part 3
COVID.
I had covid.
After avoiding it for years, I had covid. It was not long before I was meant to be traveling across the world, to teach a dance I wasn’t sure I feel ready to do. It felt like I really had to confront if I really WANTED lindy hop this bad. No one would blame me for bailing. I agonised over it. A risk of such a public facing job, with lots of travel. Something I’d been hesitant to do. Was I just afraid of getting sick, or something else as well… I wasn’t sure. Nor had I been willing to look at it. I had been trying to be ok with a life without regularly travel. Without dance. Without the shadow that had loomed over my shoulder, and the hope and colour slowly drained out of me over the years post lock down. Because…
2020 was going to be my year. I was going to finally make it to Europe. I was finally feeling ready to prioritize dance, sacrifices and all. I might just step back into the lindy hop scene…. Maybe I could come back to that old abandoned dream… I was finally ready.
COVID.
I tossed and turned, sweating through my sheets, nightmare filled dreams. It feels like every time I go for this, something happens. Last time 2019, I took a fall and ended my trip before it even began. It’s years later, the world has changed, and I’m somehow back here. On the border between all I have been working for and something holding me back. I’m terrified. Deep down I never thought I’d leave the country. I’d always dreamed of world travel. But I was never able to. I wasn’t chosen for school opportunities and couldn’t afford other ones. I simply flipped through study abroad pamphlets and hoped maybe in university I could find something.
I never did.
Like most Black folks, I didn’t even have a passport until about a month ago. It felt unreal as I turned the document over in my hand again and again. My ticket to somewhere else. And yet here I was in bed, so close but so far away. I was feeling nervous about my teaching style, and the rejection I feared from the lindy hop community. Would they listen to me? Would they reject my cultural anecdotes? Would they respect me since no one had seen me dance in years? I felt like I had so much to prove and at the best of times was worried if I would measure up. I’d heard covid causes fatigue for a while. Would I manage to teach? Or just embarass myself. Was this responsible?
I’d made dancing my life, and was deep in denial about my real feelings. I started to wonder… If I could tolerate another heartbreak again if I dared to try again. Instead I told myself I was fine. I could be happy. This was enough. I could let Pomona teach our classes, return home and continue with my acceptable life. Things could be different. The scene could be different. You could be different.
The pressure was building and time was running out.
Was I doing this, or not?
Sweden
I’m exhausted. I’ve been waking up a few hours early to prep for classes and run drills and going to bed soon after classes to be sure I can recover, and it’s time for the class that has me the most intimidated. The advanced students. I’d noticed them through out the event. The level of dancer I used to look up to years and years ago. They were so technical, and had skills I planned to learn and never did. The gaps in my knowledge glaring to me. The rough edges of my skills, bothering me as I felt my social dancing was not good enough, although quickly returning. My teaching is strong but I can’t help but fret. Is this hard enough? Do they need other things. Did I forget something? Can I teach through my insecurities?
“I haven’t seen you like this in years” A friend says to me a few weeks prior.
“What do you mean?”
“You are so… focused. Determined. Driven. Happy.”
Echos in my mind. I take a breath to settle my nerves. Ludvig is smiling and shows me the room. It’s HUGE. Another breath. I’ll find a way. I review my notes again. I guess we will see if the scene is ready for this style of class and these tools…
After class a flow of students come up saying how much they loved it. I had felt the class get on board with me. I’d never really stopped thinking about lindy hop and all it could be. Teaching that class was such a high and yet I was still unsure if this is what I wanted. To go back to lindy after so many years. Let alone back to dance overall. The last night of the event I decided to stay and dance.
And suddenly I was flying! A grin spreading across my face, a satisfaction bringing up the earliest versions of me, a passion fully reignighted. It’s different from Blues something I wanted to be a replacement for swing and yet, has always been meaningful for its own reasons. Outside of working with the most skilled dancers of their style, It’s rare to experience this these days. That special mix of joy, technical challenge, artistry, expression, and fast paced partnership taking us higher and higher into flow state when we become the music and all else ceases to exist. Pushing me to think fast and express loud. To get out of my own way, to be present with my partner because if I don’t the magic can be lost, shattering this art experience. Blues, is so much more… grounded in reality. The humanness of being with another, a beautiful thing in and of its self.
