Reason # 8. My weapon of choice are my dance moves.
The Cat Empire said it best, ‘On my feet I wear two shoes for dancing. Dancing to be free…’
Listen, I am not the best dancer. I find it very hard to follow dance instructions and my feet are yet to learn how to keep up with what my mind wants them to do; it would be fair to say that my dancing is a bit all over the show but a lot like freedom. It’s the self expression and freedom to just move, and allow my body to have a say and express itself, what I love the most about dancing.
If I go out dancing with my friends, I can’t help myself but to dance fight. Oh yes, I am a proud Friday night dance fighter and my dance moves are my weapon of choice.
I am very aware that 9 out of 10 times my opponent is way ahead of me, but I don’t care. I find it to be a lot of fun, a way of interacting with people in an environment that is not necessarily conducive to do so unless you are wanting to mate — a social construct that I wish to overturn.
Meeting people at a bar and having a nice conversation is very hard. The music is loud, the preconceived ideas of what dancing with someone else that is not your partner might mean, the shyness we all seem to hold when being amongst strangers, and all that jazz, makes it really hard to connect with others at a club. But a good dance fight takes all of that away. You get to have a full on conversation with someone else without exchanging a word. The energy exchange is mysticall, the battle is unpredictable, and the weapons of choice that are mind, body and soul connection showcased in a pure dance move form are remarkable — uncoordinated at best of times, in my case, but bloody remarkable.
The best thing about a casual dance fight on a Friday night out is you always win, there are no losers because no one can lose when you are all having fun. It doesn’t matter if the moves are out of tune, if you have no idea how to shimmy or even know what a two-step is as long as you move driven by the way that song — that someone, somewhere, composed for you to enjoy — makes you feel.
It is, in my opinion, a beautiful alignment of a shared experience that surpasses time, space, culture and ego. At some point in time, somewhere in the world, someone wrote a song, someone helped compose it, someone believed in it and recorded it, someone went out on a Friday night to have a drink and ended up on the dance floor meeting me for an unexpected dance fight. If that is not connectedness, then I don’t know what is.
The more I love myself, the more connected I am, the more I trust my instincts, the freer I am and the fearless I become on the dance floor, which is why I vowed to learn how to breakdance before I turn 40. So there it is, now you know and now I can’t back out of it.
As it happens, this one is not just another reason why I love myself, but why I love my dance crew so much. It is because of them, that I found my love for dancing again. A shared experience tends to be more impactful in one’s story than an individual one. I miss my girls for this and many other reasons. This one is as much for me as it is for you Sarah, Cat, Steph and Kirsty. Hope we get to meet on the dance floor again, sometime soon.
As for the rest of you reading this, I also hope we get to meet on the dance floor at some point in time, particularly on a day where I’m feeling deeply in love and connected with all of me, because that day you will be able to feel that love through the energy projected by my sometimes erratic yet always magical dance moves.
#35reasonswhyilovemyself
