Dance as a Catalyst and a Calling
I love to dance. I’ve loved to dance since I was a little girl. Growing up in a super remote and isolated community of homesteaders, dancing as a kid didn’t consist of making up choreographed routines with my school mates to our favourite Cindy Lauper songs or attending ballet class at an academy. There were 75 other people living within a 50 km radius of us so for the most part, group activities and peers were out of the equation. Dance for me was a solitary journey that manifested itself in an explosion of limbs, spins, and ear to ear grins. I remember dancing my little heart out during those early years without a care in the world. I was a ballerina and a princess and there wasn’t a jury in the world that could convict me otherwise.
When we moved to town years later my mom took me to a private ballet performance with the sincerest hopes that I would want to join and could finally dance with other kids and share in an activity I was entirely enamoured with. That did not happen. I was mortified and possibly started crying or something. I don’t remember what happened, I just remember how I felt: lost, paralyzed, embarrassed, out of my element, not ready, not at all ready. To be fair I had also just been through the loss of a parent so it’s not like I didn’t have a lot of other stuff going on emotionally, but even so, that moment is burnt into my memory as one of the first moments I chose not to do something because I was scared. Neuropathways were forged, and not the good ones. Worst of all, it made something lovely and simple feel inaccessible and complicated.
Flash forward to being an adult that still loves to dance but is less scared of stuff. Though I didn’t really let not knowing how to dance formally stop me from enjoying myself on the dance floor throughout my university years and time spent living in Mexico in my early 20’s, I certainly wasn’t fully expressing myself like I was in those early years dancing around in the geodesic dome of my childhood. After many years of dabbling at night clubs and moonlighting with community centre drop-in classes, I decided to seek out a dance school, invest in a monthly membership, and become what I had always wanted to be more than anything ever: “A Dancer”
I knew I had to find a dance school that felt like the right fit and that my experience in those first few months could very well make or break my foray into dancer-dom. I am a touchy-feely person that is all about cultivating deep and high-value connections and if something isn’t authentic then it just feels wrong to me and I have a hard time aligning my efforts with it. I was recommended Baza Dance Studios in Vancouver by dancers I trusted so I signed up for their Zumba, Latin Fusion, Bachata, and Salsa ON2 classes ready to jump in on the outside but scared out of my gourd on the inside.
What happened next was nothing short of a personal miracle. Have you ever experienced a moment, almost entirely exclusive to time and space, where you felt in every cell of your body that you were exactly where you were meant to be? That was me during my first Zumba class at Baza, I have never felt such an overwhelming urge to cry from sheer joy. I don’t remember exactly what I did about it, I just remember how I felt: connected, in my element, amongst my tribe, and super actually ready to start a journey I had left abandoned years ago on the basement floor of my childhood home. A journey of starting before I was ready, of confronting my fears, of being ok with looking silly, of possibly not being very good, of letting others witness my vulnerabilities.
Dance wrapped all of these things up into a neat little package for me and presented them as an invitation to truly bloom as an individual. I accepted the invitation and have literally not looked back since. It has been a year and a half since I became a member of my dance school and in that time I’ve spent an average of 15 hours there a week, joined a performance team, and pushed myself in ways I had no idea I was capable of. The interesting thing about personal miracles is that they are rarely one dimensional. Along with filling a part of my childhood soul with the movement and expression it craved, my dance community also met me with incredibly deep and high-value friendships and meaningful opportunities to be of service.
Maybe dance is my thing and, not yours, maybe it is both of our things. Either way, everyone has a thing even if they’ve forgotten it or haven’t found it yet. I encourage you to think back to what you loved doing as a child, what brought you inexplicable joy before you formed ideas about what was cool, or you, or acceptable, or even possible… Following our dreams is so much more than just the sum of all of its obvious parts - it is a calling that we don’t so much choose as it chooses us. Resurrecting and following this particular dream was the catalyst that gave me the courage to propel myself into the unknown where my deepest potential was laying just out of reach. It compelled me to build character by stepping into the very adult shoes of discipline and commitment while occupying the free spirited and energetic innocence of childhood. Dance is both my calling and my catalyst and I can not wait to see where it takes me next.
‘Antonya’s Zumba Jams 2020’ is a super fun and dancable playlist by my dear friend and muse Antonya.