An African Dance Experience: A Life Experience

A certain sadness has settled over me as I begin to write about my short experience of West African Dance. It bears an odd and surreal finality, how I imagine it would be to write a will that precedes a pending death from terminal illness. This dancing that I began with enthusiastic joy, determination and liberation has become quickly and unexpectedly impossible, as one crucial joint and muscle after another has dramatically refused; pleading weakness, injury and pain. I have no choice but to listen and comply with quiet resentment, admitting that being in my upper thirties, after carrying and birthing five babies through some complicated pregnancies and long periods of inactivity and prescribed bed rest, and having foolishly stopped both dance and most regular exercise through it all has rendered me fit for only a slim category of slow, careful, low-impact activities, of which West African dance clearly does not fall into. This is reality, and it is the kind of reality that slaps hard, like the crisis of aging and mid-life. I now understand how someone who thinks that they are young can wake up one day, shocked that they are old, and say, “How did I get here? I wasn’t finished with youth. Time passes far too quickly!” This reality is that from which I write what might in a worst case scenario, serve as a final remembrance of how this art form felt within me, as well as the learning that it brought to me and the personal value and significance that it holds for me. A kite-like object of hope dives and wavers, challenged as it rides on the whipping wind in the sky, far too high above me. I grip the string end tightly, not wanting to lose the vision of a time when injuries will heal, strength will increase, unhealthy post-natal weight will melt, and my muscles and joints will become supple and flexible, so that I might once again sink down into deeply bent knees, and balance my weight forward onto the balls of my feet, heels light, while arching and contracting my head, tail and spine; bouncing, kicking, flapping arms and feeling myself pulse through and through in an extension of the music of the drums, the earthy booming that calls me into motion.

As a person who came into this dance style with a history of ballet, and as someone who generally prefers to walk and not run, speak softly and not yell, keep an orderly space about me, pay attention to detail, strive for near perfection, and take on a whole lot of responsibility in my very full life, African dance immediately posed an opportunity for me to attempt an unprecedented looseness and vibrancy, and in the beginning, I was visibly awkward and out of my element. Additionally, it was my very first attempt at any kind of exercise following the birth of my six-month-old child. I was simultaneously re-entering college after a ten year hiatus, and beginning life as a single mother of my four children. The heavy perspiration, cardiovascular work-out, and enlivening drumming left me with an incredible endorphin release after each class that may have singly saved me from burning-out from demanding academics, a nursing baby, a tantrum-prone toddler, and consistently insufficient, three and four hour sleep nights.

While dance classes were doing wonders for my energy level and were helping to renew my spirit, my body began to complain right away. When my knee began to hurt during the second class, I didn’t worry, thinking it would be fine by the next week after a few days of rest. Instead it worsened, and a few weeks later, I was having difficulty walking and felt really discouraged. It became necessary for me to sit out of class for a while and just watch. I learned that pain is important for me to take seriously. My body gives out signals for me to take notice and stop before the damage gets worse. Pushing on and toughing it out has been my usual tendency, and this has been partially due to my belief that if I don’t keep going, my instructor will lose favor with me. This mental dilemma caused me a lot of stress as I ended up having to sit for quite a while to bring my knee back to danceable health. The pain did get better, and I was able to get back up and rejoin the class for the remainder of the school term. Despite this, I went through some emotional lows, losing confidence in my dancing ability because I felt so uncoordinated and unskilled with this style of dance that was so different than anything that I had tried before. I was reminded with the clarity of a crisp morning, of a pattern that I have seen in myself more than once. I expect the best from myself. I like to feel confident that all work I produce is of the highest caliber, and that I am able to excel at all that I attempt. If I don’t catch on to something immediately, I feel incompetent. Knowing this, and resisting the insanity of it, I picked up the pieces of my discouraged, rubble-pile of self-doubt, and despite my embarrassment about dancing poorly, I decided to attempt a second school term of this dance style, since my endurance was improving noticeably, and I enjoyed the feeling of the dancing.

The next term started wonderfully. I felt much more confident among a class largely full of beginning dancers, and the particular dance that was being taught was fairly low-impact on my joints. Yankadi is a dance of love and flirtation. It has a swinging rhythm that appeals to my love of sexy music with a hint of jazz. The movements are wonderfully feminine, and slow enough to put some serious expression into. I was having fun and getting better at it. I became so enamored with African dance, that I began planning to continue attending classes and even take a Summer trip to Guinea with my instructors in a few years, when my smallest children are a little older. The next dance we began is called Ku Ku, which is a version of the very dance that had caused me discomfort during my initial school term. Much to my dismay, my knees began hurting almost immediately. I danced for a few more classes, while the pain came and went, still stupidly hesitant to stop and admit that I shouldn’t be dancing. We had a week break from school and my knees seemed no better. Additionally, a week later, I inexplicably injured my shoulder, neck and rib. I decided sadly, that I will have to stop taking African dance class for a long time, if not forever. I have discovered that with the rapid pace of the movements, I am unable to pay careful enough attention to the subtleties of my body alignment, and am probably harming knee and shoulder joints by moving through unhealthy positions in my efforts to execute tricky, syncopated step combinations. Also, the tension that I habitually hold in my upper body causes ineffective and subsequently accident-prone posture. My self-observation reveals that when I take a class like ballet, I am able to carefully and intentionally learn healthy positioning along with development of core strength and flexibility. Maybe, with great luck and diligent work, this training will eventually prepare me for another go at African dance. I am not sure if my almost thirty-seven year old body will get that far, but I will continue to hope, because I don’t quite have the heart to end this story with a truly final goodbye to a dance form that I found so much pleasure in. For now I will hold onto that kite string, and watch it out there. I will imagine it to have a beautiful image of a dancing woman on the kite. She is dancing with energy and she is feeling good. She will come down to earth when she is ready... when I am ready. Maybe she is me in another life.