SUNDAY: Dance Class
I got so pissed at my otherwise impressive contemporary dance teacher, Z. In class one Sunday she split us into two groups to perform a piece of choreography, which she made no sense in her description of it as “the Matrix” and “sexy.” But after watching the unimpressive performance of first group, with two of the hippos from Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ rocking it out in the front, I realized I could relax with very little to lose. Here we go, but after just eight counts the dancers around me were guffawing: deer in headlights standing mid step shooting looks at each other. Normally I would rely on everyone around me to carry me through what I do not understand, but this time I turned, ignoring every one of them and just kept on dancing. Dance-watching is a mode that is so safe and familiar to me, but this time I couldn't rely on anyone else for the movements or timing. So I just plowed through it with the Gnarls Barkley that I knew and loved from our sessions dancing together with my I-pod, and from this I knew how to listen hard and find my place in his music. Even when I saw others pounce on the wrong counts I held my ground. I accented, I pointed, I glided, I spun and by the end I knew "YEAH, I hit it!" I was by no means perfect, I was not yet and maybe never will be a contemporary dancer, but considering that members of Z’s own dance company were totally lost, I thought I had nailed it and with style! It might have been the best I'd ever done it because for once I wasn't paying attention to everyone around me. It was my first contemporary solo, by default, and I’d done myself proud.

It wasn’t long before Z wiped that smile right off my face by storming to the front of the room shaking her head “No, no, no” at us, at the ground, then back at us while saying how ridiculous it was that we couldn't do this simple piece of choreography that was "made up of basic moves which you all already know. . . It's not like this is hard.” EXCUSE ME?! According to who is this not DAMN HARD?! Simple piece of choreography - BS! Basic moves as they may be, this is my first fucking contemporary class, NOTHING is basic and EVERYTHING is
unfamiliar and hard. Each class she would rattle off terminology I have no comprehension of for turns and kicks that sound more to me like lewd sex acts: "pencil turn", "fuette kick." I'm a complicated person but as a dancer I’m simple: monkey see, monkey do. And just then monkey did a damn fine job of faking it as a contemporary dancer. So she really pissed me off.

Any way you swung it she had marginalized me. Maybe she hadn't bothered to pay attention to what I was doing to notice that I had got it right because to her I wasn’t important enough as a dancer. Maybe her criticism didn't apply to me, maybe she thought I did a fine job and so what I resented is her assumption that any of this was EASY for me. When she accused all of us of not trying hard enough at the very end of her speech it changed my attitude towards her class altogether. This was my hardest version of trying, I had been trying SO HARD since day one and now I didn't want to try for her at all. I've never been pissed at a dance teacher before and in spite of my initial awe at her dance ability I never went back to her class.