I’m visiting home, which means I’m also dancing. I went to my original stomping grounds in Sacramento. I never had the chance to grow up here as a dancer, because I started dancing when I already lived somewhere else. But among many other firsts, I had my first lesson and my first social dance here. So I go off and try new teachers and new styles and new partners and practice obsessively and take breaks and I get better. And I change, a lot. I come home about once every six months but I’m never the same dancer I was the last time I passed through. I’ve only been dancing socially for three years. But because I love it, I’ve significantly improved in that time.
This change also comes because I challenge myself in my dance, in all kinds of ways. This means learning to lead this past year and making myself actually leading at every social. I have a list of things I am always working on. It can be anything from remembering my turn out to focusing on my balance to asking someone new to dance to not beating myself up when I mess up or don’t follow a step correctly.
Now, let me take a moment to talk about my personal journey with high heeled dancing shoes. Most follows have some version of these events. I started out not wearing heels to dance at all, why would I want to do that to myself? But then I started dancing and competing Kizomba in Mexico City, where Salsa and Bachata is king and there is definitely a culture of wearing high heels on and off the dance floor. I started with baby heels and slowly but surely graduated to very tall very pointy heels. Is it less comfortable? Yes. It is more difficult? Yes. But do I like the way I look and is it a challenge that helps me be a better dancer? Also yes.
So I decided to challenge myself by wearing heels to a blues fusion social, something that I had never done before. It was combining a very free and expressive form of dance with footwear I generally only use in a very structured, in many ways more predictable form of dance. When I told my friend this, he asked me a very good question. “Why do you need to challenge yourself here?”
At the time I wasn’t sure. What he was referring to was the venue. In dance, there are different levels of difficulty depending on the social. The level of ability in the room determines a lot about how challenging the night is going to be. If the room is full of high-level dancers, you better bring your A game. But if you want to see if a dancer is good or not, watch how they dance with beginners.
There is also a difference between two people dancing for the first time and old dance friends. More often than not, the first time I dance with someone I am “testing” them in a way, trying to see their abilities and showing off my own. A big part of following is understanding someone else’s inherent style and rhythm, adapting yourself to that, and creating space for your own freedom and expression of movement within the confines that are created when you share space and connection with another person in this way.
Once I’ve established a dance history with someone, dancing with them becomes less challenging. I know, more or less, what to expect, and the type of connection that comes with the person. Less challenging is not necessarily bad. More often than not, the less challenging the dance, the more enjoyable it is and the “better” the dance is going to be.
So why did I feel the need to create challenge for myself in a place that is very much my home, that I am very comfortable in, even if I’m not really “from” there in terms of dance? I think it is because dance for me is a form of play, the most important form of play for me in my life. The desire to challenge myself is an aspect of my personality but also stems from the desire to improve, to be better equipt to play, which in turn allows me to play with a wider pool of people, which then enables more elaborate, and ultimately more satisfying play.
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