I Want To Dance

I love dancing. I have loved it ever since I was a little girl. But the older I got, the less inclined I was to dance where anyone could see me.

Photo by Mike Baird

There once was a song from the children’s show Veggie Tales called “I Want To Dance”.

It was a song that I related to so strongly that I’ve never forgotten it. What was meant to be silly was a painful reality to me.

It was a song about a gourd who had always dreamed of dancing, but because of his size and shape people would only make fun of his attempts.

Granted…I’m not a gourd, but I might as well be, for all the grand jiggle that I possess. I wanted to dance freely and not be made fun of, regardless of my skill level or fat behind.

Sadly, real life really enjoys mocking fat, jiggly dancers. So it was largely against my will that I signed up for Dance 100 this fall.

My first day in class sent red-hot shivers of doom down my spine, most of which I shrugged away in the hopes that I was being paranoid.

These were pathetic hopes.

 

Class #2 had me doing moves with French names and satanic intentions. At the end of an hour’s worth of torment, I propelled my sweat-drenched, heaving carcass out the door and careened towards my vehicle.

I couldn’t move for days without growling like a dragon.

Flash forward a few classes and I’ve started to warm up to it (or reach a level of survival…whatever). But up until today I found it humiliating to be the fat girl trying to dance.

This morning I woke up sick. Crappy, drippy, hacky, all get out sick. The kind of sick that urges you at all costs towards a warm bed and hot soup. But once again I hauled my jiggly butt to dance class, if only to sit and watch.

As I sat in the auditorium, watching my fellow classmates try and keep up with our friendly (yet assassin-like) dance instructor, I was struck with a new realization…

Dancing is beautiful.

This isn’t a completely new idea to me…I’ve always considered professional dancing beautiful. But this was new. I was watching people of varying skill levels, ages, heights, weights, and personalities, and I was stunned. They were gorgeous.

The simple desire to express a feeling, enjoy movement, or simply challenge themselves made them beautiful. Instead of the urge to be embarrassed for people who aren’t particularly genius dancers, I found myself contemplating the beauty of movement and the courage of an unusual group of people.

Long story short…dance class may still kill me, but now I feel less concern about how I appear and a stronger desire to do what I have loved since I was little…express my heart through the art of dance.

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