Finding The Moves
how is your skeleton?
are you giving it a good home?
what does it feel like inside this body?
[ r e m e m b e r y o u h a v e a b o d y ]
One day I give up sitting at my computer because nothing good is coming from it. I walk up the stairs to change my clothes then descend back down until I end up in my basement. I look through my email to find the Pony Sweat newsletter, containing a free video dance aerobics routine. After taking a deep breath, I press play.
Before this moment, I had been curious about Pony Sweat but like most things that require moving my body I have avoided exploring what going to a class might feel like. Allowing myself to be in my body is not a practice that I am excited about these days. I spend most of my time caught up in my head, creating from there, and doing my best to ignore how my body feels. And yet, I have this very real need for movement. I have all this energy inside me that builds up when I don’t use it. I have feelings that need to be expressed physically. If I go too long without moving, I begin to have an edge to my words and tension in my shoulders.
what is happening inside this body?
can you find the source of the tension?
when you find it, what does it tell you?
[t h e b o d y i s n o t t h e e n e m y]
I usually choose to go for walks when this happens, but on this day where I end up dancing in my basement it’s raining. It’s raining and everything inside me is aching in a way that is hard to describe. I guess the feeling is more comparable to an unreachable itch. I am desperate to get some relief.
I start dancing along with the video and at some point I stop looking at my computer screen. When this happens, I’m just letting go, and my body begins moving all over the place. I begin to wonder what songs are stored in my muscles. What memories are in my shoulders, my calves, waiting to express themselves on my makeshift dance floor.
can you hear a sound when you rise from your seat?
can you hear the way this body speaks to you?
what is it saying?
[t h e b o d y r e m i n d s u s t o l i s t e n ]
There was a point during college where going out dancing was a semi-regular event. I found that I didn’t really know how to dance in a club type setting. I analyzed the people around me in order to determine how to move my body. Especially on the “Girls’ Nights” where I would end up dancing with a drink in hand wearing high heels, I lost all sense of myself and depended on my friends to know what I should be doing with my body. There was no authenticity in my moves, so there was no real sense of letting go, but there was a sense of giving in.
Sometimes I would go out with a friend who would purposefully take up so much space with his dancing that no one dared to get close to him. When I recall the memory, I see his long legs reaching outwards, almost as if they were crawling away from his body. I would get caught up in how free he looked while dancing and how he seemed to feel entitled to taking up space. There were times where I think I let go, too, but I can’t remember. All I can remember is the way he looked. I think I wished to be looking into a mirror, to somehow see myself as him, to believe that I could move in whatever way I wanted in and take up as much space as I pleased. As I let go in my basement on this rainy day, all of this comes to the surface, and I wonder if somehow some of this is what has stopped me from moving my body.
can you claim the body as yours?
why or why not?
what would it look like to claim it as yours and only yours?
[t h e b o d y b e l o n g s t o s o m e o n e]
If I think even further back, I am reminded of when I used to take dance class. I took ballet, lyrical, jazz, and hip hop throughout elementary school. I hated the costumes but I loved finding myself in sync with the other dancers in my class. There was less pressure then, in some ways, since I didn’t have to find my own moves. The only expectation was to copy what was in front of me. The teacher I liked the most didn’t resemble what I had thought a dancer was supposed to look like. She wasn’t a poised, stick-thin, bun-headed woman. She was an average person that happened to love dancing who worked at the pizza restaurant my family frequented. She started our classes blasting Scissor Sisters. She had us work hard but never to any type of breaking point. The container she created in our class felt safe. To most eyes, I was an unskilled dancer, but in her class I still belonged.
I look back at the screen to see Emilia, the fearless pony leader, straying away from her own choreography. She stays true to her motto of fuck the moves and gives into the movement her body is calling her to express. I come back to her, following along once again, studying how she doesn’t seem to judge herself. Her confidence is magnetic. I wonder what it took to get to that place. I don’t think this comes easy to anyone. Though we aren’t in the same physical place, I feel again like I did with my old dance teacher, I belong. I am enough, showing up, in my basement, as I am.
what does it look like to say “fuck the moves”?
where does that idea take the body?
where do you go when there are no rules?
[a l l o f t h e r u l e s t h e b o d y c o m e s w i t h c a n b e b r o k e n]
Suddenly, I crave to be back on a real dance floor, to be in a shared space, moving alongside other people. I desire the heat of it, the loudness of the music, the atmosphere that makes movement possible. In a huge crowd, the attention isn’t on me, and there’s a sense of privacy that doesn’t even happen when dancing alone. When I am dancing alone, I have no choice but to be aware of every moment I am making. In a crowd, I imagine there is potential to really lose myself.
In my basement dancing along to this video, I am aware of my moves. I cannot turn that awareness off. But maybe I need to be aware. Maybe getting lost is just another escape from really connecting with myself. Maybe this is what it takes to recognize this body, to find some understanding of it. To claim it as my own.
do you want to feel connected?
can you practice being present?
how can you allow yourself to be imperfect in this practice?
[r e i n t r o d u c e t h e b o d y a n d y o u r m i n d ]
There are many types of bodies (body of water / body of work / body of christ / body of knowledge / body of evidence / body of an essay / governing body / etc). They have names and this one, the one I am inside, does too. I have already renamed myself, but have I renamed my body? Am I one with myself?
On the Pony Sweat website, under core values -> our actions, it lists “We notice our bodies (breath, feet, bones, muscles, blood, skin.)” What does it mean to notice the body in this way? Beyond appearance. To zoom in on how the blood feels moving under skin, how the breath feels in the nose, how the feet feel on the ground.
I have no answers. I don’t want to have the answers yet. All I know is that there are songs stored in my muscles. There are memories, there are moves, that live in this body. The next step is to let them out.
can you let go?
can you find your moves?
what story do you carry that tells you not to dance?
[a b o d y i n m o t i o n s t a y s i n m o t i o n]
Note: This writing is not affiliated with Pony Sweat but you can learn more about them at https://www.ponysweataerobics.com/
