For most little girls, enrolling in dance class as a toddler was not a decision we made for ourselves. It was probably our parents who decided it for us, who wanted to see us onstage in a little rose-colored tutu. This was how, at age four, I went to my first dance lesson completely unaware of the lifelong lessons I would learn through dance.
Now, this flowery introduction may lead you to believe that I would become a gifted dancer. Not exactly true. I danced for thirteen years and never achieved much higher than a mediocre level of dance. But being technically good at dancing and learning from dancing are not mutually exclusive! Despite never dancing competitively, my experience has taught me, and a lot of other former tiny dancers, important skills that stuck with us into young adulthood. So let’s reminisce, shall we?
1) We learned not to take ourselves too seriously.
At our first recital, when we got onstage in bumblebee costumes in front of hundreds of people, we learned quickly that our artistic portrayal of the trials of pollination would not be regarded with a critical eye. Throughout the duration of “Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee,” the crowd cooed at our sparkly antennae and giggled when we shook our stingers. Should we forget a step, the parents would audibly laugh at our mistake. Nevertheless, whatever their reaction, we never cried (well, basically never).
That’s how we became tough. We were proud of how hard we worked to remember the steps and we maintained our dignity.
In retrospect, we realized that sometimes our dance moves were pretty hilarious. This lesson would later help us make a lot of great friends in college.
2) We learned the power of smiling, even when we didn't want to.
When dancing to pop songs in jazz class, the most appropriate facial expression was the smile. During lessons and rehearsals, constant smiling was imperative for maintaining the good vibes our moves were givin’ off. “Keep smiling!” our dance instructor reminded us every few minutes. Next she would blatantly lie to us: “It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown!”
So we smiled, grudgingly at first. Then the smile made us feel happier, and we were smiling unconsciously for the rest of the lesson, because we were so happy!
Corny as it sounds, we still use these forced smiles to keep us positive. They change our perspective when things seem terrible.
3) We learned to love our reflection.
We needed to watch ourselves often in a full length mirror to train our bodies to move gracefully. Moving gracefully was not typically our strong suit, so we had to look at ourselves a lot to improve. Over time, we learned to stop fretting about how our reflection looked at rest, full of perceived imperfections we could not easily fix. We told ourselves that the limitations that people tried to impose on us for how our body was supposed to look shouldn’t affect our ability to dance.
This was our hardest lesson. When we accepted what we could and couldn’t change about our bodies, we finally saw our reflection dance. We congratulated our beautiful bodies every time we remembered to point our toes during our pirouette. We kept on improving until our very last recital (after which we changed hobbies but never ever stopped dancing).
What other lessons has dance taught you?
