Let me introduce myself, well, a part of myself. My dancer self. I grew up as a dancer, but I also grew up in the 90’s...which means I grew up when the word “poser” was a cool thing to throw around.
If you wore Van’s but didn’t skateboard? Poser!
If you claimed you were a snowboarder but weren’t riding double black diamonds? Poser!
These subtle and not so subtle messages impacted me a lot when it came to my dancing. By the time I was in high school I was dancing close to 20 hours a week, going to various conferences and competitions that were entire weekends long, and traveling to other states for national competitions. But I STILL often felt like a poser. I thought that you couldn’t call yourself a dancer unless you lived in New York and were performing on Broadway or in professional ballets. I felt this split in my identity, because dance meant so much to me and was such a huge part of me, but I thought unless I was perfect and making money from it I could not call myself a “dancer”. This especially was true for me when I was 14 years old and broke my foot in dance class. It would be a year and a half before I could dance again, and I never felt that I got back into the technique and ability I had pre-injury. I was only 17 years old when I started fantasizing and relishing in the “good ol’ days” of my dancing career. I thought it was over. To me- a dancer’s career was going to be over by the time they were 30 years old after all of the wear and tear that they put on it. You would think this may deter me, but it didn’t. It made me want to push as hard as I could to be able to make it, and even if my body reached an abrupt decay from all of the hardship I put it through, at least I could say I made it. But after my injury I fell into a deep depression. I wasn’t able to get the desire or the hope I had once known back, and I thought that my future career as a dancer was over. For reasons I don’t have the time to go into here, I decided to become a missionary in Northern Uganda instead...at the age of 14. I moved to Northern Uganda when I was only 19 years old and lived mostly by myself with various friends that became like family. I was introduced to a Ugandan dancing crew and was invited, if not coerced, into dancing with them in various practices and performances.
I looked JUST like you may imagine. A white, ballet trained girl trying to move her hips and shoulders? (not to mention a girl who grew up in purity culture and felt shame about even having hips and curves in the first place) It must have been a sight to see! I felt funny. I felt awkward. But more importantly, I felt alive. I felt a part of me that I had lost many years ago start to come alive on the dirt grounds where we would practice and move and shake. I felt my heart begin to beat again as I took in the sound of the drums and various instruments played by the musicians in the crew.
I need you to hear that I write this with a lot of tension in my heart and my gut. I am holding the tension of this being a beautiful experience for me, and also knowing the harm and issues with me entering into a culture, a village so different from mine without awareness of my own impact. I did not know then, and I am only still learning now, the impact of my skin and what it brings. So while I write this I am combatting my own judgments of being another white missionary who was part of colonizing cultures and people. I have a lot of kindness and pride in that 19 year old. She was fearless and bold and loved so big it broke her body in a different way than her ankle ever did. I cannot write my missionary years off as just “wrong”. There was also so much goodness and life that came from that time, and I also continue to hold the nuance of the harm I was complicit in through white supremacy and colonialism.
I didn’t realize that it would take the plains of a country on the opposite side of the world to bring me back to...me. And even though I found glimpses of myself through movement as I was covered in red dirt up to my knees, it would take another decade for me to embrace what I had found. I am still learning to embrace it...embrace her. This dancer that lives inside of my body. She is not a poser. I am not a poser. I may not be the most technical...or even really have any technique left! I may not be performing professionally (although I’d lie if I said that wasn’t still a dream of mine). But what I learned from this culture and my friends is that movement is life. Dance has been adulterated and counterfeit as it has become prescriptive. Most of the types of dance I grew up with never feeling good enough in are types of dance that were created by white men who did not have kindness for bodies in mind when they created “technique”. Dance is much more than specific postures and flexibility. Dance is an energy that courses through our individual and collective bodies. It unites us and brings us together. Dance dissolves our sense of self so that we can find community and union. Evolutionary biologists believe that song and dance were what glued societies together and enabled us to form functioning communities.
Dance is powerful, and that power scares me. I know what it is to lose dance, and that makes me afraid to embrace it. But I also know that in not embracing it I am losing so much of myself. So it is my life’s work to bring myself back to my dancing body. To make dancing feel accessible to ALL bodies. That all abilities, skill levels, and sizes may start to feel comfortable and free in their own unique movements. THAT is why I offer restorative movement classes. For me… for you… for all of us <3
If you are interested in connecting to you, your movement, your unique dance… join me for my restorative movement classes. Full monthly schedules and class information is posted on my “offerings” page. You can email me at jennifer@indwellcounseling.com to register.