Remember the old hippy "Happy Shoes"? Well, these are my "Happy Shoes". For the fifth time in my life, I am back dancing. Something I thought might have permanently dropped off the list of possibilities is once again available to me and I'm thrilled.
I was two and a half when I started dance classes. How was I to know it was going to be a lifelong addiction? Over and over again I have been drawn back, spending years as a child - and even more years as an adult, in class and occasionally on stage. It's one of the activities where I feel most myself.
I was two and a half when I started dance classes. How was I to know it was going to be a lifelong addiction? Over and over again I have been drawn back, spending years as a child - and even more years as an adult, in class and occasionally on stage. It's one of the activities where I feel most myself.
Finding Flow
What does it mean to take my ageing and rather battered body back to dance class? Well one of the studios where I do classes has as its slogan "Great dancers can come from all walks of life. This is where they come together". The young man who teaches ballet recognised me from three years ago. The class is full of passionate young people of various ethnicities - a tall, bespectacled youth and a fairly even gender balance. I am the only older dancer. I know for a fact that I'm five years older than my nearest contemporary at this studio. Nobody minds. We are all different in our own way. We are all united by the passion and pleasure of doing the physical meditation that is ballet. Will any of us be performers with a capital "P"? Unlikely. Certainly, I won't be. It's sheerly the joy of doing it that matters. It's a perfect example of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi dubbed "flow".
At the other studio, where I had previously danced for around seven years, I was welcomed back like a family member. A long-standing Dance School of solid repute, this place has whole dynasties of dancers, covering the entire lifespan. My teacher is in her mid-sixties. The school is run by a woman in her seventies. I look at them, and think "I want what you're having". With this school, I've participated in many concerts where grandmothers, mothers and daughters or sons are all dancing. Each at their own level, in their own style. It's a not-so-secret society. And it beats the hell out of aerobics.
At the other studio, where I had previously danced for around seven years, I was welcomed back like a family member. A long-standing Dance School of solid repute, this place has whole dynasties of dancers, covering the entire lifespan. My teacher is in her mid-sixties. The school is run by a woman in her seventies. I look at them, and think "I want what you're having". With this school, I've participated in many concerts where grandmothers, mothers and daughters or sons are all dancing. Each at their own level, in their own style. It's a not-so-secret society. And it beats the hell out of aerobics.
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