Hip Hop: First Class
I signed up for hip hop classes on my phone, still in bed, first thing in the morning — a multi-month commitment to get into something I’d never tried, decided. I’d been walking by the studio for months, thinking, I should sign up for something. And then one day, in late August, I opened my eyes and the decision was already made.
It’s like that sometimes, you get a clarity and something falls into place. You see what’s right in front of you.
I’ve been striving for that: seeing the moment as it is, and smiling. Seeing opportunities in things as they are: what’s easy now that might be harder later? And right now, I live walking distance from a dance studio.
The dance teacher, Morgan, is fresh and younger than me. He’s all smiles and nonstop motion, popping extra moves through the warm-up stretches. We learn an 8-count sequence, move through unfamiliar poses.
“It’s so I can finally be cool,” I waited all night to say, until it was definitely uncool. I said it anyway.
I’m a ballet-type person, trying not to be. I missed one point out of 114 this morning on my homework, and I know already that will bug me all quarter. I keep trying to focus on the learning, but I can’t resist the heavy pull of the grade. Perfection is possible; how can one want less? But dancing — as Morgan says, you don’t dance with your brain.
So far, hip hop doesn’t feel like dance to me. I know that I’m only learning, but I’m used to having moves described: exact positions one through five in ballet, or at least a basic step in partner dance. This feels goofy. It looks cool when other people do it. But something about what I’m doing definitely isn’t right, and it does not look cool. I’m trying, and you can tell, and that’s the problem.
I’m confident, but I don’t have swagger. I earned my cool on tech conference stages, but engineer-cool doesn’t translate many other places. I rely on my competence.
I’ve been learning to meditate. It’s all about acceptance. Sometimes it works, but sometimes I’m just waiting for the slow and calming voice to lull me to sleep, just enough distraction from my thoughts. I’m not great at downtime. I don’t play games. Books are just books. I want my time to go someplace. Really, I want to not want my time to go someplace, but I do, I want it. So it’s hard to relax, because that always feels like trying too hard.
Morgan is so chill you could miss it: how much swagger does it take to keep that dance vibe so casually high in front of a room of nervous mostly-white mostly-women? Mirrored walls, bright fluorescent lights. He doesn’t look like he’s performing; he’s pulling it off. I don’t think he’s being cool, I think he just is.
We do a freestyle circle at the end of class. That’s right: class one, nervous newbies, clapping and snapping in a circle while everybody takes a moment centerstage. To be honest, I’m more nervous about clap-snapping right than dancing (and, I do mess it up). I can do my dance, in front of people, and not care if it doesn’t look good. I’m making it up; there is no right way. I’m more bothered by the distance between what a thing is and what it’s supposed to be.
The trouble is trying so hard to not care that it’s impossible not to. But how do you let go?
