Dance classes can mess with my head.

For those who don’t know this part of my history, I spent most of middle and high school doing community theater. Mostly musicals. A lot of singing and dancing. I started college as a musical theater major with a vocal scholarship in Boston and lasted one semester before I bailed on the whole scene. Why I bailed may be another post for another day. Anyway, haven’t done formal singing or dancing since.

Two years ago I started going to NIA classes, standing in the back, of course. Having spent most of my 20s dancing at raves instead of studios, all the mirrors felt odd. They signaled the difference between dancing for how it feels vs. dancing for how it looks. Suddenly, I could see myself dancing again instead of just imagining how it might look. I wasn’t sure if I liked what I saw.

NIA’s choreography is intentionally easy, though … so it wasn’t long before I remembered all my dance classes from childhood, got used to the mirrors, figured out what I was doing and started slowly sifting forward in the studio. After a few months, I was up near the teacher in the front row, subconsciously showing her and the rest of the class just how awesome I was. Check me out!, I danced. I know these steps and I look awesome, thank you very much.

Then, about a year ago, this young woman started coming to class and triggering me.

It was super fucked up and revealed infinitely more about my issues than anything she was doing. Despite being a new student, she was clearly a trained dancer and was immediately right up front at class, dancing bigger than the teacher. She was very, very skilled. She kept her eyes locked on her reflection through the entire class, dancing with herself in the mirror and liking what she saw. Somehow her very presence made me feel competitive. OH YEAH, I kept thinking to myself, WELL, I CAN DO THAT TOO, MISS SHOW-OFFY. Then I’d try dancing harder and prettier and better than her. It sort of reminded me of high school, really.

God: ICK!

I don’t know if it makes things better or worse to say that I wasn’t the only person being triggered by this new student. That either means she was radiating a competitive vibe intentionally, or else that I’m not the only one prone to petty jealousy and nasty resentment. So ok: She irked me, but even worse was knowing that my irkedness was alll about me. Obviously, her showy-ness was bugging me because, well, I was being showy too. Seeing myself in that was deeply uncomfortable. I tried getting over it and just couldn’t. During class I couldn’t help but stare at her.

Ew. Ick. I decided the only solution (other than not coming to class any more) was to dance at the back of the studio, where I literally couldn’t see her, and where all my show-offy reflexes were completely quashed. If my own showy mind-fucks were giving me grief, I would banish myself to the back of the classroom where I was invisible, just like I’d been in all those pitch black warehouses. I would force myself to stop caring about how it all looked and get back into dance as a sensation.

So, back to the back I went and AHA! True nirvana was found! In the back of the studio I could keep my eyes closed half the time and dance in my own bubble. It felt easier to deviate from the choreography because I had nothing to the prove to the teachers or my fellow students. Woo! Just Ariel, quietly getting her freak on in the back of the studio! While at clubs I’m known for dancing at the front right speaker, at NIA I stick to the back left corner.

And then I started taking this new dance class: Bottom Heavy Funk. HA! Most hilarious title ever, and if it strikes you as stupid then you would hate the class. I guess Jazz Funk would be another way of describing the style — or Really Fun Music Video-Style Street Cheeze. That might describe it, too.

Love the teacher (this is her, although she’s doing modern there), love the music, love the routines … but man I suck. I mean, I get it: I’m new. I haven’t done choreographed dance in 15 years. But on the routine we’re working on now, I lasted exactly one 8-count before getting completely lost. Three weeks of working on it, and I get the rhythm of certain sections, but canNOT nail the footwork, have no crispness at all, and am miles away from thinking about style.

The 17 year old me in my brain is mortified.

Naturally, I put myself in the back of the studio. NO CLUE, not gonna be in front where everybody can see the no clue-ness. Only showy girls who know all the moves go in the front.

… But after stumbling through a full class where I couldn’t see what I was trying to learn, I realized that with choreographed dance, you have to be up front or else you miss half the instruction.

The back of the studio was all the really well experienced dancers who didn’t need as much help, and sometimes even helped the teacher count out her street moves as she translated them to choreography. It was so confusing and I was completely lost. Hidden and safe, but lost.

I realized the only way to see the moves I was trying to learn was to sift up to the front of class. I had to be all sucky for all to see.

Oh man that shit is deeply humbling.

And oh man, is it totally awesome!

I might have gained public speaking skills and an uncanny ability to fake confidence from doing theater in high school, but I’m also oddly broken and brain-twisted about performing in some ways. I think it’s from having done so much singing and dancing during a deeeeeeply insecure time in my life. Now singing and dancing are always a little tied up in weird adolescent navel gazing and freaking out. I have this weird left-over neurosis that if you can’t do your shit WELL, you should just get off the stage. Hence: me never going to karaoke nights.

But I’m starting to learn the value of doing it poorly and visibly and spastically, right up where everyone can see you, just for the education and fun of it. I’m totally struggling in Bottom Heavy Funk, but it’s super fun and I’m trying to get over my weird performance hang-ups.

Because of Bottom Heavy Funk, I switched Unplugged night from Wednesday to Tuesday. So I get home from work, putter around for a bit, and then it’s off to class to step-ball-change with my weird performer brain demons from the early ’90s.