Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssssssssssssssss! Of course, I recognize that everyone doesn’t have 30 minutes to watch this whole thing but you really should. The pertinent area here starts at right around 11 minutes.
As I start to feel myself more when I dance, I can’t help but think back to my first dance experiences which all revolved around choreography. I guess not all the way back to the Zoise Baer days of tap and ballet and black Little Red Riding Hood. We’ll keep it more recent than that. Not even the times in elementary school when we’d get together and put together some dance to whatever song struck our fancy at that time. Those definitely prepared me for when I got to learn more choreo.
The dance you see here between minutes 11 and 15 was one of the first dances I learned for choreography at Club Med. Granted, it was a shortened version, but it’s still a lot. I mean, at the end of the day, it Michael Jackson! We killed that shit every week in the Halloween show. Yep, we ran a Halloween show when it wasn’t even Halloween. (Oh, stomping off stage at 15:40, lol)
Sidebar: how funny that I just had this very similar conversation, unprompted, in IG messages, lol.
So yeah, I come from choreography and when I started being forced to ‘freestyle’, my go-to move was to hide or openly refuse to do it. Of course, this does not foster growth. I stuck to tricks and choreography forever. But little by little, here comes freestyling.
Part of freestyling that I didn’t really recognize was that, by doing so, I get to tell my own story. Choreography is telling someone else’s story in your voice. Freestyling is laying your soul bare for everyone to absorb. And a LOT of the time, I didn’t want anyone seeing that. It was dark and sad and choppy and broken. But guess what? That makes for pretty dance. Don’t shake your head for me. We’re all a little broken if we’re being honest with ourselves.
I think freestyling will come in stages. I’ve already broken through the ‘fuck this’ wall and I’m peeking around the corner. Next step will probably be dancing around naked with both middle fingers up yelling fuck what you think because there’s no easing into things. Throw yourself off the cliff and hope to catch some air and land softly. Is that the best plan? Probably not. Is it the plan that’s been going strong for many years? Yeahhhhhh.
The random stream-of-consciousness posts continue. Cut me some slack. It’s been a long hiatus. I’m getting my shit together. If you’re reading this, tell me if you would be interested in hearing me read you naughty stories, perhaps in lingerie, definitely for a fee.