Believe it or not, we had less then three weeks to plan Rebuilding the Bridge. Believe it or not, we had zero money - no budget - when we started. All we had at the start was an idea and five people with a burning desire to do something about the tragic, tragic earthquake in Sichuan, China. But what can five people do alone? We built a coalition and now five people became a unified community. The underlying premise was, “If Asians can’t come together for something so tragic, what will we come together for?” So this coalition of Asian non-profits, for-profits, old media, new media, political offices, and everything else became the body of a movement with compassion for a soul.
Now here we are, 13 hours away from one of the biggest, if not the biggest Asian charity event in NYC this year. In less than three weeks we secured Ryan Leslie, Planet B-Boy break dancing crews, J-Lim, Beau Sia, and Andrew Choi. We’ve had many artist and entertainers volunteer their time and services. Many of which we ultimately couldn’t fit. We’ve had an outpouring of support from Asian and non-Asian organizations and corporations alike. Without them, we would have no money, no venue, and no hope. All of those bricks were laid in less than three weeks.
I’m painting a rosy picture. Many times we were thinking it’s over; we just lost our venue, we just lost some sponsors, and we just lost our headline act (multiple times). All the issues and all the drama during this building process seems irrelevant now, staring at the event 13 hours in the future. When you think about the scale and reach of what we were doing and in the timeframe that we did it, literally a dozen small miracles had to have happened. Why put ourselves under such pressure to produce a show of this caliber in less than three weeks? This was the only timeframe we had to work with the Jabbawockeez…
So we lost our headline act about 4 days before the event; the act that we built this entire event around. As much as I want to get into why this happen, there are numerous reasons why it’s easier that I don’t. For the record, please don’t blame the Jabbawockeez members and managers for this. They really do care about what we’re trying to do and said that if they had a choice, they would be at our event in a heartbeat. They are the same guys that you’ve read about before this event, and the fame of winning America’s Best Dance Crew has not changed them one bit.
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Tags: andrew choi, beau sia, charity, dj cipha sounds, dj delinger, event, j-lim, performance, planet bboy, preparation, rebuilding the bridge, ryan leslie, sichuan earthquake, victims
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