I find there are so few times these days (especially as a parent 😅) when I can say to myself: “Wow, I am so proud of me. I am so glad I didn’t quit or give up.”
But earlier this year I had exactly that experience and that moment.
Back in March I was asked if I could choreograph the Big Kid dance for our Indian community’s annual show. I might have let out an involuntary laugh - it was such a ludicrous idea. To take on choreographing a dance on top of traveling every week, launching a new product and coordinating a move was beyond laughable, it was a clear and understandable “no”.
I quickly and emphatically said I'd love to, but I really and truly can’t. A week later though, no one else had volunteered and it looked like the big kid dance was on the chopping block. I was devastated for the girls. Some of my most cherished memories from being 10 - 16 years old was doing dance with friends across the community. It extended into my 20s with competitions and even recently, coming back to dance with women I danced with when I was a teen.
It was bad enough that Covid stole 3 years of shows, of the community gathering, of culture being passed down - if I had the ability to change the outcome of this year, I had to do it.
And so, against all the better judgement of my mind, my heart and I volunteered.
Cue the panic and the “what-have-I-done” for weeks following. I've danced for more years that I can count, but I’ve never choreographed. Not once. I am great at memorizing and executing complex sequences but never have I been called to conjure the movement that tells the story of the music.
I watched YouTube videos and tried to find shortcuts but that was almost worse - there were professionals with moves that would never work or small kids with steps too simple for what I knew these kids could do.
By Easter Sunday I was about to message to say, I'm so sorry I made a terrible mistake and I need to quit. I think people, including myself, would have been disappointed, but no one would have blamed me.
But, deep down, I didn’t want to quit. This mattered. As I reflected on all the things I was dedicating time and energy to in my life, this easily fell into the top of what was important to me - not only personally, but for what I wanted to pass on to the girls, for what I want my life and contribution to my community to be.
So I told myself I'd give it one week - if I couldn’t make progress I was happy with, I'd hand it back.
I then sat down and came what felt natural to me - I took a scientific, first principles approach to the task at hand. I have no idea if this is the way proper choreographers do it or not, but I broke the whole song down to the component 8 and 16 counts. I saw where the chorus repeated and where the instrumental parts came in. I listened to what the lyrics were. I basically nerded the shit out of the problem.
And then I committed to doing ~30-60 seconds at a time - just 2-3 sections. I closed my eyes and just listened to the music, let formations and movement come together.
Once I had the frame of something, I roped the girls into it all and we all tried it out. What I didn’t know when I started was that I would have incredible co-collaborators in my girls. Trying moves out, giving notes, suggesting other options. It became a thing we would do every Saturday morning, together. Before I knew it, we had over half of the song done and within a couple of weeks the whole thing.
At dress rehearsal yesterday, it all came together for the first time in a way that brought me nearly to tears.
I saw before my eyes why I loved it. Because dance is so much more than moving your body to some music; it tells an age old story of culture and celebration and resistance and triumph. Because dance makes us, for a couple minutes, exist in our bodies and shut out this noisy world. Because dance can be passed down from generation to generation and even as the music and steps evolve, the heart remains the same.
And for the first time, I felt this joy not because I'm on that stage. But because my daughters are. It’s impossible to share what that feeling is exactly, other than to say it’s heart-bursting.
In the work that I do in the everyday, I spend so much time worrying about the details of our home lives. The logistics behind all the meaningful things. Ironically, it’s taken a toll in my own life, because I've had to focus on the most pressing things, the most immediate and practical.
But today … today, we danced. We told a generational story on a stage, in front of our kids and our parents and our grandparents. And after my daughters danced, we all watched my mum dance, celebrating her 70th birthday on that stage that I grew up.
That matters. A lot. In the every day frenzy, this is what I want to hold to. Commit to. Honour.
It doesn’t matter if it was perfect or even if it was good. It was.
And for that, I will always be grateful to the part of me that said yes to something so very scary and daunting but that I knew would build something even more important than what I build in the everyday.
So, as the timeless Leanne Womack puts it:
…when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
… I hope you dance.