I went to dance school for 12 years, from the age of 6 until I was 18
Dance was a huge part of my life, I loved it but it was a strict practice. I memorised choreographies and barre sequences, I counted the beats, I synchronised with the rest of the group. My body loved dancing , but my mind was stuck thinking about doing it right rather than enjoying it. I definitely learnt discipline and perseverance because of dancing and met some of my best friends in those years
From a young age, I learnt that when I was on a stage, I was there to perform and to be watched and be assessed. When I became a teenager this affected the way I looked at my body: something that was valued for the way it looked and moved. This judgement often stripped me from enjoying the experience of movement, too focused thinking about what others thought of it
Later on dance became something we did in night clubs. And alcohol was needed to start the dance. We would dance to impress. Other girls? The boys?
It had to be sexy, but not too much
´cause what if it was vulgar
then you were a slut..
Fuck that
It took years to unlearn the pattern of ‘dance as performance’ . We don’t have to be ‘good’ at dancing to dance, because not everything we do needs to be judged and ranked
Dancing makes me feel alive, because for me dancing is when my body melts into music. And when I dance these days, I invite the old versions of me, and we hold hands and spin around each other
Dance is freedom and liberation, empowering and cathartic. And if movement is the language of the body, dance is poetry
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