Gotta Dance

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

Vivian Greene

There are two things I really love about having a body. If it were the sort of choice I could make, I would give up food, or breathing, before I’d give up either kissing or dancing. Kissing is the best way to connect to another person. Dancing is the best way to connect to the universe. 

When we were together my ex-husband used to say that I was part leprechaun. Apparently, leprechauns became cobblers because they were always dancing holes in their shoes. I prefer to go barefoot when dancing, or any other time, really. Still, I can relate to the irresistible compulsion to dance any time there is music.

While the women on the Irish side of my family are definitely petite, I don’t think we actually descend from mythical creatures. There is something about dancing, though, that makes me feel connected to every ancestor, to everything. Drumbeats connect to heartbeats, feet connect to earth and all things seem to flow through me at once. I can feel my wings spread when I dance, my spirit growing like branches from a tree.

As a young child my dancing technique was somewhere between Martha Graham and Evel Knievel. I would tie a blanket around my neck like I was Mighty Mouse and put a record on and then throw myself about the room in an enthusiastic parkour ballet until some landing would hit a little too hard and the record would skip. In hindsight, these early attempts at flight may be why my parents put a small trampoline in my room. The records certainly skipped less once my dancing was contained to the springy circle. 

I tried ballet briefly but I hated it. I had big emotions. I wanted to dance with that same enormity. All these years later, I can still hear the ballet teacher in my head, “Girls! We are not a herd of elephants.” She wanted our movements to be delicate, controlled, precise. I am none of those things. I could not understand how it could be dancing if my hand had to be exactly like the girl next to me’s hand, if my toe had to point at exactly the same angle. In the beginning class, there was no room for letting the music move you. I learned that I am not a ballerina. 

I understood choreography better when I was figure skating, how one movement fueled the next. Figure skating is building up energy and then aiming it artfully. I think any art involves taking these explosive forces from within and harnessing them for creation instead of destruction. Figure skating does it with actual physics. The jumps and spins required me to be bold, powerful, and responsive. That, I could do. I mean, I fell on my backside, a lot, but it was worth it for those moments when I could jump, and spin, and land, and glide. Conducting my own momentum felt like a symphony, like having superpowers, like actual magic. 

Over the years, I’ve taken my share of dance classes- ballet, bellydancing, ballet folklorico, hiphop, tango. I am always the last dancer to grasp the choreography. I have no natural talent for dancing and I find it difficult to connect the part of me that enjoys dancing to the part of me that can keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing. It took me a long time to become willing to be bad at something for long enough to become good at it. Not great at it. Following choreography is hard, and my freestyle can be chaotic, but I don’t say I can’t dance. I know I am teachable. I can learn. Whatever the dance style, slowly, awkwardly, eventually, I can learn. 

I find over time that every dance style I learn works its way a little bit into my freestyle. I have more nuanced ways to tell a story now, a turn of the wrist, a flick of the hip, a stomp of the foot. My emotions aren’t just big, they’re nuanced, but I can dance every one of them, even the ones I don’t know how to put into words. Despite my love of reading and writing, I am even more drawn to those states that are wordless and primal. 

Dancing has been a struggle for me since I got sick in 2019. Big emotions, small lungs. I fatigue so easily. Still, that part-Leprechaun aspect of my personality cannot resist moving to music. I don’t stop dancing, I just keep the movements simpler, more repetitive, now.

It was one of our first nights in Lisbon that we had a sort of welcome reception at Le Chat. The food was nice. Tastes of this and that, rather than plates of dinner, served at standing tables, which I suspect was all designed to encourage mingling. Our host org runs a number of programs simultaneously and they were happy to be hosting all of us on their home turf. Happy in that social, bringing some of us together, way.

It’s just that by the time we got to Lisbon, we, the group of us who had been in Ponta Delgada, had already been through so much together. It felt weird to be thrown together with strangers all of a sudden. We had survived the usual culture shock, but also a Covid outbreak, and witnessing our friend dealing with unimaginable personal tragedy. Arriving in Lisbon felt like an occasion for a victory lap and now we were running it with players that hadn’t been in the same game. It was awkward. 

I’ve never been good at small talk under the best of circumstances. I really didn’t have it in me that night. Also, music. They were playing danceable music. If there is music, I dance. Dancing gives me so much joy. That night I didn’t care if I was weird. I didn’t care if my Ponta Delgada classmates thought I was being weird. I certainly didn’t care if the new group of students thought I was weird. I just wanted to dance. Fortunately, my people accepted me as I was. Some of them danced with me. As far as I can tell none of them judged, not my choice to let the music move me, nor the clumsiness with which I move. 

That night at Le Chat wasn’t the first time I danced the whole night. It wasn’t the last either. It wasn’t even the last time that summer. Lisbon is where I learned that there is such a thing as a “boat party.” We took a four hour cruise down the Tagus getting amazing views of landmarks like the 25th of April Bridge, and the Monument of the Discoveries, not to mention the sunset, while the bar served drinks and the DJ kept the music flowing. At least, on this floating club, I was supposed to be dancing. It was a fun way to meet new people from all over the world, too. Dancing really is a great way to connect to everyone and everything. 

Now, “different” is nice, but it sure isn’t pretty

“Pretty” is what it’s about

I never met anyone who was “different”

Who couldn’t figure that out

So beautiful I’d never live to see

But it was clear

If not to her

Well, then to me

That…

Everyone is beautiful at the ballet

Every prince has got to have his swan

Yes, everyone is beautiful at the ballet

A Chorus Line
At the Ballet