How to Dance

Toby Israel, Prozdor Grade 10

In the seventh grade, my friends and I began to regularly attend school dances. For all of that year and the next, I would watch other people, and attempt to copy only their simplest dance steps, for fear of making a fool of myself. Along with the majority of the bodies in the gym, I found myself rocking my hips back and forth, and intermittently walking to another point in the room for a change of scenery… for three hours!

About a year ago, I started to let go. I began to connect to the music; I felt the beat and I knew how I alone, not anyone else, should dance to it. A musical epiphany? A sudden enlightenment in the art of dancing? Not exactly. It was more of a general realization that I should be confident in expressing myself in whatever way is natural. Now if I’m dancing and I want to throw in a bellydancing move or a salsa step that I know or that I’ve seen, I do so without pause. If I want to rock out, I say, “Why not?”. Ideas pop into my head and come out as my own, unique style of dancing.

Recently a friend commented to me at one such dance that she found it difficult to be confident about her dancing when surrounded by better dancers. “I don’t look at the other people,” I replied, “I just dance.” This is because I believe in dancing like nobody’s watching.

A very wise man, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Whoso would a man must be a nonconformist.” I doubt Emerson was thinking of dancing when he wrote this, but the wisdom of his words rings true nonetheless. I was wrong in thinking that I needed to imitate others with me on the dance floor to avoid ridicule or even personal embarassment. In reality it was quite the opposite; I had to find my own internal rhythm in order to dance to the music around me.
Emerson also wrote, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” I don’t know if I’m actually a talented dancer, but I believe that I am, I trust that I am, and that’s all the truth I need. The actual truth of the sentiment is infinitely less significant than my faith in its veracity.

I have extended my belief in the importance of uninhibited self-expression to all areas of my life. In the past few years I have become completely confident in that self-expression, and that sort of confidence sets me free. You can be free to dance truly when you dance like no one’s watching, to live truly when you live like no one’s watching; this I believe.