Danser!

Sometimes (okay a lot of the time) I’m not very PC. I know that fat-shaming and judging people by their appearance is totally bad. I certainly don’t want people forming opinions (or voicing them) about the shape and size of any of my body parts. But, as someone who has been something of a fitness junkie all of my life, I’ve got some opinions about bodies and why they matter.

I guess it all started when I was a kid. For one thing, my mother kept tossing me out of the house and telling me to go play. I usually didn’t go very far. Up the cottonwood tree in the backyard to daydream, or maybe to dribble a basketball on the patio. I wasn’t exactly the first pick on the kickball team in P.E., nor the star of the various alley games with the neighborhood kids. In fact, I was pretty much the smallest and the slowest. “Field day” at school was a white-hot misery.

But then, when I was 8, my parents got me a horse. That critter was tall and scary and had a bad attitude. It was a long, slow process of learning to ride her and care for her. As I got older and stronger, my father got older and more bent from ankylosing spondylitis. I started doing more and more of the things that men usually did – mowing the yard, unloading the horse feed, cleaning the barn, working on the car. Then I started junior high school. More P.E. Basketball, which I sucked at. Tennis, which I sucked slightly less at. But sometimes, we just ran loops around the school. And sometimes I passed people, or outlasted them, and that was nice. I discovered that I really liked running, and I liked passing people too. I started to feel more capable and confident in this body.

Then somebody came up with this idea called aerobics. Jane Fonda made a workout tape. That was fun. And my high school sweetheart bought me a 12-speed-bike for my birthday present. I rode all over north Texas on that thing, once I figured out gears. The bike was a lot more reliable way to get to school than my Ford Pinto station wagon. My thighs got too big for my skinny jeans. At age 18, with no money and no real plans, I randomly decided to join the Army. Off to basic training I went, where I discovered I wasn’t as fit as I thought I was. Pushups? What are those? I remember goofing around with some of my buddies, taking pictures of each other in our battle gear. My hair was short, my body was lean, and I felt like I could do anything. What a great feeling that was. Conquering the challenges of basic training taught me to approach physical and mental adversity with gusto and courage. 

It’s been a few years since basic training. I have a desk job. I have two kids. Staying fit is harder than it used to be. I go to the gym with my oldest daughter a couple of times a week. And I’ve started taking dance classes. Belly dance and Irish dance. They are both very difficult art forms. I’m not very good at either of them. Irish dance in particular is extremely physically demanding, but after dance class or a practice session at home, when I’m panting and drenched in sweat, I feel so amazingly alive. And hours or even days afterwards, I can feel the difference that dancing makes. There’s this core flame of strength and energy that I can always draw upon. Anyone who does regular aerobic exercise knows this feeling. 

But with dance, there’s something more. Dancing is more than exercise. It’s more than just the intersection between physical strength and physical control. When you dance, you become the physical embodiment of the music. And the more you master the dance form, the more perfectly you become entwined with the music as you dance. In Arabic there is a word for this – the spiritual ecstasy that arises from the physical experience of dance. You don’t just approach the divine - as you dance you become the divine, and you understand that the beauty and strength and joy of the body are divine. There is no separation. Why do you think fundamentalist religions ban or discourage dance? There is no ‘god up there and you down here.’ The power and pleasures of your physical self are magical and powerful and sacred and real. Do not sit on that couch. No one is watching. Everyone is watching. Get up and dance.