Creating Something Genuine

I’ve been creating new choreography weekly and slowly struggling to make ‘unique’ moves. As I’m teaching an intermediate class, I used it as a platform to create intricate and imaginative choreo as my heart tells me. But seeing that beginners are coming to my class, I had to tone down some of my ideas to make them more accessible.

Hi all, Fabian from the think team. I had an inner dilemma recently, that I saw everywhere. It is either providing something of purely your vision or trying to give the crowd what they want. In my case, I feel that my choreography is watered down to something more commercial. In the end, I need to think about how I can have students keep coming back. When people attend choreo classes, they want to have a video of themselves being able to do the choreo.

My idealistic self was challenged. How can my work be genuine if I have to tailor it to the market? I spent nights overthinking about this, and this is really not the first time it happened.

I spoke with a journalist friend a while back. She told me her struggles of writing for a magazine because the revisions suggested by her clients almost erased her personality. Editorial integrity almost doesn’t exist. But it is what it is. We cannot always provide something 100% us, especially if we work for others. But what if we work alone, shouldn't we stay true to ourselves?

Until a few weeks ago, I remembered what Tak said about su-re.co."We do not do what the market wants. No." That would only result in Business-as-usual activities. We don’t want to ignore any potential negative impacts we can make, which may happen if we only follow the crowd. Instead, we provide something purely from the heart, target those who are in line with this vision, and slowly package it in some way that is digestible for the bigger crowd (without modifying the content). This is why we don't sell coffee, chocolate, or biogas, we create gifts. This is still genuine, or even more genuine because we stick with our values.

su-re.co product bundle in 2019

Just yesterday we had a meeting where marketing was discussed a lot. Without marketing, any company will fail to have its customers understand their actual value. But being only good at marketing could easily mean you are a scammer, because you're selling products with lesser value than you promote them. We don't want to be either, so it is about balance.

In my case, I learned that genuineness isn't as clear-cut as the means or ends or providing what the market wants. Instead of being hardheaded with what I am, I should just stick to my mission. As long as I stick to my mission of “spreading the love of dance”, I think I am being genuine. I'll start with who is within reach, but perhaps once my name is more established, I can show the world more of who I am. As long as I never show the world who I am not.

What do you think? Do you ever feel like your work is not genuine because of the market? I'm really interested to hear about this!