Before Yesterday

Last night, like so many of the nights of my life, I took a dance class. At this point in my life (I’m 54) I don’t find very many opportunities to take a class.

I drove 45 minutes to take an 8:30-10:00 jazz class with Todd, terrorized by the possibility that I might humiliate myself the entire way there. I was the only dancer that showed up. Todd held the door open for me to enter and held the class anyway. Great. So many more possibilities to humiliate myself waited in the empty dance studio.

The Boston Marathon bombing was yesterday. Todd moved here to Phoenix from Boston. It was a rough day for Todd. Not as rough as for many in Boston, but for someone removed and unable to help, rough still. But he stayed present to teach a class to one person…a 54-year-old dancer who rarely gets into class.

Last night, I didn’t have the right footwear for pirouettes, my left knee didn’t…my balance wasn’t quite…my butt refused to…I only wanted to sous-sus with the my right foot front even when the left foot front made more sense, but Todd and I danced together anyway in a style from back in the day. Back in a good day.

Last night was stepping back  to a time when I got to move with music to choreography somebody else created. This is a luxury I cherish now. This is a luxury that used to be “usual.”

I forget that I love to dance. Deeply. Dearly. Last night I remembered that our bodies were meant to soar and float and our souls were meant to breathe. Sitting in front of a computer it’s easy to forget.

We smiled. Almost the entire time. We had both danced with the same people back in New York, back in the day when twin towers still towered… with Luigi and with teachers still teaching:  Hama, Doug Caldwell and I can never remember the other guys name…Claude Thompson!  I had white high-top jazz oxfords back then. Humiliating shoe choice now, but so cool then.

Yesterday sucked for Boston, for America, for human beings. Art of any kind always gives us a pocket to climb into and escape. For me, dancing is my comforting, cherished pocket.

This morning the world is still the same, but for an hour and a half last night – it was a yesterday before terrorists. 

A yesterday when dancing was usual. 

Boston, I hope and pray you will find a pocket of escape for your soul to breathe and someday you will be able to remember your days before yesterday.

Thank you for taking the entire time to dance with me last night, Todd.

 

www.abbybelladance.com, Todd Bailey, instructor

https://www.facebook.com/dancersover40?fref=ts

https://www.BurnsItUp.com 

The Nature of Defiance

I wonder how many dancers have become dancers just out of defiance? There are easily millions ofdancers that have stopped dancing and millions that will dance into their grave at the end of a lifetime. I wonder if determination born of defiance could also be counted in the millions? At least as it refers to dancing.

I had to write a poem about an event that occurred in a room in the house where I grew up for a creative writing class. The professor pointed out that the dancing I loved came almost more out of defiance than anything else. I think I really just like being music, but his thoughtful comment caused me to consider that perhaps I'm stronger than I ever considered. Which is GOOD and I'm just gonna go with that.

The Straight and Narrow

Oblivious to the clicking of steel on linoleum I twirl thru the tiny brown kitchen

Hypnotized instead, by Judy Garland asking,

“If birds fly over the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?”

My brother points and laughs from his steady perch atop a stool

At the miniscule kitchen table.

The braces strapped on my legs to straighten out a crooked broken nature,

did more than restore the trauma of a birth canal.

The cold, perfectly straight, unforgiving iron bars

that could cement bone to bone

and free sinew so muscles could move,

also cemented iron to a will

and released the music inside, despite small spaces and small minds

and rough beginnings.

The need to silently twirl and leap happily over linoleum freely oblivious

to a brothers laughter and metal designed to constrain

would ultimately bring more defiance and elegance

than if I had been born in the perfect image of the dancer that stood within the bars.

But even after a forever of straight-legged pirouettes and fearless leaps,

being broken to begin with is still the person that returns my glare in an endless sea of mirrors.

Still, after a lifetime of silent dancing, the bars are something to be stepped past.

Another reason to dance: defying imperfection.