Thursday, March 14, 2013

Coincidence

Besides my marriage... I haven't written any stories of my life in the past years. Maybe cause nothing worth mentioning was happening. So I'd like to share a little story. Every morning on my work commute I listen to this american life in my car.
Last weeks episode was about coincidences. A very cool episode and definitely worth listening to!

So I was talking to my co-worker about our own coincidence experiences. I couldn't remember any "crazy" ones that happened to me. But the following day, I actually remembered one coincidence that is actually pretty cool. So here we go!

It all started when I was living in Germany. It must have been around 2006 when I first got interested in the dance style popping. Among my friends dancing was not a big topic so it was hard for me finding people to practice with. Youtube was already popular at that time and I looked for good popping tutorial videos. Out of all videos I watched I found one exceptionally helpful which is the following.

I remember watching it several times and whenever I had some time to kill whether it was in the car or when I was standing in line for the movies etc, I would always practice the "hits".
 In the next two years I got pretty good at hitting my forearms but that was about it. Since I had nobody to practice with my progress was very slow. It got to a point where I didn't practice dance at all for a couple of months.
Two years later I got hired at Dreamworks in the Bay Area. On my first day at work I'm met a bunch of people I knew from art forums like cgtalk and sijun. Erwin Madrid was one of them. We quickly became friends and started going to conventions and art events such as sketchcrawl. I believe it was the 25th world wide sketchcrawl when the artists were gathering at the Ferry Building in San Francisco and Erwin recognized a school friend Joe Hayama. The funny part is that he recognized him because he did a crazy dance move while talking to other people and he remembered that Joe was passionate about dancing back in college when they first met.
So that's how I got introduced to Joe Hayama.

I believe it was the same day Joe took us to a party at the Minna Gallery in San Francisco. By the time we arrived there was already a pretty long line outside of the building. I notice a guy at the end of the line who is popping to the music that was leaking out of the club. And of course Joe happens to know him. His name was Assad. We get introduced and we start chatting. As I mention that I just moved from Germany to the States he starts speaking German to me. I was very surprised and couldn't really say anything for a few seconds!? That was the last thing I expected. Apparently his grandma was German and taught him how to speak....crazy. Anyway, he turns out to be a popper and at the end of the night he tells me to check out his youtube channel for some popping videos. He goes by "inventfmc". As I got home I looked him up on youtube. And guess what video I see....of course...!

I didn't know what to say....I watch a random popping tutorial video in Germany, two years later I move to the states and I happen to run into the guy who I was learning from on youtube? That's pretty darn awesome. Anyway I tell him in excitement but I don't meet him for a while. In 2008 I started taking dance classes at citydance in SF. After a year or so learning from Boy Wonder (see video below), Assad takes over the popping class.

Now I'm learning popping from that random guy that I saw on youtube. I still think it's pretty crazy. One day Assad asks me if I could help him out filming his online lessons he's planning to sell on his new site learntopop.com. So we meet up at cellspace to shoot the promotional video and the lessons. You can buy the lessons at the above mentioned link. And here is the promo video I edited.

Assad moved to LA last year haven't seen him ever since but I have no doubt that sometime in the future we will cross paths again.

7 comments:

Kana said...

That's an incredible global coincidence! Looks like your threads are interwoven with his, I bet you'll meet online or in-person again!

Great promo, for some reason the man walking unconcerendly through the background at the end really lent something to the feeling of closure before the fade out - like when a performer strikes that last pose of the piece, then smiles a little to themselves...a sort of self-referential acknowledgement, I don't know how to explain it.

Unknown said...

Goro--interesting story. here's mine: i started following your blog a couple years ago after stumbling upon it randomly. drawing had always been a hobby of mine so i occasionally browse the web for cool artists and inspiration. another hobby of mine is dancing. i danced in highschool casually with friends and when i got to college there were more opportunities to dance through different campus clubs. i took some classes at the campus gym where i met this guy who went by the name "invent". he taught me a lot to clean up my hits. after i graduated, my dancing hobby fizzled out. one day i was skimming facebook and saw that assad aka "invent" posted a status about dancing with guy name "goro". i thought, how many goro's could there be. and what are the chances that i'd find another artist-dancer.

small small world.

Goro Fujita said...

Woah that's awesome Cam!!
Thanks for sharing your story!

Peter Oedekoven said...

Coole Geschichte:)

RAWLS said...

Love it! Stuff like that makes me smile.
“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.” - Albert Einstein

Nicholas Hong said...

Wow...amazing story, Goro. Everything went well because you enjoy it and while you are doing them, you like to challenge yourself even more so that it leads you to where you are now, which is successful at some point. Thanks for sharing your story with us Goro! ^^

Erwin Madrid said...

I remember that day and night. I didn't want to go but you convince me to go to my first sketchcrawl. I'm glad I did. Good times!:)