![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emchyso my love of dancing is no secret to most of you. get me out someplace where there is music and i start moving. god forbid it's anything swing like and i have probably pulled you onto the floor too. my bandmates often get the brunt of this since once i am cocktailed i get aggressive in my want of a dance partner. i like to think sweetly aggressive but still. so last night rooster had a surprise date planned. i got home to lilacs!!! that she got special ordered from CANADA!!! omg. amazing. then she made tasty salmon dinner with a cucumber, apple, avocado and butter lettuce salad and i did homemade balsamic dressing. all tasty happy we got in the car and she block by block directed me until we were at embarcadero. i guessed the new jarmusch movie but was surprised by Every Little Step. We had meant to see it at the SFIFF but missed it. It's the amazing doc of the origins of A Chorus Line and the subsequent revival.
So what you may not know about me and dancing. I was in dance classes from the age of five. In high school I was in a competitive dance troupe (2nd place state competition) and was actively dancing for about 4 hours a day 5 days a week. I was still a curvy girl but I was also one helluva and athelete. I also owned a beat up copy of the Chorus Line movie from the 80's that I taped off of someone's HBO that I watched easily 120 times. That's a low estimate. I wanted to grow up to be a dancer / performer on Broadway. Dance and music were all that mattered to me. But since I was still curvy, when I graduated and went to college (not in NYC) I gave up on that to be more responsible.
When I left Michigan (again not for NYC) I gave up even more. All I wanted for so long was to move to NYC and try to make it but I didn't see people who looked like me making this work and didn't want to live my life as a perpetual and delusional failure.
Yet the love for dance never left. Here and there when the $$ was around I have taken classes around town and though I am not in the athletic shape anymore - dancing makes me happy. Happy like playing the best song ever on my accordion. Happy like writing or singing a perfect song. It's the other part of me that I keep pushed down a little because to realize how much of it I don't do breaks me a little.
So we went and saw Every Little Step. And it was great. And it was normal feature length and I could've watched at least five more hours of it. All I want now is dance dance dance. I am still not 100% in my body around the idea since my athelete pieces just aren't up to snuff and it's weird that where my muscle memory takes me in terms of stretching, warm ups and yea the dance itself - my body can't do it now. Body betrayal and that brings up shame and sad.
But the dancing is so joyous. So happy. I am too broke to afford a class. BUT. If I plan ahead every lunch. If I don't buy coffee out and just swap it for water. If I watch where the other costs come from and hustle up some extra gigs here and there - I can make it work. I found a 2 hour session on Weds that I want to try to hit weekly. Honestly? If I could I would try and add this into three nights a week just to kick it off right. But once a week will give me the joy. I am going to try and just start. Even if I think the $$ isn't there because someone i trust told me to take risks and believe that you can ask for anything. So here i am. I believe the $$ or the barter or whatever needs to happen will come up.
I believe that I can go back to saying that I am a dancer and not that I was a dancer.
My body needs more activity to feel strong. Sitting in a cube is disintegrating me and only more real world action will undo those spine bending hours. If for a while all my life is is playing music and dancing while trying to get my performance career off the ground and by performance career I mean both making the bands active and successful and amazing, and collaborations with other accordion players, and i mean feeling in my body and in my skin for how i walk in the world.
I want my core to feel strong again. Both inside and out. This is one of the steps.
ps
since the smoking post i have not fallen off the wagon. thanks to those who are supporting that - espmc_kingfish for the unlit placebo cigarette the other night!
So what you may not know about me and dancing. I was in dance classes from the age of five. In high school I was in a competitive dance troupe (2nd place state competition) and was actively dancing for about 4 hours a day 5 days a week. I was still a curvy girl but I was also one helluva and athelete. I also owned a beat up copy of the Chorus Line movie from the 80's that I taped off of someone's HBO that I watched easily 120 times. That's a low estimate. I wanted to grow up to be a dancer / performer on Broadway. Dance and music were all that mattered to me. But since I was still curvy, when I graduated and went to college (not in NYC) I gave up on that to be more responsible.
When I left Michigan (again not for NYC) I gave up even more. All I wanted for so long was to move to NYC and try to make it but I didn't see people who looked like me making this work and didn't want to live my life as a perpetual and delusional failure.
Yet the love for dance never left. Here and there when the $$ was around I have taken classes around town and though I am not in the athletic shape anymore - dancing makes me happy. Happy like playing the best song ever on my accordion. Happy like writing or singing a perfect song. It's the other part of me that I keep pushed down a little because to realize how much of it I don't do breaks me a little.
So we went and saw Every Little Step. And it was great. And it was normal feature length and I could've watched at least five more hours of it. All I want now is dance dance dance. I am still not 100% in my body around the idea since my athelete pieces just aren't up to snuff and it's weird that where my muscle memory takes me in terms of stretching, warm ups and yea the dance itself - my body can't do it now. Body betrayal and that brings up shame and sad.
But the dancing is so joyous. So happy. I am too broke to afford a class. BUT. If I plan ahead every lunch. If I don't buy coffee out and just swap it for water. If I watch where the other costs come from and hustle up some extra gigs here and there - I can make it work. I found a 2 hour session on Weds that I want to try to hit weekly. Honestly? If I could I would try and add this into three nights a week just to kick it off right. But once a week will give me the joy. I am going to try and just start. Even if I think the $$ isn't there because someone i trust told me to take risks and believe that you can ask for anything. So here i am. I believe the $$ or the barter or whatever needs to happen will come up.
I believe that I can go back to saying that I am a dancer and not that I was a dancer.
My body needs more activity to feel strong. Sitting in a cube is disintegrating me and only more real world action will undo those spine bending hours. If for a while all my life is is playing music and dancing while trying to get my performance career off the ground and by performance career I mean both making the bands active and successful and amazing, and collaborations with other accordion players, and i mean feeling in my body and in my skin for how i walk in the world.
I want my core to feel strong again. Both inside and out. This is one of the steps.
ps
since the smoking post i have not fallen off the wagon. thanks to those who are supporting that - esp
mc_kingfish for the unlit placebo cigarette the other night!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-09 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 04:37 pm (UTC)