Well, This Is Unfortunate

My dance training has made me a bad dancer.

I've been taking a modern/hip-hop/salsa/jazz class at the Cincinnati Ballet (above photos) and I absolutely love it.

It's ten songs of choreographed anarchy, and each week one song is ditched while a new one is added with new choreography. So basically if you've just started going, there are nine songs you don't know the moves to.

I went for the first time last month and was able to catch a few combinations here and there, but mostly I just flailed, kicked and did pirouette's four counts behind everyone else. But when I went again a week later, I was suprised at how much easier it was to pick up the choreography.

It was all muscle memory, because I certainly didn't retain any of the combinations from my first attempt.

And that's exactly why my dance training has made me a bad dancer. My mom signed me up for dance lessons (tap and jazz) when I was about six. I took lesson (including a brief year-long flirtation with ballet), for 14 years.

When I show up at a dance class I expect certain things, like to learn combinations. It's a mental exercise. When an instructor tells me to "chassé right and pas-de-bourrée on the left," I know exactly what to do.

But modern dance, especially hip-hop, isn't broken down like that. If there are names to the moves, I've never heard them. Instead, you just watch the instructor and mimick her. Mentally, it doesn't mean anything. There aren't steps I'm saying in my head so I'll know what to do next. The decision to change to another combination is based on the rhythm of the music, and hopefully when I hear those changes my muscles will remember what to do. Otherwise I just flail about until I can pick it up.

Saturday I was watching a dancer in front of me perform the leaps and turns and steps. She was cut from a dancer's mold - thin, lithe and graceful. I was enchanted by her. At first I was convinced she is a professional dancer. There's just no way you can come in off the street and move your body like that without dance lessons. She was fluid and effortless, with a natural abandon in her rhythm.

Then I thought, Nah, I bet she's not a professional dancer. Her body just knows how to move, while mine awaits directions.



You can see me in the back here, awaiting directions.