What is dancing for you?

Oh, I love that question. As you might remember from your introductory course, dance is a way of using movement and rhythm to create a new form or experience in a music. We have many examples of dancers using dance to make music. I know that this is a difficult question to answer, but I am going to do my best to do so.

Dance was a part of my childhood – there was a dance I liked – called “Dance of the Heart”. One of my mother’s friends, who worked hard to get me to attend the dance class, showed me a video featuring “Gus and the Bluesmen” (the first time I saw this). I remember seeing the two black men dancing in front of the schoolhouse. I didn’t know them at the time, but the dancing was so powerful and moving, the two men who were dancing made me feel like all were dancing together for the same goal – a harmony of human bodies and the energy of the sun.
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This is my interpretation of dancing with the sun, and a simple form of that experience – harmony, balance, and flow. Dancing with the sun is a way of making new forms, experiences or expressions that we never know we want until the experience happens. The joy and awe that I experienced at the time was the same joy that my first love, Gwenyth Paltrow, got when she was able to experience music from an entirely different cultural perspective: she learned to dance with the people in her life.

And I find myself dancing with the sun in the same way that my first love, Gwenyth Paltrow, found happiness by dancing with the people in her life. I am fortunate to have dancers like these at my college that have taught me the joy of creating, finding a new language, and making new ways of being. At the same time, I am deeply moved by the pain of those who lose a loved one, and they dance with them every night in front of me. How do I find my dance and make it my own? I need to see my dancing as making us feel more comfortable, more loved, more alive. And also, I need to see the dance of the heart as a reflection of that love.

These questions I thought would give me more clarity or direction, rather than give myself more work. Perhaps the best guidance I have received is just by doing. A few days ago, I walked into the dance studio of Dr. Michael Jackson’s dance academy.