Auditioning With Vivian Eng

I found a notebook I kept during my first two years living in New York City. Each day I’d hit a brick wall, everything seemed impossible, and I realized fast, within a month, that I would be rejected almost every day.

If you were doing your job right with the end goal of being cast in a show, then you immersed yourself in a long period of time where you took classes, auditioned daily, and didn’t let the rejection tear you apart from the inside out. Almost one year of this passed and I had made enough friends to where I knew I had some kind of energy around me to soften what we all called rejection, and live with the truth that you will not always get what you want, might not be seen, that you’ll be dismissed quickly and often. I auditioned for everything that first year. It was exciting and frustrating, and I was privileged to be able to pay for dance classes, taking up to 7-10 per week, so I was learning a lot, too.

Then came that moment, as it often did, where I faced unpleasant thoughts, potential truths I didn’t want to digest, like maybe I started this too late, or didn’t know enough to really do this, or perhaps I did not have the level of talent or education required to be cast in a show. And that’s when I happened to sit down next to Vivian Eng, the thinnest most stoic dancer I’ve ever known who years later died in a fire in her apartment.

Vivian would roll her eyes at “the young ones” when they complained about getting cut at auditions. She asked me who I was and how I was doing, and when I started to complain, I got the eye roll and her funny advice: “you have a bad day? Please. Try looking like this and dancing around women half your age who have actual tits and ass.” That is a for sure Vivian quote.

This is as close as I could recall what she said after that: “Just go to bed and wake up and do your stupid yoga but do it before the sun rises. And all that intention crap?”—big eye roll—“just kick life in the ass, or in the balls.” I keep forgetting that early morning exercise really kind of does that, so here is me kicking life’s butt, forward bending on a Sunday morning, pre-sunrise. Thanks, Vivian. I won’t ever forget you.