Thursday 30 August 2018

Bowing out

On Saturday, it's my favourite monthly dance event, and it feels like the right time to take a bow, thank everyone for the dances and leave the stage, as it were. Maybe I'll take photos with a few friends, for the sake of having a few good memories, but it feels like it's all coming to an end.

I can't honestly say that the break is definitely permanent, however. The conflicting feelings are between a love for dancing and a deep-seated contempt for some aspects of the scene and a number of the personalities within it.

Maybe, somewhere within, it's always troubled me that learning to dance was never really my decision. I accompanied a lady to that first Modern Jive class at her request, not because I particularly wanted to go. I actually felt that I wouldn't enjoy the whole thing, but I turned out to be wrong. Things started to go wrong almost immediately, though, in the way other dancers perceived our interactions.

One of the few friends I made during that time dared me to give Salsa classes a go. The deal was that I had to go for at least six weeks, and if I was to quit before then, the consequences would be humiliating. Obviously, I stayed much longer.

At this point, I don't feel that I have anything left to prove to myself. The old adage about teaching an old dog new tricks always got to me, and kept me there, when I sometimes wanted to give up or felt like I'd never get it. There's a piece on the internet somewhere, within which the author states that many male dancers give up, just as their rate of improvement is about to pick up.

It could be that I'm just feeling particularly low right now. Earlier in the week, I got to talk with someone who is partly responsible for my development in my work, about everything that's going on, and has gone on, to make me feel the way I'm feeling. The response I heard was that the people who have the level of inner strength I possess are few and far between. It was nice to hear that, but I think I'm tired of being strong. Maybe it's not about being strong any more: maybe I'm just tired.

It would be remiss of me to not point out something else, as I'm bowing out, taking a break, or whatever this turns out to be. A relatively new dancer asked if there was anything I could tell him about the dance scene. I said that he shouldn't listen to ladies who have never learned to lead, when they tell him during a lesson that he's doing something wrong. It sounds silly, but it happens far too often, and I've seen far too many men leave dancing behind because they wrongly believed that they were terrible dancers and would never get it right. A few of these ladies, I've observed, use this tactic to eject men from the scene who don't meet with their warped ideas of what they'd like a Salsa dancer to be.

For me, the issue is that I'm a sensitive soul. There's a social aspect to dancing, and for some, that's their focus. For some, there's a sense of competition with other dancers. I'm just there to feel the music, dance to it, and enjoy a few moments in the company of others who want the same. Anything I ever had to prove was to myself only. The sensitivity I spoke about comes across in the way I dance, but it's also why I need time out, and may extend that indefinitely.

A friend once spoke about what dancing does for me and, more specifically, about what side of me it connects with. As stated, dancing connects with the sensitive, emotional side of my personality. Connecting with a dance partner isn't always a comfortable feeling for someone so introverted, but it's something that someone this empathic and intuitive achieves without much effort. "You're a good lead," some say. "You're a great lead," fewer people say. Both have been said enough that I have to accept the premise of those statements, but I know from where that quality comes, and I have to question what it costs me to connect in that way with the music, with a dance partner, and with how it feels to dance.

At a dance event in January, I got to take part in a Yoga class. I felt great during and after the class, but especially after. I suppose that, internally, I was contrasting the way I felt after that class with the way I felt when I danced. Sometimes we get these messages from within. That weekend happened to be one where it felt like everything was crowding in on me. It was a weekend which led to me doubting the motives of someone I'd come to think of as a close friend. It was a weekend that changed the way I saw a number of things.

The normal reaction, when people hear that I dance, is laughter. Perhaps they know what should be staring me in the face - I'm not meant to be a dancer. I've decided to join a martial arts class again, to go in a direction in which life seemed to be pulling me for a long time, but I resisted. Our days, our weeks, months, years, and our lives have a flow, and it's my belief that our suffering is caused by resisting this flow. I'm a martial artist, first and foremost. That's what I am, and that's what I have to be.

Am I a dancer too? It doesn't feel that way right now. Some time ago, I had the idea that I had to be both. I practised martial arts for a long time, and somehow it seemed to help me deal with being this sensitive, emotional being. I took a break, and it's possible that I needed to do that, in order to see what being a martial artist really meant to me.

I have to accept that none of this may make sense to anyone reading it. I'm okay with that. I know that the event on Saturday could turn out to be such a positive experience that I hang in there for a while longer - that has happened a number of times before. It could be that I just need time out.

I'm a martial artist. I accept that as a part of who I am. Can I say that I'm a dancer? Is that still something I can accept as a part of who I am? We'll see. One thing is certain, however - it will be my decision.