Belltown Messenger

(This is dedicated to Elaine Bonow, owner and teacher-extraordinaire at The Belltown Ballet & Conditioning Studio.)

Anyone who's been a dancer since childhood and is dancing, still, long after most of her peers have shed their dancing shoes to resettle into age-appropriate yoga, tai-chi, or water aerobics, will eventually face the question, "Are you still dancing?" The emphasis on the word still is the long arm of implication reaching 'round.

And you know how hard it is to answer the question because, at forty-something when each day is a swinging pendulum between young and old, there's so much to think about behind the feelings such a question arouses, the kind that has you staring out the window at 3 a.m.

Usually I answer cheerfully, because I do, in fact, love my work as a dancer and choreographer. But sometimes the question provokes, and at that moment I try to remember there's a space between the brain and the mouth for a reason. That way I won't regress in an instant, saying something that struggles to sound blasŽ. Something like, "Life is a dance." Or, "Aren't you?" It's not that the question isn't well-founded. Most adults do move on from the strenuous workout and time commitment dancing involves, the kind of flexibility and cardiovascular stamina it takes to do, well, what dancers do. And one can't argue that physical ability does decrease with age. But not to the degree most assume. More accurately, what happens is that life intervenes, and in our culture that life's likely to be a sedentary one.

When I think back on all it has taken to maintain fitness (no one in my family is naturally svelte), I can honestly say the main reason I continue to dance is because I'm able to. Simply that. And while I may have danced with more power when younger, that pales compared to how it feels to dance with the kind of resilience and tolerance-for-fear acquired only with time. Give this up for the taut tummy and mile high leaps I once had? No way.

Lately, when I take stock and try to paint a mental picture of The Future, I think about what's in store, physically, when I finally take leave of daily dance practice. So I've tried several stretch-for-the-sake-of-stretching classes, a dance-with-abandon-but-no-technique class (that seemed more like a social gathering, but whatever), and a spin class that nearly killed me. What felt like eons later, I was finally able to breathe again, teaching me only that aging comes with many small affronts to one's dignity. And that humiliation is solid.

Ten minutes into each class, no matter how challenged I feel, I grow restless and bored. For one thing, I long for the artistry that is not a part of such straightforward calorie loss, not to mention how out of place I am, a doubter in the church of health clubs, an agnostic in the New Age.

Aside from the fact I want to run away howling from people who use words like "free flowing muscular energy," I end up quitting, mostly because my uncomfortableness overrides any such vigor, physical or otherwise. Add that to a low small-talk threshold, and resistance to why any woman would mount a sports logo over the tender flesh of her left breast, and you've got a most reluctant student. Then there's the matter of all that hi-tech spandex. I need to ask, is part of the workout squeezing into the outfit? Spandex. Even the word irritates me.

It's taken me the last decade to realize how much life urges me to honest. And it's a way more generous thing than I could have imagined when I still feared aging so. Beautiful as youth is, it is full of the kind of judgment people hold on to because they are not quite sure if they are A, B, or C enough, a world to outgrow in order to breathe more deeply. And it's why, somewhere, there is a survey or poll confirming that a very, very small percentage of the dancing population will continue to dance unashamedly, no matter how young and sleek the majority of dancers are, because with age comes the gift of giving a big fat shrug to what others think. And when I look at the women and men who dance into mid-life and older, whether in my class or someone else's, I think what a comfort it is to have us around. Still, I've been close to quitting many times. Especially in those disconcerting moments when I realize I can't jump as high or bend as low, or when class goes badly, or, worse, a performance. Anyone who thinks dying is the worst thing doesn't know a thing about live performing. Yet, I'd be nowhere without my performance blunders. They've nudged me to face a medley of fears. My performance mantra being: No one ever died by asking "Why, why, why me?" Keep smiling, I say to myself when I misstep, and they'll never know I want to perish.

It would be easy to say I'll always dance, but it wouldn't be true. Every dancer knows this layer of intense conditioning eventually needs to shed. As much as I look forward to rewarding myself with a little less discipline, I'll always be grateful I resisted settling for a safe norm, that I pursued the passion that first seized me as a child when life stretched in front of me endless and free. And I like knowing how it feels to come to the studio without aspiration, competitiveness (with others or myself), or any of the other emotions that can haunt a younger mind and keep one from fully enjoying what it is we do each day. It's taken a lot of failures and a willingness to experience each to free me of anything other than pure love of the discipline.

Remember the song, "Do you like good music, yeah, yeah, that sweet soul music, yeah, yeah?" Most of my life I've sung these lyrics whenever things go awry, as if the words are written into my DNA. It doesn't matter if I hear the song in a grocery store or a coffee-cart line, I'm going to dance to it until, like the moment your ears pop, everything is even again. The song may be an oldie, but the bliss I feel when I dance to it is pure and never, ever out-dated. u

(This piece is from Sanelli's collection of essays, Falling Awake, forthcoming this fall from Cune Press.)