It’s also where roles begin to solidify. Leader. Choreographer. Mentor. And then, one day, he walked away. I’m no longer on a team. I’m a free agent now. That’s how Peter describes himself now. No team affiliation. No obligation to produce. For the first time in over a decade, dance is no longer tied to responsibility. After leaving his team, he stopped for a while. No choreography. Fewer classes. Minimal dancing. Because leaving a team after years of building within it isn’t just a logistical shift—it’s an identity rupture. The kind that forces uncomfortable questions: Who are you when you’re not needed in the same way?What does dance look like for you when no one is asking you to create? For Peter, the answer wasn’t immediate. It still isn’t. But there’s something intentional in the uncertainty. “Everything I created before was for competition, for the stage, for the team,” he says. “And that slowly changes how you see dance—you stop doing it for yourself. Now I’m just figuring it out,” he says. “Dancing on my own terms.” Leaving Google and Launching “Dance Club” Outside of dance, Peter was a software engineer at Google. He took severance and left the job a year ago. He considered returning to tech—but when it came time to prepare for interviews, something became clear: “I didn’t want it anymore.” So he made a decision many people thought about, but didn’t act on: he chose to build something for dance. The idea started with a simple frustration: Why is booking in dance so manual and so difficult? So he started building a platform that began with studio rentals, then expanded toward pop-up class booking, aiming to streamline the entire experience. More importantly, he made a conscious choice: He didn’t want to profit by exploiting dancers. “Dancers already struggle enough,” he says. “I don’t want to be another person taking from them.” We all have a responsibility in dance “If you’re in this space, the problems you see might be the ones you’re meant to solve.” A developer builds platforms. A director creates work. A dancer expresses. A storyteller documents. Dance has never been just about the people on stage. It’s a system—and it’s still being built. And we can all contribute in our own terms. Follow Peter Lee: ins @peterlee__ [https://www.instagram.com/peterlee__/?hl=en#]Dance Club: ins@dnceclub_ [https://www.instagram.com/dnceclub_/?hl=en#]Host: ins@ruijingshu [https://www.instagram.com/ruijingshu/?hl=en#] rednote @theTryGirlPodcast: apple podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/dance-chat/id1801858332] 小宇宙 [https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/podcast/67ca90ecb18cd39295435fef] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetrygirl.substack.com [https://thetrygirl.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Returned to Dance Two Weeks After Giving Birth: Condition Your Mind, Then Your Body

In New York City’s dance world, some chase the spotlight, some live inside studios, and others quietly question what “success” even means. Melanie belongs firmly to the last group. Her journey doesn’t follow a clean, linear arc. It feels more like improvisation—testing, detouring, and rediscovering—much like the way she dances. Living Two Lives Dance wasn’t a sudden calling for Melanie—it was always there. She started dancing at 3, taught first by her parents. By 6, she was training in ballet, jazz, and tap. But it wasn’t until 16, when she stepped into Broadway Dance Center, that dance became something serious—something viable. That’s where she saw dancers who existed beyond the classroom—people in music videos, on stage, building careers. At the same time, she was studying criminal psychology in college. During the day, she took classes, studying human behavior; at night, she entered the studio, training physical expression. “I was living two lives,” she recalls. Then came the turning point: Stay in school for midterms—or fly to Africa to tour with Ashanti? She didn’t make the trip. But the decision was made. She dropped out of college—and chose dance. Finding Freedom in the Battle At first, Melanie thought success meant one thing: dancing behind artists, appearing in music videos, being seen. That changed at 21, when she stepped into club culture—parties, cyphers, battles. “That’s where I found my freedom.” With almost no preparation, she entered a waacking vs. vogue battle at House Dance Conference—and made it to the finals. Back then, there was no social media. No Instagram. No footage to study. Just her instinct. She could read her opponents in minutes—their strengths, their insecurities, their habits. But more than that, she had a mindset most dancers spend years chasing: “I never cared what people thought. The only thing that mattered was my relationship with the music.” Your Style is What Comes Natural to You Many dancers struggle with the question: What style should I focus on? Melanie’s answer is strikingly simple: “The style that comes most naturally to your body—that’s yours.” She’s trained in everything—hip hop, house, waacking, belly dance. But the ones that truly made her shine were the ones her body “just picked up.” And instead of separating styles, she blends them: * Street dance waves into belly dance * Belly isolations into battle rounds For her, it’s respecting the roots while making yourself more complete. Motherhood Didn’t Slow Her Down For many dancers, having a child is seen as a pause—if not a full stop. Melanie did the opposite: * Teaching until weeks before giving birth * Back to work two weeks postpartum * Competing internationally within months * Winning battles less than a year later “The only person who limits you is you.” She doesn’t deny recovery—but she reframes it: Movement is part of healing. Discipline, Redefined Melanie’s philosophy centers on one idea: self-conditioning Her rule is simple: “Your confidence comes from keeping your promises to yourself.” If you say you’ll train, you better hit that gym. If you say you’ll show up, you better show up. Otherwise, you lose trust in yourself. That mindset extends into her lifestyle: no alcohol, conscious eating, periods of fasting, and avoiding draining relationships. Not out of restriction—but focus. Channel all your energy into becoming who you want to be. Who You Are is More Important than Technique For Melanie, growth isn’t just physical. She strongly encourages dancers to study acting. Because acting forces you to confront: Are you being truthful? “You want to be seen, but you’re afraid to be seen. Acting strips that away.” And once those layers are gone, dance changes. What She’d Tell Her Younger Self Melanie doesn’t regret her past—but she’s clear about what she’d do differently: * Avoid alcohol earlier * Take care of your body * Stay away from chaotic relationships * Put your focus on yourself And perhaps most importantly: “Put the drama in your work—not your life.” In a dance world increasingly shaped by visibility, trends, and algorithms, Melanie is reminding us: Freedom is about whether you are truly yourself.