Phillip Chbeeb - INTERVIEW
Earthbound Studio: What is the impact of social dancing on your development as a dancer and choreographer?
Phillip Chbeeb: I believe social dancing, specifically clubs, events, battles, and interactions with real people, humanized my art form. When you're isolated in a room, as many people are nowadays, the style can become mechanical and technical. You develop the techniques, skills, and shapes, but your body isn't telling a narrative when you dance. The human experience isn't visible. I think this is because you need to engage with other human beings to understand the human story. Humans dancing for other humans are telling a story. They're communicating in a way that's so subtle that even if you tried to replicate it in person, you're not learning the language. For instance, we can talk right now because we've been talking to people, like our parents, forever. Dance is similar. If you don't have enough experience actually dancing in front of other people, your language skills in that capacity are diminished. For me, having in-person contact with other dancers at events was essential for me to develop a vocabulary that was genuinely human.
Earthbound Studio: Could you describe how you balance staying true to these community-born styles while also developing your own unique artistic identity?
Phillip Chbeeb: I believe I am very prone to freedom regarding personal exploration. I think people should be able to explore any style they want. It's their body, and they should be able to see what styles suit them. They're at a disadvantage if they don't have the cultural background, as they're fighting an uphill battle. But that shouldn't deter anyone from trying something. If you want to learn popping and don't have a popping community in your city, I still say try it because you don’t know where you'll end up. To me, aside from the very minimal amount of people who will be professionals, dance is about self-exploration. If a particular style, even at a distance, helps you understand yourself better by exploring your body, then I think it's a net positive. And I don't think we have to fight that much to keep people out of our communities who aren't part of the culture.
Earthbound Studio: You're open to people exploring dance styles outside their cultural backgrounds and communities. With the rise of platforms like TikTok, where anyone can share their dance, do you believe this trend is changing the landscape of dance? And if so, how?
Phillip Chbeeb: I think what's really amazing about the revolution of dance is the fact that now we have people who have an incentive to get together and create dances. We had this to some degree, but now it's to a larger degree. I see seven-year-olds learning dances, not because they want to be professional dancers, but because it's normalized as an expression of fun and bonding between people. You'll see people of all ages dancing on TikTok. Whether or not we like the incentives of the app or the platform, it promotes greater acceptance and excitement over dance in general and the dance of ordinary people, not just professional dancers. One of the highlights is that it used to be a binary choice where you were either a dancer or a normal person who liked dancing and was willing to create dances on camera. But this new digital world has allowed everyone to dabble in exploring their body. That's an incredible achievement for me because I think many people who would've never danced before are now willing to try it.
Earthbound Studio: How does this new environment affect the overall structure of dance education and training?
Phillip Chbeeb: I believe the digital aspect of dance has provided many benefits and detriments. One obvious detriment is the lack of places where people can feel human-to-human contact with their dancing. They're not getting real-time feedback. They don't actually know what it's like to dance in front of a crowd and receive real-time, audible responses from the people around them. This type of feedback is vastly different from comments, which are consciously constructed. If you elicit a "woo" from the audience, it's an entirely different feeling because they didn't even get to choose that feeling. Understanding how to elicit these sorts of feelings from an audience is something I don't think you get a good gauge of how to do through the medium of the internet.
Earthbound Studio: Do you find that this new method of sharing information has helped the dance industry?
Phillip Chbeeb: It's interesting because there are two ways to examine the dance industry. The financial aspect considers how much money is circulating for dancers who want to make a living. Then, there's the success of the soul exploration of your inner self through the art of dance. I believe these are two different things. Whether TikTok has successfully pumped money and resources into the dance industry, I think the answer is yes. It has spread it out a bit, but overall, it has allowed more people to make a living from dancing, which I find fascinating and desirable. As for personal exploration, I believe that is a cultural task that is still before us. I don't think TikTok has done anything extremely negative to that, but I don't think it's helped either. The idea that dance is something that every human can do to understand themselves better and help regulate their emotions is not discussed as much as it should be. I'd like it to be because I think it's one of the significant aspects of dance, beyond the views and things. The other thing is that, honestly, we are all inherently unique. I believe that when we chase someone else's best expression, we will never compare. You can spend your whole life trying to be a better version of someone else, but you will never succeed because you are not them. The more people realize their version is incredible and deserving of as much, if not more, attention than the person they're trying to emulate, the more time they'll spend investigating themselves rather than dissecting what works for someone else.