I miss this one specific moment. You train for days, weeks, months, pouring yourself into a piece that seems like it will never fit together. You wait backstage in the dark, not daring to breathe, shaking from nerves. As you stand, wide-eyed in that moment of fear before every show where the darkness is your friend and the slowly brightening lights mean the impending discovery of the audience that you have forgotten everything you ever knew, something amazing happens. The body saves itself. In the split second between your cue and when your body actually begins to move, all memory fails you and suddenly you are dancing from pure instinct. And in that moment all fear, all pretense, all safeguards are gone. You and the movement are joined into something as near a spiritual experience as I've ever found.
That moment is why I love dance. But I love all that comes along with it.
I miss sore muscles. I miss soaking my aching feet and icing my throbbing bruises knowing that they were there because I had given all of myself to what I love.
I have decided that starting Monday, I'm going to put myself through a self-imposed dance intensive. I'm going to go to as many dance classes at the School of Contemporary Ballet Dallas as I can fit into my schedule, and see how much progress I can make in two months. It's not going to be easy, and I'm probably going to whine a lot, but I doubt that at the end I'll regret spending four months dancing.
