Ugly Bits

More thoughts about dance

My dance teacher told me in the last class that she will start pushing me to articulate the moves she teaches, not hint. She says my timing is correct and I have the moves, but I’m holding myself back. Although the class is just a hobby, she sees a direct relationship between my comportment and how I dance. Within a few weeks of starting the class, she told me this for the first time when she videotaped us dancing together and told me my goal was to be more confident and assured that I am capable of more than I think. Being in her forties, my teacher is a natural mentor, seeing in my body the hurdles she also went through in her creative practice as a young person. She wants me to settle into my “grown woman body,” as she calls it.

But taking this goal seriously means contorting my body in ways that feel unnatural, not graceful. It feels counterintuitive when I’m trying to look cool, graceful, and expressive to jerk my elbow outwards or bend my knees like a scarecrow. Lately, my dance teacher has been pushing me to follow through on movements, sitting in, or pushing through uncomfortable positions. Towards the end of each class, she strings these disjointed movements into poetic sentences, whereas I’m trying to portray poetry or cool without understanding her phrasing.

Many young pop artists across genres commit the same sin: they mistake perceived performance for artistry. They’re so committed to a cool, clean, or sexy aesthetic that they cannot make the ugly sounds or movements needed for a more fully realized performance. Someone might call this embodiment if I were still in a grad school workshop. Instead of calculating how a movement or gesture might be perceived, you commit to a decision, understanding that weird and confusing should be a step towards something greater.

Some pop culture critics have called this out in the slew of mediocre performers in the landscape. Both as singers and dancers, some pop stars seem wary of doing too much. Whisper singers croon in a baby voice, afraid of what might come out if they open their mouths too much. Hearing pop stars like Selena Gomez, Tate McRae, Normani, or Tinashe always feels like someone decided they should also smize with their voice. Stars aren’t hitting the same choreo as Britney, Ciara, or Janet would. They’re doing “TikTok dances.” Intensely aware of where the camera is and how their body might be perceived. They stay in a vertically oriented rectangular frame, even when dancing in a wideshot music video. When I watch Tate McRae dance versus Britney, who she gets compared to, Tate is equally acrobatic and powerful, but Tate McRae cheats her movements, ending them before I can process the shape.

My dance teacher often reminds us to get out of the mirror. If you’re watching yourself too much, you cheat the movement. And it’s hard. My body doesn’t look like hers when I try to learn her steps. Am I doing something wrong? One bad day after work, I spent too much time in class comparing my body to the small white woman standing in front of me. That day I couldn’t dance. I had the movements but felt paralyzed at the thought that I wouldn’t look like her when I danced. When I left the class, I called my mom and sobbed. I would have finished my book by now if I could get out of these cycles.

In our current surveillance state, where everyone and no one could be watching. The state of paranoia is understandable but unsustainable. It’s not just one mirror we’re watching; we’ve entered a fun house with the Trump Administration. We’re tracking the movements of migrants of all statuses, spending copious amounts of time on apps telling us how to optimize our lives, and experiencing a regime that built its platform on keeping everyone in their “rightful” place. Living in this state of hypervigilance for too long does not breed creativity, culture, or human connection. This is intentional.

What does this mean for my goal as a dancer? I have to figure out where to look when I’m dancing. Looking down is bad and doesn’t show confidence. As I mentioned, the mirror can turn from helpful to harmful if I’m not careful. This is true when relying on the teacher or another classmate for reference, too. Hopefully, I figure it out soon.