While my heart may be part Brazilian, my hips are not. I’m not sure how the rhythm skipped over my DNA, but it did. It definitely did. When I was a fancy little preschool dancer, my signature move was what my family used to refer to as the "turkey leg", but in fact was probably more of a flamingo move. I would awkwardly hop around on one foot. I had a unique lack of coordination mixed with the gracefulness of a capybara. I was more of an interpretive dancer you could say. As I got older and learned the reality of judgement from others, I grew self-conscious and decided I was more of a wallflower.
Fast forward to adulthood. A mom friend with a daughter in competitive dance told me about a dance class for moms at their studio. It was part ballet, part Zumba, and part completely out of my comfort zone. That first day I showed up, I'm pretty sure all the little girls with their perfectly slicked back buns were wondering if I was lost. I didn't have a child who was a student there, and I certainly didn't look like a dancer. The instructor (who was hardly any older than my oldest daughter) was very gracious to us as we dropped down to stretch out our snap-crackle-pop joints as we prepared to watch ourselves flop around in front of the full length mirrors.
As the instructor pressed play on an early 2000s station, I was cautiously coaxed out of my comfort zone by the sounds of Britney Spears and Beyonce. I looked around at the other moms and realized that none of us were looking at the others and judging each other. We were all just smiling and laughing. Gone were the days of little girls giggling and laughing at the ones with less rhythm or less sparkly costumes. I attended this class for a month or two and then decided to move on to the next thing. The biggest lesson here- dancing and laughing are good for the soul, especially when doing those amongst others with the same mindset. You're performing for an audience of one... yourself and that's the only review that truly counts.
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