What Dance Means to My Life

Dance is more than a physical thing; it can also be quite spiritual. The wind I dance around, the ground I dance on, and the sounds that compose my beat make me feel like I’m surrounded by whoever created me.

The African dance company I belong to often performs outside at festivals, weddings and outdoor parties. Our movements were destined to be outside. But inside the practice studio, every time I’d reach my arms up, I’d see a broken ceiling and when I reached down I’d see a floor unpolished and unfurnished. There had to be something more, like the initial meaning of these steps and where they are supposed to be done. I raised my hand in class one day after I had seen the ceiling too many times. I asked about the name of the dance, it’s meaning and its people. It was a “rites of passage” dance done at a ceremony where the entire town would gather. Daughters of the town would dance for and praise their elders and ancestors, thanking them for letting them live and guiding them. That answer was surely inspirational. The steps I was doing were bigger than me and the studio. They were as big as history, as big as ancestry.

At the performance of that dance, the audience unknowingly had set the scene of my imagined “rites of passage: ceremony. They wore the patterned cloths, stood in a circle, clapped, whistled, howled, and danced along with us. The crowd was so big I could not see my family or any individual faces. I looked at the crowd as one; the representation of me, and my past and future legacy. I thanked them each time my hands would touch my chest then open up to them. I thanked them each time I jumped and had a solid ground to land on. I thanked them each time my head swung back forth or sided to side. I ended standing with my arms open accepting their applause and feeling my familiar wind before receiving their hugs. I felt my creator again.

When my mom exposed me to ballet I wanted to find my spirituality inside it too. African dance could not be the only place. The ballet studios were a lot nicer than my African dance ones. The ceilings and floor were too perfect to dance anywhere else. The performances were never outside. Instead they were always on an elevated stage that looked out into a huge motionless crowd seated in an orderly fashion. When the lights lit up the stage and darkened the audience, I tried to listen to the silence and hear the sounds but all I heard were a few coughs. I accepted that African was my uplifting experience and ballet was my technique.

It remained this way until one day after dance class when some other dancers and I were playing in the grass. We played tag and hide and seek until their mothers came to pick them up. I was left in the grass waving at the cars pulling away. When there was no more waving to do, I started spinning and practicing what we had done in ballet a little earlier. In the midst of the turn the leaves flew up and, with the wind, circled around me as if I was Pocahontas. The wind was whistling and leaves were rattling. I had my beat and my ground and my wind and felt once again as if I was surrounded by my creator. I acknowledged what had just happened, jumped up in excitement and ran around. I went through everything we had done in class with my new ballet spirit. It was so uplifting I could carry it with me anywhere-in the studio, on that quiet stage with that quiet audience, and wherever I walked.