My (unrequited) Love Letter to Dance

Dear Dance, 

Sometimes I feel like you are my unrequited love. 

I love you with every bone in my body. Yet, you feel like that ever so elusive crush. 

When I was young, our relationship felt like home. 

Growing up I danced at home, in the living room, with my tía. I never did the typical dancers training: ballet, jazz, and tap. Nor did I dance with all the cool kids in the neighborhood clubs. I grew up groovin to salsa, cumbia, merengue, reggaeton y baile de las Orishas al estilo cubano. My very round experience, did not seem to fit into the very square sarcophagus-shaped peg that was the conventional American dance world.  

When I was in high school, our relationship felt like a performance. 

When I got to high school, dance was all about upholding this very cisheteropatriarchal norm. Our dance team was the substitute cheerleaders for boys athletics. So there I was, dancing at half-time, and being trained to fit into the good ole football boyfriend-cheerleading girlfriend archetype.  (gag)

When I was in college, our relationship felt experimental. 

When I finally got to college, I loved dancing with our student-led troupe. We learned choreography to bachata y salsa. I was flipping up in the air, spinning all around in my golden sequins, and choreographing to la reina de reggeaton: Ivy Queen.  It felt like a dream, a very heteronormative partnered dance situation, but a dream to finally move in spanglish. 

Then I wanted to take our relationship to the next level. 

I graduated college and returned home to the west where hip hop reigned supreme. I dusted off my dancing sneakers and tried to dance on the hyphen, my Mexican-American identity. I was navigating both the hyphy movement & my love for Daddy Yankee, Wisin y Yandel & Aventura.

Through all of those rhythms, I was trying to find my own beat amidst the cacophony of synthesizers and claves. Again, I knew I loved you, but you had me chasing you all around the country and across genres. 

Over the next several years, I honestly felt like I tried every dance class in the Bay Area, and like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, none of them seemed quite right. Some were so technical that I felt like all the rhythm in the world couldn’t meet the teachers standards. Some were so unbothered by tradition, that the moves felt inauthentic on my body. Some dance classes were clearly formed by one teacher’s fan club. Other classes were all about exercise with a side of dance. Some classes were less about teaching and more about the instructor yelling at each body who did not mimic the instructors. Other classes were so innovative and fused so many styles together I don’t think I could really decide if it felt good in my body. 

As for who was in the class, well that was also an odd feeling of trying to find my crowd. Some dance classes felt like folx who attended could practically teach the class. Other classes were extremely cliquey it felt like high school all over again, while some were so individualist that no one could share eye-contact. My favorite classes were the ones where white women were so  offensively unaware of how much space they took up both literally and figuratively. These classes were often every radicalized classes like salsa or west African dance where the entire front row would be a wall of Beckys.  It was honestly too much for my little heart to take. 

Today, I am still on my self-love journey with dance.

I just want a space where I can be fully in my body (no matter what size or form it takes), where I can relish and evolve in the dance forms that originated in communities of color with other people of color who are also there to share in a reverent & nonjudgmental joy of dance. Is that so much to ask for? 

I am still on my quest to find my perfect dance love match. Maybe I will gather the courage to create the dance space of my dreams. First, I have to heal the wounds of the many (& mostly) women of color who told me I could not/should not/would not become a dance teacher. Funny enough, dancing actively helps to heal those wounds. I am reclaiming what dance looks like and feels like in my body.

I know you are out there. In the words of Gloría Anzaldúa: “caminante no hay puntes, se hace puntes al andar.” Keep dancing.

With love, 

Naomi