👉🏻 Follow her ins @melanieaguirre [https://www.instagram.com/melanieaguirre/?hl=en#] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetrygirl.substack.com [https://thetrygirl.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

When Gymnasts Enter the World of Dance: Body, Limits, and state of “Flow”

A girl “Banned” from Competition by Her Parents, Secretly Trained Her Way to the National Team At three in the morning, Qilin crawled out of bed and tiptoed down to the basement. That was during her second year of middle school in Canada. By day, she was an ordinary international student, sitting in classrooms taking academic courses; by night, she was a rhythmic gymnast practicing in secret—something her parents knew nothing about. Her father had made it clear to her coach: “Don’t let her train competitively.” In her parents’ eyes, sending their child abroad was the proper path; sports were, at most, for fitness. But Qilin had her own mind. From a young age, she knew her body was made for something extreme. Eventually, the truth came out because of a competition entry fee. Her mother saw the event title on the registration form and sensed something was off. “What kind of competition is this?” Qilin had no choice but to confess. But by then, she couldn’t stop—her coach had discovered her talent, and she had found her place in the sport. This was just the beginning Understanding body movement from physics Qilin first realized her body was “different” when she was 10. She was learning Chinese folk dance recreationally. The first time her teacher tried to press her back into a stretch, the teacher was startled: “I’ve never stretched you before—why are you this flexible?” Qilin herself couldn’t explain it. Later, when she joined rhythmic gymnastics, she noticed that movements others had to drill repeatedly seemed almost instinctive to her. Take a wave, for example. The dance teacher would spend ages explaining, yet her classmates couldn’t find the feeling of “rolling the spine down vertebra by vertebra.” Qilin didn’t understand what was so difficult about it. “It’s just the spine—starting from the thoracic vertebrae, one segment at a time…” She couldn’t quite articulate it, but her body simply knew. There’s nothing mystical about it. Later, studying sports anatomy, she learned the term: neuromuscular recruitment—the efficiency of communication between brain and muscle. Some people are simply better wired to “do exactly what they intend,” and her ability happened to align perfectly with rhythmic gymnastics. Rhythmic gymnastics training is brutal. Each session lasts four hours, with one or two sessions a day. It starts with fifteen minutes of jumping rope, followed by an hour of floor basics: stretching the top of the foot, flexing and extending the foot, knee awareness, hip alignment, core and back strength, spinal mobility, leg lifts, and backbends. Endurance holds—five minutes per leg, front, side, back, no exceptions. Then comes the apparatus work: putting routines together and drilling for success rates—if a sequence has three toss-and-catch elements, you need to land eight out of ten before moving on. This system shows no mercy. It asks only one question: What else can your body do? Qilin’s body answered. In her second month of training, she won her first competition. A year later, she won the Chinese Students Rhythmic Gymnastics Championship. She made district teams in basketball, showed promise in track, but only rhythmic gymnastics made sense. She knew how to improve, how to execute each movement, how her body should move through space. “My body was just made for rhythmic gymnastics,” she says. The Child “Abandoned” by Her Coach But a lingering shadow has always cast over Qilin’s athletic career: she was a “child abandoned by her coach.” Her first coach had been told by her father not to train her competitively, so she was largely ignored. Later, a Ukrainian coach worked with her for six months before leaving due to visa issues. In Canada, her coach recommended her to a high-level training group comparable to national camps—but her father only allowed her to train four days a week, so the coach didn’t invest much in her. “I was a people pleaser as a kid. I just thought my coaches didn’t like me,” she says. Another coach wanted to take her on, but four months later, the pandemic hit. After returning to China, she went back to her first coach, who later embezzled five or ten million yuan and fled. Not only did he refuse to coach her, but he also barred her from entering domestic elite competitions—because he had a beef with the system, and as his student, she couldn’t even get her physical fitness or insurance forms. “I was pretty depressed during that time,” she said. In her junior year of high school, she didn’t train at all with a team—she practiced alone in her basement. Strangely, her technical skills improved significantly that year. Later, she returned to the national rhythmic gymnastics team and rejoined the national-level individual rhythmic gymnastics program—due to citizenship issues, she couldn’t join the official national team in Canada. Then came long COVID. When the body betrays you The aftereffects of long COVID showed up as vestibular dysfunction and autonomic nervous system issues. Simply put, she would get dizzy mid-training, her vision drifting. Walking too fast made her faint; standing on a bus without a seat could make her collapse. At her worst, her exercise tolerance was