The last time I was teaching one of our adult classes in the Dance Project studio, I was still using my 10-year-old iPod for music (it’s ok, you can laugh; I am often behind the technological times). It hasn’t actually been that many years, but I’ve been teaching our Adult Modern class this summer and fall for the first time since 2019, and I hadn’t realized what it would mean to me to get back into the studio this way.
Working administratively for a dance organization means I get to be around dance every day, but it doesn’t mean I get to DANCE a lot. These last few years, working partly from home and virtually, I’ve been even more disconnected from my dancing body.
Although teaching a dance class is very different from taking it, the process of planning and teaching class has prompted me to rediscover the joy of moving my body in dance and the ways dance connects us to other people–aspects at the very core of my love for dance, but that have grown a little theoretical over the last few years.
Now, I find myself thinking about combinations from class all the time. I create plie combinations in the kitchen, I have to try out a particular way of spiraling to the floor around my kids’ toys in the living room. My creative brain feels reawakened in a certain way, and it’s a welcome feeling.
Likewise, the familiar pleasure of connecting with other people through the physical act of dancing has been energizing. The protective cocoon I retreated into during these last few years had become restricting, muffling; dancing again feels like returning to a world at full volume.
I’m grateful for the chance to experience others going through a similar rediscovery, in the studio, and through my work with the NC Dance Festival this year. Gathering with artists and audiences who were fizzing with this re-kindled energy reminded me of all the reasons I love this work.
I’m hoping you are also finding experiences that are reconnecting you to a sense of energy and possibility, whether that’s happening in a dance studio or elsewhere. Here’s to remembering what you love.
