I'm a Dancer

My friend Kristin sent me an email when I told her I was coming up to the University for a visit:

Advanced Modern I is at 9:15 AM on Friday.  You should go come and take it.

I knew I had a pool party coming up in Sonoma.  I could use the extra exercise to make sure my body looked in tip top shape.  Also, I wanted to see how the old body was working.

When I told Kristin, “Sure, I’ll be there!”, I got a follow up email:

That might be a tough course to throw you into.  Let’s see how you do.

The gauntlet was thrown down.  I was going to show Kristin and her students that I still had it. 

I had been doing yoga (maybe a few months ago). 

In any case, I run every (other) day! 

Okay, but I’m in shape.  I might be a good deal older than these students, but I look good for my age.

To prove how fit I am, I scheduled an 8 AM run with a former student of mine.  Andre and I decided that we would do two loops around the campus.  Easy!  We start running.  Andre tells me about life since graduating.  I wonder why he’s not in LA.  He’s taking a playwriting class with a group of people who are in their sixties and he’s learning a lot.  I tell him about life in LA.  He wants to slow down the run or take a break, I keep going.  At this point, I can’t believe that I have more stamina than a recent college graduate.  I love it and keep running.  We finish one loop.  Walk for a minute.  Then we hit the next loop.  Andre tells me about a woman “in his life” (I know he reads this blog, so I’m going to be discreet).  We high five on it.  But I am amazed that I am keeping up.  What a great warm up for class!

By the time we’re finished we have done 3.4 miles.  Didn’t even feel like it.  We had a great conversation.  Caught up.  My legs are warmed up.

I change and get into class.  I am wearing a pair of short running shorts (black with two neon green stripes down the side) and a long sleeved white and grey striped t-shirt.  There’s only one other person waiting in the dance studio.  I guess I’m early.  My friend Kristin comes in and the three of us warm up.  Something with a tennis ball and rolling it under our legs to warm up or work out the muscles or something.  I’m not quite getting it.  Kristin’s correcting me a lot.  Whatever.  It’s a tennis ball!

The students come in as we’re stretching and warming up.  I look them over.  All girls and one guy.  They seem friendly enough.  I’m on my back and running the tennis ball over my ass when Kristin introduces me as an alum, a teacher, guest director, actor (baker, candlestick maker, cop, construction worker, and cowboy).  I might be on my back and not looking at them, but I can feel a collective rolling of the eye.

F you!  I’m gonna smoke your asses in class!

I might be a little competitive.  Kristin starts class and explains a new section of the Wave that we’ll be exploring today.  I guess the Wave is a combination or a routine or something.  I never did the Wave in dance class, but I just decide to follow along.  She does this whole section.  The kids nod.   I look at her with puzzlement.  The kids follow along perfectly.  Maybe I shouldn’t have gone for that run.

We start the Wave.  So what I do know about the Wave is that it’s a continuous series of exercises.  We keep going and going and going on.  At a certain point, everyone looks like they’re doing a different thing.  So I decide that I’m going to warm up what feels right in my body.  I move around.  I follow along a bit and copy some of the dancers.  They follow me and what I’m doing.  It feels completely in sync and I feel buoyed by the dancers.  I like this.  I wonder whose technique it is for us to all warm up at our own pace.  But I love it despite my questions.  Then we start doing the new section that we talked about.  Oh!  So we kind of did an improv warm up and then we launch into the new section.  And everyone knew how to follow through and jump right in!  Wow!  Kristin really has these students locked into her way of thinking.  Then Kristin explains another section she wants to add on.  At one point, I’m completely facing the opposite direction of the students as they’re doing their routine.  I go with it.  It all feels completely intuitive.

At some point, I look around and realize that everyone is doing the same thing, but just maybe at their own pace or a little off.  Then I realize that what they were doing wasn’t an improv.  I was on the only one improvising.  Oops!

Fuck it!  I then start following suit a little bit more closely.  We finish the Wave, which seems like 45 minutes or more.  Then we gather around and talk about what we learned from the Wave.  The students talked about specific sections that they were getting better at.  They talked about being lost in the beginning of the course and now starting to hit their stride.  They talked about certain joints.  They talked about not having coffee in the morning and feeling woken up by the movement.  Everything they’re saying seems so specific to today’s physical experience and about them wanting to get better.

The question comes around to me.  What did I learn?

I learned that my body is not the same body I had twenty years ago.  But my mind was so focused and sharp.  I was more in the present of what I was doing instead of worrying about what my body was doing.  I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I gave into that.  I kind of just let it all go and let it all happen.

My statement was met with polite nods of acknowledgment.  With their blank stares, they were saying, “Whatever, old guy.”  And, by the way, I look like I’m only a few years older than them.  So they could have been saying, “Wow, we better keep going with this training because look at how quickly it all goes.”

Kristin, in a delightfully supportive (or maybe passive-aggressive) way, asked the class to raise their hands if they saw me.  How I was doing my own thing.  I just look what I wanted from the movement series and attached to what I wanted to.  She did say it was beautiful.  But did she mean beautiful in the way that the crazy and out of touch can be beautiful.  There is a certain beauty in insanity, after all.

I think Kristin was being encouraging and not condescending or feeling sad for me.  But despite what she meant or didn’t mean, I loved what she was saying.  And it seemed like a metaphor.  In my life, I have mainly cared about what other people think.  I lived my life to please everyone.  Here I was in this dance class with some people who might have been half my age.  They were totally wrapped up in getting it right.  I was wrapped up in the experience.  I remember being that kid who was trying to keep up and feeling like I just wanted to get it, but it wasn’t happening.  I was so focused on what I wasn’t doing, that I was missing what I was doing. 

True, the body is different now.  I have aches and pains I didn’t have before.  But the body is also more informed.  I am actually stronger now than I was as a dance student.  I have more weight to my body.  I am more grounded.  I truly saw the advantage of being older.  I was completely oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t doing this very laid out routine.  But I also engaged in what I could do and that felt so expansive.  I felt like I was doing everything right, because I was doing everything that was right for me.  And I was still getting movement into my body.  I was still elegant.  I was still strong and powerful and graceful.  That class kicked my ass, but not because I couldn’t keep up.  I kept up.  I kept up with myself.

My friend Susan in the two tarot card readings she’s gone for me recently has said that I have all of these amazing things happening around me that I can’t feel.  My experience of life on a daily basis is not one where I am focused on what I have and what I have accomplished.  I constantly look at my deficiencies.  That mentality literally blocks the blessings. 

But what I did yesterday unlocked something in me.  Something deep.  It didn’t matter that I was literally facing in the other direction.  I’m an Aquarian.  My ruling planet of Uranus orbits in the opposite direction of all the other ruling planets.  I’m supposed to be facing in the opposite direction—not the wrong direction, but the OPPOSITE direction.  That’s my role.  I completely was unaware to the fact that people were doing something else—well, that’s one way to look at it. 

The other, more constructive, way is to say that I took what I needed and left the rest behind.  Like any philosophy or way of thinking.  I took what my body needed and left what it didn’t.  I focused on what I am rather than what I am not.   My body still got its fill.  I stretched my muscles and I held my poses.  I worked my core.  I created the experience that allowed me to fully embody who I am. 

I had some hesitation initially about coming up for the reunion.  I had some residual bitterness about being passed over for a job there.  But then I realized that every time I come up to visit, something good happens.  So I decided to make the trip.  And that revelation—that I need to just fully be in myself—was worth the trip.

And I think it'll change everything.