measured at 5.0, where normal is 7 to 9, borderline disability is 4 to 5, and athletes are usually 18 to 22. “I couldn’t move at all,” she says. Once, during a fire alarm at school, she walked out — but couldn’t walk back. Her heart rate spiked; she had to sit down every few steps, wait for it to settle, then stand up, take two more steps, and sit down again. During that time, she began to ask: if my body can’t move anymore, who am I? Until then, her entire sense of identity had been built on what her body could do. She did well academically only because she treated school as a task — finish it, and you can train. Sport was her only passion. On the competition floor, there were moments when everything went quiet — when it was just her and the apparatus, in total focus. That state, she says, was the closest she had ever come to happiness. And now, that passion had been taken away. From sports to art, the body remains In December 2024, Qilin officially retired. But in reality, she had started dancing as early as 2023, after stopping competition. She started with commercial street styles, then discovered that heels suited her perfectly — the upright posture, knee awareness, and tight Achilles tendons honed through rhythmic gymnastics made wearing high heels surprisingly comfortable. Later, she tried krump and realized that the pursuit of intensity and power was exactly what she was looking for. Her krump teacher told her: it’s okay if you can’t hear the music — listen to your body’s dynamics. If you can’t see clearly, that blur can inform new movement. She found that when she improvises, the first thing she does is make her vision unclear — so she can “listen” to her body, quiet her mind, and her thoughts stop racing in all directions. “I don’t want to see things clearly,” she says. “That way, I feel more grounded.” This is actually a clash between two bodily logics. In rhythmic gymnastics, the body exists to execute difficult moves, meet standards, and earn points. Every movement has a clear objective: leg control must be 180°, spins must include an extra rotation, and tosses and catches must be successful. But in dance, the body exists to express. You don’t have to meet a fixed standard; what you must do is let your body speak. Qilin moves back and forth between these two logics. In heels, her gymnastics foundation gives her stability, straight knees, and clean lines. In Krump, she pursues raw power. “I’m still chasing the extreme,” she says. “Just in a different form.” No obsession, no mastery Looking back on her movement history, Qilin says that if she could give her younger self one piece of advice, she would say: manage your weight carefully during puberty, and don’t take school too seriously. “My entire movement journey has been for this one passion,” she says. School was merely an obligation — an inescapable duty for East Asian kids. To fulfill this duty, she slept five or six hours a day, woke up at 4 a.m. to do homework, trained during the day, and returned to the dorm at 11 p.m. Her severe long-COVID symptoms later on were likely related to this. But she has no regrets. Every decision was one she made herself — except, perhaps, for taking her studies too seriously. “Actually, if I’d been able to take things a bit less seriously back then, if I’d been a bit more self-centered — just focusing on what I wanted and cutting away those so-called obligations — it might have been better for my body.” But she also knows that, given who she was, she wouldn’t have listened anyway. People pleaser. Competitive. Obsessed with extremity. These traits are built into her body, just like her flexibility and strength—both gift and curse. Now, the life she wants is simple: teach heels classes, go out drinking after, sleep, choreograph, teach again. “I just want to live like an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old,” she says. “I didn’t get to have fun when I was younger.” What you suppress will eventually return. As for the future, she isn’t quite sure. She might join a contemporary dance company, or she might continue with fine arts — much of her work involves the body: installations, video, and performance. “Movement is the only thing that brings me peace,” she says. She has wondered: what if one day her body no longer allows her to dance? But she also doesn’t think that will really happen. “In dance, even someone with very limited physical ability can create something equally valuable,” she says. “Dance isn’t about testing the limits of the human body — it’s about expressing what your body wants to say.” The Weight of Existence Toward the end of the interview, Qilin said something that sounded quite grand. She said she could not accept submitting to any power, nor did she wish to establish a power of her own, because power inevitably leads to oppression. She simply wanted to exist as an individual. If one day she ceased to exist, so what? “I think there’s only one reason I’d want to continue existing: I’d rather feel something than feel nothing.” She said this with great calm. In her early twenties, her body still bears the scars of long COVID; her ankle injury could flare up at any moment; she has mild tricuspid regurgitation — the doctor warned that if she kept training, the tendon in her big toe might rupture, to which she replied, “If it ruptures, it ruptures.” What kind of mindset is this? “If you don’t go all in, you aren’t living”. Her body is her best tool, and also her greatest enemy. It has taken her to the world stage, and it has trapped her in a daily life where she can barely walk. It has allowed her to experience the hyper-focused flow of the moment, and it has forced her to get up at 4 a.m. countless times to do homework. It has been stretched, strained, exhausted, overused — then rediscovered, repurposed, redefined. Now, she’s still using this body to dance. Not for scores, not for rankings, not even to prove anything. Just because she needs to feel something — and the body is the way she knows best how. “I guess I just want to move,” she says. 🔗 Follow Her Rednote@麒麟 qilin @麒小麟在加油ins @yunqiqilin This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetrygirl.substack.com [https://thetrygirl.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]