Don’t forget to enjoy dancing

Today I asked my good friend and dance partner to make me a promise. I asked him to promise that he will tell me if I ever start to take dance competitions so seriously that I stop enjoying it. We attended a ballroom and Latin American dance competition. The dancing was great ... but so few of the dancers looked like they were having any fun. It made me especially sad to see so many cute little children dancing with great technique but hardly a smile to be seen. Among the adults there were more smiles – but still very little that looked like true enjoyment. Why do we dance? Certainly we start dancing because we enjoy it (well, for the kids, perhaps, it’s because their parents enjoy it). We keep dancing because we enjoy it. And even when we decide to take part in competitions and measure our dancing against that of others, we should still enjoy it. Why else would we do it? Those who know me know that I take my dancing very seriously. I spend hours practising and it’s important to me to get things right and look good doing so. I can be a real pain in the neck when I’m struggling to master a step or a movement. But ultimately I work so hard at it because dancing matters to me. It matters because it makes me happy. And I like to believe that shows. I’m sure you’ve read this quote from the late dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham before: “You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.” And in many ways that is true. Dancers know that some part of your body is always sore. Your muscles forget what it’s like to be relaxed. Your feet are calloused and painful, your toes are ugly and sometimes you lose your toenails. And you probably have a teacher who says, “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.” But dancing does give you something back. Cunningham called it “that single fleeting moment when you feel alive”. I call it beauty and power and joy – but mostly joy. There were two little girls no older than eight dancing together on the competition floor today. Their technique was not perfect but their smiles were. The joy shining from those two girls was captivating and they made me feel happier than any perfectly executed movement by a more experienced couple.