Weirdo Dance Party
Because I lived down the street and she knew me, my dance teacher, Miss Eleanor let me start a year earlier than her usual youngest students. At three. It led directly to today.
I danced with her from 3-14 and 16-17. I was never particularly great but I kept up and I am consequently very comfortable being seen on a stage. Heard, not so much, but seen is easy. I lived most for the costumes. Odd, really, as I hate costumes now and have ever since I had to come up with Halloween looks that weren’t my dance costumes from the spring before.
I had a short lived stint on Drill Team, two misery filled years of being surrounded by the cool kids that I sooo did not fit in with. Until I woke up one day and realized I never had to go there ever again, so I didn’t. I missed my pom poms but that was it. But another dance phenomenon had happened to me several years before.
My second school dance, seventh grade Christmas dance, maybe. Shot Through the Heart, Bon Jovi. Did you know if you stand right in front of the speaker you can feel it? I didn’t. Till then. And I was addicted. I was the weird girl, for years, who danced all alone, right in front of the speaker. I couldn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought. For those hours I was invisible from the staring, judgy eyes of classmates – a state I very rarely found myself in, so awkward and self-conscious was I. But put me in front of a speaker and I am free.
Nothing could keep me from a dance. School, JCL state conventions (one every night!), college sorority dances, and of course, once 21, in every damn club I could find from NYC to Austin. I wasn’t there to drink anywhere near so much as to dance. To move to music. I was always dancing, like one of those women you see at a stop light moving and singing along with abandon. I love to see that kind of embraced joy, or rage, or abandon.
I can still dance. I can still just let my body go with the flow. Hell, I can do my own version of the electric slide. I like music but I’m not one of those people who has massive, eclectic, obscure collections. By and large, I like music I can dance to.
Today the list was:
Fire, Barns Courtney
Call Me, Blondie
Personal Jesus & Strangelove, Depeche Mode
Pump It Up, Elvis Costello
Route 66, Depeche Mode
Missionary Man, Eurymics
Inside Out, Eve 6
Mystify, INXS
Bad Things, Jace Everett
Try chair dancing sometime. See what you can do. How much of a work out you can achieve. How much range of motion you can reach. How much joy you can feel. It’s a damn good time.