Your First Steps

Maybe some of you grew up dancing or took one class one time because your mom dragged you, or maybe dance is your passion and you can't imagine life without it. Well, I have danced on and off for about fifteen years now and I love it and my current dance team.  But regardless of your dance background, I would like to think that this blog can extend past the world of dance and into anything you have known for most of your life, or at least lead you to rethink the norms of your life.  

Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself.  You're probably thinking, wait, I thought this was about dance.  Well, it is, and it's not.  You'll see.  

So today marks the first official meeting of the dance team season.  Since we have a new director, we needed to work some things out. Establish norms, get our emergency contacts in line, exchange phone numbers, the usual.  

For starters, for those of us who grew up in your typical jazz, tap, ballet dance studio, this new director of dance is way out of our "comfort zone." (You'll see why I added quotations later.) But she is welcoming us into this new journey of dance and into her view on this vast art form.  

So after working out the details, we started with an exercise where we discussed the question "what is dance?" From that, we got a nice list: expression, fun, ideas, community, etc.  Then we began to move...

Grab the golden ball.  Throw it around. Feel its weight.  

Now swallow the ball. 

Roll it around your head. Neck. Shoulders...

Now let your head lead you. 

Up and down. Side to side. 

Now let it move you out of this space.

Now speed it up.

Vary your speed.

Now think of something that pissed you off recently.

Where do you feel that in your body?

Let that part of your body lead you around.

Now interact with the other people around you and their movements.  

Interact with the architecture... the lines... the curves... tempo... repetition...

(Note: that was not a poem.)

That is what we were told. What we did for the rest of practice.

If you cannot picture it, just think about one of those exorcism movies but with the constraints of normal bodily limits. But also a little bit of what it would look like if you gave a kindergarten class an endless supply of candy (minus any fighting or crying).  Also, note that there was roughly 18 of us in a dance studio doing this.

I know what you're thinking. That. Sounds. Amazing.

Well, you're right.  It was great.

I have never had a dance class where I had to step so far outside of my dance "rules."  Where I didn't care about what I looked like because I was so caught up in the moment, in what I was doing.  It didn't matter what I looked like because that is just how my body was interpreting the directions I was given.  We were able to move through the space in a way that only we could do.  That only we knew how.  Somehow this felt like taking the first steps into my comfort zone, not one I've ever known before though.  

Now, if someone walking past had stopped to look in, they would have thought we were insane.  They'd probably say "did you see those weirdos in there?" But that's fine, because they have probably never experienced such freedom in movement, or maybe their free movements just look different. 

No judgment.

So that is the start of what I can tell is going to be a very beautiful journey of discovering dance and what all that means.


If you want to learn more about this crazy modern dance thing, check out this post.
Also check out some Martha Graham because that is pretty crazy.