Dance Inside

Today, I turned in my dance article. Today, ballroom meets for the last time. Today, I want to dance. Today, I miss him more.

Today, I can't dance because of him.

Dance for me is the physical equivalent of writing. But I'm a baby chick, flapping its wings with dance. At least in writing, I'm about ready to hop out of the nest. Dance calms me. Dance gets my emotions out. Dance centers me.

I've never had extensive training in dance. I was in tap and ballet for two years when I was 6. I took electives in high school for a total of probably 1.5 more years of dance. And those were "dance through the decades," Broadway, and tap/jazz. We had to take a quarter of ballroom dance sophomore year. That's it. I picked up on it quickly. It wasn't challenging. It got me interested in dance again.

And when I was alone at home, I would dance. I would listen to the music, let the lyrics fill me, and dance. Whatever I was feeling that day came out. Moves borrowed from music videos, from my futile attempts at emulating what I saw on dance programs, from my own mind. I did dance workout videos. I did whatever I could to dance. And then it stopped. There wasn't any room in my dorm to dance.

So when I found out that someone on our floor was starting a ballroom club on campus last year, I was excited. I had looked into the Swing Society on campus the previous semester, but found the atmosphere to be something I didn't want. Something was off with the way the members interacted, so I stopped going. And then an e-mail came out for ballroom lessons, but were $65. While I had the money, I didn't want to pay that price for only 6 weeks, and I had heard about the free ballroom club Laci was helping to start.

I went to the first meeting alone. None of my friends were interested. Well, Tif was, but she had class. Lauren and Tori, not so much. I walked all the way across campus, and arrived to see almost no one there, in a banquet hall no less. I sat down and started talking to Laci, the only one I knew. Soon, a few more people showed up. I still didn't know any of them. It was an interesting start. Amusing to watch how a club got started. It was like a child: it had to learn how to stand before it could walk. It had just pulled itself up to stand at the end of last year.

I enjoyed those first meetings. I was meeting new people, talking to some that were hardly acquaintances, and forming some friendships I didn't expect. Not only that, but I was dancing. Granted, these were basics I learned in high school, but I was dancing. I was learning from people who had trained and were willing to pass this training on to others like me. At the end of the semester, the child stumbled a bit. They didn't know where they were going.

It took them another semester to find out, and take that first confident step. All last semester I went back. I enjoyed it: the sporadic dances we were learning, new steps combined with old, and the chance to dance. Not only the chance to dance, but the chance to dance with my boyfriend, someone who had even more of a passion for dance than I did. And I started to think that maybe I was good at dancing. Everyone said I was a good follow, and that I picked up on things quickly. Maybe I'd even start competing down the line.

The ballroom club started out this semester with a new exec board, and a new plan of action: teach two dances each month, with a half an hour spent on each. That way, members could continue to practice what they knew and start to possibly form routines. And it went incredibly well. We were all impressed with it. And as vice-president, I got to learn these new steps first, and practice them before everyone else. I started to know enough that, if I desired (and I did), I could choreograph.

Choreographing is something that I've done since about 8th grade. It's in my head, and occasionally escapes through my body. I can see the moves in my head when I listen to the music. I never write them down. No one ever sees it, or offers suggestions for improvements. I try them out on me first to see if a professional took over, how it would look. And then, when I hear the song, the choreography plays in my head.

The choreography stopped for awhile this past month. So did the dancing. The dancing hasn't started again. I want it to. I need it to. But it's not coming. Because of him. Because he started the club. Because he's president. Because I miss him. Because I still love him. Because he left me. Because now ballroom is associated with him.

So today I'll dance inside. Not inside a room. Inside my head. The only place I can dance.