Dance, Dance, Dance

Dance is strenuous. It uses muscles you never fathomed you had. After a demanding stretch and floor exercise, an aching pain surfaced around my inside upper thigh. Whatever I did to stretch it did not work. After class I had asked my dance instructor what could be causing such discomfort and she responded it was my hip flexors. My newly found muscles began to work in my favor, allowing me to go deeper in my splits, leap with more stature in the air, and offer strict and poised legs for pirouettes.
My body would lean and bend in ways a straw could. “Larger, longer!” My instructor abruptly yelled at me as my feet met the wooden floor then just as quickly left. Thudding was not allowed. Dancers are poised for a reason and that is not to sound like a mad cow rampaging across the floor. When a dancer’s feet made a thud that was louder than the music, she would be told to re-do her leaps across the floor as everyone watched. I hated this training and conditioning. I just wanted to dance.
I was built for dance, my body petite and my muscles lean. My own instructor had once told me I had the perfect pointe toe point. Flexibility came fairly easy to me. Everyone would rave in jealously as we stretched our splits and I’d just shyly acknowledge their comments, “I wish I was that flexible”. It’s not all genetics, little did they know I suffered and conditions for several grueling hours to become like that, not just wishful thinking. I spent almost fifteen hours a week training at a gymnastics studio. My coach was coarse but had the biggest heart for every one of us. She pushed us to our brink to only better ourselves. She would deliberating take our front legs while in a side split and hoist it up on a wedge or some of us lucky ones who were more flexible had to prop our leg on the side of the trampoline. She’d shout, ‘Arms up!” and we’d be forced to sink even further into our split.
I loved gymnastics but I didn’t have the body for it. My arms couldn’t support my weight on back hand springs, kips on the uneven bars, and let’s not speak of the vault. That’s when I went back to dance. Dance allows me to express emotions in a way that is so majestic yet powerful. Dance is strenuous but I adore every damn minute of it.
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