Dance class

I love social dancing, particularly the variety found at Gaskell and FNW, but I have never been much for clubbing. So, I had a few trepidations about the "African Traditional Dance" class that was scheduled for four evenings of our orientation. It was very new, the energy is very different from the high, smooth feel of the rotary waltz I love so much. The dance instructors were all amazing, beautiful dancers, and they could execute isolated movement so well that I was somewhat intimidated. The music was also totally new and strange. The drumming is strong and powerful, the rhythms were strange and almost syncopated, but not quite. And the tonality was also new, the drums each had their sound, and the rattle and the bell, and then the singing and flute on top of it all. It was a total sensory overload.

But the professor is amazing. He is totally attuned to the expression of dance not only as a movement of the body, but as an expression of the spirituality of the community and the individual soul. During orientation the dances were really hard, I just didn't quite get how the music and the movement worked together. In part because I am such a controlled person. The professor would say, "when the music changes I want you all to get out there and boogie, boogie with all that you are." The idea of letting go so completely into a dance is very frightening to me, at the same time, the word boogie just sounds funny, and not like something I would ever be caught dead doing. To top it off, they called the move we were learning "chicken arms." So, we would be dancing around in a circle, and then one of the assistants would come over and call you out into the center where you had to show off. It was so frightening, but at the same time the attitude is so generous, and everyone is smiling. For a few, brief moments I could slide into my body and just move as the music moved, until someone would call out and I would become self-conscious again.

As I was signing up for classes, I was worried that dance would not fit into my schedule, and so I missed the first week of classes. Luckily when I went last night they were working on the same dance we learned in orientation.

I am so amazed by the professor. He started off explaining that we had to come with the correct emotional energy for dance, then led us in a song that grounded the group together in a common pulse. And then we got up and started practicing the dance moves. It was the noisiest environment. The drums filled the entire room, and the acoustics have a lot of echo. Additionally, some parts of the dance are sexually suggestive, and so there is a lot of hooting and laughing that go along with them, especially during the explanation of movement if one of the TAs is a bit silly and over-exaggerates a movement.

The style and technique are still foreign to me, and I have a long way to go in learning how isolate different parts of my body, but the class moves at a good rate, and the attitude is so generous that I know this will be an important kind of learning for me.