This past weekend was an incredibly special experience.

Five years ago, I founded a troupe in Washington, DC to send a fire conclave to Burning Man. For those who’ve never been, on Saturday night during the week of the Burning Man festival, the titular effigy of a man is burned and the entire event celebrates. The opening act are fire performance troupes from all over the world that submit audition videos in order to be a part of this very special experience.

I’ve run this group every year of its existence (and every year we’ve been selected to perform) aside from this year. I decided to take a year off from Burning Man, so the woman who was my number 2 for the last 2 years has been running the troupe instead and she’s been doing a wonderful job. Her name is Kyle.

This past weekend was our date to shoot our video audition to submit and it it reminded me both of why it was important to still be involved in the group as well as why it was important to step back.

A lot of work came down to just the last few days. Choreography was being changed even hours before the shoot was scheduled to start. The whole piece top to bottom had only been performed on fire for the first time four days before the shoot.

In short, it was nerve-wracking.

I didn’t know walking into this year what if any role I was going to have in the troupe. After all, it would be unseemly to seem as though I was wresting control back after having willingly given it up or undercutting the new head of the troupe.

At the same time, I could see many areas in which the leadership was struggling and where it was going to be helpful to have another set of eyes to help out.

In the end, I wound up stepping in to help as often as I could. There were some initial moments of confusion as a result of this, but overall I think it helped the entire show gain cohesion.

The goal was never to take control or bend anybody to my particular will--it was always to bring out the best every performer and individual performance piece had to offer and I was in a unique position to be able to do this.

At the same time, it created a few problems.

One of the big ones was that given there was one person outside the leadership who was now actively giving performers feedback it opened the door to performers giving each other notes. And that led to some tension.

It also fed into a situation that is common among fire performers and that it took several years of performing in a local dance company for me to finally break myself of: trying to be the star.

When performing in an ensemble, it’s common to want to be the star of the show. To do the best version of the choreography and to be that one person that always hits the counts right even if nobody else does. You think: I’m going to do this thing the way it was meant to be done.

And believe it or not, it’s the wrong answer.

I danced for several years in a local company and more or less had to be called out directly in order to have this tendency broken within myself. It was a hard lesson and one that I still have to internalize from time to time.

When everyone is trying to be the star, then nobody is. When people see an ensemble performing, what they want to see is everyone working together in unison, not the ensemble competing with each other for the audience’s attention.

Hard as it was to digest this lesson, digest it I did. Sometimes it’s not about you. A lot of the time...it’s about the audience.

I had to give this note a couple times in the lead-up to the video shoot. To let the performers know that they succeeded or failed as a unit, not as individuals. That getting it right was working together with the other performers rather than being the perfect version of the performance in your mind.

And it’s also something that I needed to be reminded of.

On paper my official role at the shoot was as videographer. I was meant to sit behind the camera and capture the work all these performers were doing. Of course, I became much more active than that, still giving people feedback and trying to keep people motivated.

And a funny thing happened.

As the night wore on I had a lot of thoughts as to how to put the performers in the right headspace and get the best performance out of them. But so did the woman who is leading the troupe. She had her own plan. She had the performance that she herself wanted to see.

So I had to remind myself: it’s not about me. I’m here to support her and her vision. And I got back in my lane.

The shoot was an amazing success and I can’t wait to give the troupe their video. It’s one of the best fire shows I’ve ever seen and more than anything else I’m proud to have been a part of contributing to it and capturing it.

And in the meantime I’m grateful for a reminder of a lesson that especially among performers is far too easy to forget.