Dancers are the ones who paint a story with their body. Dancers are the ones who dream with their feet. Dancers are those who know that dancing with your feet is one thing, while dancing with your heart is another. Dancers are the individuals who speak a language of secrecy, one that enables them to seek freedom, and live their life beyond limits. This same language has allowed me to see the world in a whole new way, as a dancer, and as a writer.
As a child, restricted by the walls of a motionless classroom, I often found it very difficult to perform certain writing assignments, such as the generic “Write an essay about an experience that taught you an important lesson,” or, “Discuss, in five paragraphs, your opinion on the importance of making mistakes.” These broad topics bored me, time to time again, yet I could never figure out the reason why. As a child, I was moved by the aesthetic sensation of rhetoric, but whenever I would write, I could never make my message come to life. As a result, my writing was of little substance and lacked creativity.
At the age of nine my great aunt, Debbie, passed away of cancer. I still remember how my mother told me, grasping my diligent hands, gazing into my glistening eyes, as if she knew as much as I did that I was trying to hold back a waterfall of tears. “Sweetie, I‘m afraid I have some bad news. Your Aunt Debbie…well…she left us last night but she is in a better place now and she isn’t hurting anymore. I know this will be tough for all of us but she would want you to be happy, and remember her for her cheerful spirit.” I could feel my heart drop to the pit of my stomach, and it was as if my heart no longer had clarity, an empty feeling that would never fully cease.
She was such a powerful woman, one who knew exactly what she wanted in life, one who was not going to let anything, or anyone, stand in her way. You could find her with a novel in her left hand, cigarette in her right, an addiction that symbolized her carefree spirit. At least that’s what I liked to think. I always wondered why she loved reading so much. To me, it was tasteless and dull. Perhaps I admired her for her passion for books, the way she hungered for this secret language, one that abolished her internal troubles, and most importantly, the sickness that pierced her health. She used to always tell me, “Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” At the time, I never understood the significance of these words, but it wouldn’t be long until they played a major role in my life.
Days, weeks, months passed, and I began to find peace in her passing, realizing that she was still a part of me. Slowly, but surely, I began to be myself again, and it was during this time that dance would change my life forever.
I only went to the dance studio two days a week, but those two days were all I needed. My instructor’s voice bounced off the wall, “Okay class this is the combination you will be doing today, Tombee, Battu, Pas De Bouree, Chaine, Jete.” I constantly whispered these words under my breath, afraid that the other students would hear what I was doing. I was amazed that the independent syllables could have so much emphasis, such as the final syllable in the word “Battu.” As this word rolled off my teacher’s tongue, it was as though the word rolled through my soul. The pronunciation was crystal clear, and it escaped her mouth in such an effortless manner, “Baaa..tuu.” I spelled the word in my mind repetitively, mentally writing each letter in a fiery red color. For days on end, I continued this process, spelling out a collection of words, such as “Frappe,” ”Developpe,” and “Ramasse.” My tendency to spell these words, letter for letter, was a mental game that only I felt destined to play. This “mental game” kept me occupied. I continuously spelled out words, letter for letter, as if there was no end in sight. Looking back, I think this was my way of curing the sense of isolation that had always separated me from everyone else.
I was amazed that these words could evoke such strong emotions, and change the way I thought, and felt about language, something that had never happened before. I felt a connection to these words. These words symbolized so much more than terms that shaped the world of dance. These words offered me comfort. They gave me hope that one day I could release all of my troubles into the exhilarating sensation that is dance. These words offered me a personal identity, one that both highlighted my strengths and weaknesses as not only a dancer, but as a person. As the years passed, my emotional connection to dancing only deepened and the dance studio would become a place where I was free to release my inner voice.
I take full pride in knowing that the only way I can free myself of emotional frustration is by dancing. It is such a fluent aspect to my life, one that never fully ceases, even when my body isn’t moving. The language of dance flows through my veins, my mind, my heart, and above all, my soul. I believe that one must be extremely passionate in order to see the beauty that language has to offer, in all dialects and fashions. Language is a key ingredient to our lives, one that distinguishes us from others, and one that is certainly taken for granted.
I think this is exactly what my great aunt was trying to teach me. She taught me that one must be passionate in order to find beauty in the simplest things here on earth, such as language, and I could not agree more. I have learned through my experiences though, that language is not simple, it is actually very complex. It ultimately offers each and every one of us a personal identity, a sense of character, a “marker” to identify us by. I now understand how language affects someone, and if one is robbed of his or her dialect, he or she might as well be robbed of his or her personal identity.
