I never really danced in high school. Once in a while I'd turn a Relient K song and have a solo mosh pit in my room pretending I was in a music video. But I donno if you want to call that dancing....it was moving rhythmically to music...so i guess it sort of qualifies (but not really).
I never understood why people loved to dance so much. To tell you the truth, I used to think dancing was lame - or should i say - stylized dancing was lame. I remember during my 7th grade middle school dance nights, we'd do "the epilepsy" to teen classic jams such as "california love" or "YMCA" and I remember having the best time of my life because no one really cared what we looked like, and to me, that smorgasbord of unorganized energy was dancing. It wasn't pretty, but it was fun. I guess that's why I felt so weird when I saw battles because dancing became a competition; a "who's cooler" algorithm of rehearsed moves to gain prepubescent street cred.
Some of my friends in highschool would breakdance and session in their garages while I stood by in my grey dickies and band t-shirts sweeping my mullet-bangs to the side of my face. It just never clicked for me I guess: the whole idea of organized dancing. In highschool, I thought I was so cool because I was a drummer in my school's marching band because everyone knows that all the badass kids are in the marching band. If you've ever seen the movie drumline, you'd know: even black people were in marching bands and EVERYONE knows that black people invented cool. If that weren't bad enough, I was also a drummer in the orchestra, wind ensemble, rock band, and jazz band, so i guess that made me mr. rebel cool kid #1. I don't have any regrets about being in band by the way. It remains my true love and all the experiences from traveling and creating beautiful music will always hold a special place in my heart.
So whenever my non-dancing friends see me, they say
"ohhh shoot, look it's 'DUH DaNsSuhhhh!!'" (emphasis on the DUH).
I guess it's not a bad thing, but I feel slimy when I hear it. It feels like they got the wrong guy. In fact, whenever I heard that, it'd make me cringe just a little bit. Not talking about it makes me feel like there's an elephant in the room, but in reality, I feel a lot like the elephant. It doesn't belong!
College marked an ironic twist of events for me as I ended up joining a choreography team called UCSD Ascension. It introduced me to a performance world of adrenaline as we'd dance in front of crowds full of cool kids. To tell you the honest truth, I liked it because I felt really cool. That sounds so cheesy, but I liked the spotlight. Maybe that's why it's fueled me to take classes and push myself to achieve as a dancer. Being cool felt good. But inside, I'm not really looking to be dope. In fact, I am a geek at heart. I just want to enjoy my craft, and the enjoyment is running dry these days. I know its there and I'd like to catch onto it, but it's slippery.
The team I currently dance with is filled with some of the best dancers in the world. And I mean filled. Many of them have toured with international superstars and even starred in music videos and ABDC. It was my dream last year to make it onto the team and it's still a surreal experience because dreams are rarely realized. To me, straight A's are within the realm of possibility, but becoming a dinosaur is not. Becoming a dinosaur is a dream and so was making it onto the current dance crew I'm on.
Even now, when I go to practice, I feel like I'm on mars and I ask myself "what am I doing here?" Though my non-dancing friends praise me a lot for being able to make it onto a high calibur team, it's somewhat incomplete for me. Not because I can't achieve my own goals, but because I lack passion for it, and though I'd like to have more, its difficult to comeby. It simply doesnt please me as much as playing music. Maybe its just a phase but thats the way I feel for now. Pain reveals where we turn for comfort in our lives. Some people dance, but I dont. I sing and play guitar or fall asleep on my couch tapping a djembe. I find a great deal of life in being a musician, and I'm trying to catch onto the same relief in being a dancer.
I'm looking at this post and I can't sit still with it. It's gone in a lot of different directions and almost sounds depressing, but I assure you, I'm not depressed. I'm just trying to figure out what role dance should play in my life. There's no fairytale ending here to all the stuff coming out of my fingertips, but I guess that's why it's an honest drop in the bucket.
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