When I turned 35, I joined my first adult dance recital. I’m now 36, but it has taken me this long to have time to really sit and process. My life has been in “go go go” mode ever since living in New York full time for the past three years. I am so grateful to have the space and the time to hear my own voice and for the first time in YEARS, actually write–for me–again.
The truth is, my body has gone through INTENSE transformation. And I know I feel it, but I don’t think my external life has quite caught up with my internal leaps. Maybe I have a yearning—despite being painfully shy—to also be seen. It was hard for me to convey the richness of my changes when I’d see people in Manila and they’d ask how everything was.
Where to begin?
At the center of it all was that I discovered a great, big, new love: dance. Dancing makes me feel the most alive I have ever been. I am SO lucky that I found it. Every time I’d exit class at my studio, Good Move, I’d feel like my body was radiating waves that would spread good vibes to the whole of Williamsburg. How is it that I could feel depleted before class and come out recharged? My face would look better than if I was wearing makeup.
How could it not? In class, we’d shake, we’d squirm, we’d walk forwards, backwards, sideways. I had been heavily into yoga before where it felt my range of motion was a rectangle, but dancing made me spiral. I realized that as a writer, my world seemed flat—on a screen, on paper—but dancing made me leap off the page!
I didn’t know how important “the physical” was until I had to present myself physically to others. I was never afraid to show my professional output as writer because it was always tied to something else (a magazine’s voice, the story of the person I was interviewing), but this felt both so personal and physical. I would be terrified to perform the choreo in front of my classmates. And surprised that I was! I consider myself a brave person, but it was so humanizing to present myself physically. I didn’t have a page to hide behind. For the first time, I wasn’t expressing myself in 2D through words, but in 3D with my actual body.
I remember the days leading up to our recital… I would get a huge knot in my stomach as I was walking home from my subway stop; imagining the countdown to the days where I would have to perform. When I was a kid (small enough to sleep in a sleeping bag on the narrow floor by my mom’s bed), I remember I had a part in our school event where I had to dance the tinikling (a Filipino dance that feels like hopscotch around bamboo sticks). When I woke up early that morning for the performance, I pretended I was sick because I just couldn’t face the fact that I’d have to be seen in front of an audience. Fast forward when I was in grade school, I had a piano recital and even if I knew my piece so well, I for some weird reason intentionally injected some mistakes because I was afraid to be too good.
I was definitely the kulelat in my dance group. That’s the Filipino term for “last” or “lagging behind.” I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, felt way in over my head, and when my teachers would check, “questions?” I’d think in my head, “Everything. Everything is a question.”
But I just kept going. I told myself that the goal was just to show up. When the teacher would demo a phrase, before asking “why?” or “how?” I would just copy the teacher and do the steps over and over again, until it felt like I was at least on the floor or standing up when everybody else was.
I remember feeling so concerned and anxious that I was going to mess up the whole performance by being that one person that’s just not in sync. I approached my instructors, Julius and Shoshi after one practice to voice out my concerns, like “I’m not sure I’m supposed to be here, this is too advanced for me…” And I was SO surprised that they were like, what! No that is why you are here. We want you, we want all of you… the important thing is that you’re moving from one space to the next and keeping up with the general flow and you can basically adjust the choreo to fit your body and not my body to fit the choreo. I was like, huh??? That was the most radical thing I had ever heard. In my whole professional life, it was always me having to adopt the voice of someone else… my editor, the brand, the client. I was not used to flexing this muscle at. All.
Knowing that I was going to fuck up some steps in real time, LIVE, in front of an audience made me feel what it was probably like to get cancelled, to fuck up in public. We crucify people when they say the wrong things publicly. But it’s easy to condemn when you’re in the comments section. I wondered if people would be as quick to write someone off if it were face to face. I wasn’t the best in class, not even the type of student that was passing the test. I was the type that wasn’t even sure I could submit the paper when the bell rang. I had never felt this way before. I was doing something that I wasn’t good at and allowing myself to be seen. In writing, I was always confident with my capabilities, the question was always a matter of doing the hard work. I had resolved instead to approach the recital as, “Here I am, presenting myself to you, hopefully seeing my imperfections will allow you to be vulnerable too.”
I turned 35 on the night of our performance. I didn’t even plan a birthday thing (I think we just ordered halal that night) and attended my other friend’s birthday celebration. I was so content already.
***
That was in Fall 2022.
Around Summer 2023, I was in class one day and I did something new: look in the mirror for the first time.
Something shifted. Why did that feel different? When I got home I thought, I always look in the mirror. I check out my face. I fix my hair. I guiltily glance at myself when I walk by a reflective surface on the street. Then I realized, this time I was looking straight at myself while touching my hips, my legs, my body. I knew then that loving the way you look was different from what I was working so hard to do: love myself.
I still feel awkward when the teacher addresses us as “dancers” or even literally reinforces us with, “you are all dancers.” I felt like I had to have some accolade or be able to do certain moves before being able to claim ownership. But I’ve let that go. The peak is my progress. The reward is the work… being able to train, being able to dance.
***
I recently watched “Florence Foster Jenkins” on one of my long haul flights and there was this line where she says something like, “people may say I can’t sing, but nobody can say I didn’t sing.” That made me cry and subtly have to blow my snot grossly from inside my mask. It perfectly captures how I feel.
I dance so I can look in the mirror and see myself: scared, but still doing it.