I’m a Terrible Dancer. I love to Dance.
On Embracing Imperfection
I took my first belly dancing class when I moved from Scotland to Louisiana, to start a job teaching Modernism. I knew no one in Shreveport, so I would have to put myself out there, to make friends. My wheelhouse is taking classes, and a dance class appealed to me as I’ve always loved dancing, even though I’m not that great.
I’m not the absolute worst. I took a lot of dance classes as a child, so I have some muscle memory (what to do with your hands, etc.), but I’m not built to be a dancer. I’m built to grind a grain, or pull a plow, or maybe lift a recalcitrant sheep and put it back down a few feet away. My legs are very strong, but they are the exact shape of an emoji chicken drumstick. My torso is long, and my arms are also short. I’m basically a corgi, that can stand upright.
Indeed, it was made very clear to me, at a very young age, that I would never be “a dancer.” My very aspirationally middle class mother put me in all the things she thought a middle-class, white, assigned-female-at-birth child would need to cement her place in the hegemony. I took piano and violin lessons (Suzuki, of course), and gymnastics at our local gym, and dance lessons at the Bonnie Ardelean School of Dance.
I hated piano (although I can still bang out the chorus to “Joshua Fit the Battle of…