But this was flying. Pushing myself and my body to the edges of my ability, a challenge that crystallizes the mind with each successful moment. Sweat drips into my eyes and my lungs burn from excretion. I’d been dancing a bit of Lindy and solo practice to prepare, but it was nothing like this. Some of these dancers were different. A refreshing breath of fresh air into memories of a style that felt so cookie cutter. A way of approaching the dance that used to be confined mostly to others of the Black diaspora and our close network. Yet here I was, in Sweden with some bodies as pale as the moon, sometimes dancing with the same familiar tones as D’angelo playing while cleaning on a Sunday morning.
The scene had changed, at least a little.
Maybe… I could come back.
“Does the path choose the walker or the walker the path”
The trip was special. Bringing out things in me that I feared were lost. I felt more alive than I had in so long. The world was vibrant and exciting and doing nothing with these new people was incredible. I lectured and taught while traveling with a dear friend. I was still having lots of lows but highs as well and a feeling creeping into my mind in the background I was trying to ignore. By the time I got to Hi-Fi in Seattle, I was raw. My time of travel was ending, coming back to the states felt… odd. I had a lot of to process emotionally and yet my world and place in it had changed so immensely, I didn’t know how to fit back in my own life.
I’d sobbed on a bodyworkers table during the event. A deep out pouring of so much hurt that I felt as if I was drowning in it. So much fear and grief. Built up over many years, the body keeps the score and all. We sang a song a blessing, a lullaby, as I fought to release the pain and not be taken away with it. I felt vulnerable as my soul laid before them as I felt like a small shivering child trying hard to be brave. The gentle touches like fire, the soothing words stinging, bringing me back into me. Seeing all the ways others’ actions had scarred me, the internal fights I was having with myself, and failing attempts to hold it all together.
I left dazed and sat quietly in the staff room talking to no one until I was needed for classes.
Later I questioned myself again. Was I really able to perform for the showcase? I’d said yes to push myself. Figuring I needed more videos of myself dancing and this seemed like an easy way to make that happen. I may have pushed too far.
The pressure of everything built until I had a panic attack during the tech rehearsal. I’m often nervous before performances but this felt different. This felt edgy and nerve wracking. This felt like stepping off a cliff and deciding if I was ready to fly. As the others went on stage, my heart raced. I compared myself, my act, my artistry against theirs. I was close to bailing. I was terrified.
It was my turn.
The glass filled with flat Vanilla Dr Pepper trembled in my hand as I stepped up the stairs and transformed myself into the drunk scene of heart break. The music began. Sipping the fake whiskey and almost gagging as it touched my lips. I ran through the various key moments in my head, calculating the stage size as I didn’t get a change to practice, bathed the blue light of midnight and grief. Lost in emotion, I started dancing and for a moment looked out. The mix of light in my eyes and the shadows of bodies in their seats. I looked up and into the huge space, the ceilling high above like stars.
This space was mine.
This audience was mine.
Awed and humbled by this revelation I danced, knowing it was as much about dance as it was sharing myself with the world. It didn’t matter if it was words or not, but creating impact on others on a large scale. Moving them and being moved by them. Putting myself, my soul, on display as an artist and thinker while asking others to join me in that vulnerability. In our shared humanity. No longer a question if I deserved such attention, but an acceptance that I had it. It felt like reality crystallized as it slowed down, my mind focused just on the feeling I wanted to share. The thing I wanted, no needed, others to understand. A similar feeling had came over me during a lecture two weeks before. To look out at the crowd and realize they were all rapt with attention. As if I had cast a spell.
I feared that, but not anymore.
I came down from the stage to applause and knew my life had just changed.
This is what I was meant to do.
I guess I’m coming back to dance.
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