New York Moment

So every once in a while, I have these moments where I stop and think, "Whoa! I'm in New York!" These moments are usually surreal but always happy; for a few brief moments, I feel really excited about living here. One of these moments occurred last Saturday when a friend from church invited me to attend an Afro-Caribbean dance class at the Mark Morris Dance School in downtown Brooklyn. I was scared to death to go, but my friend assured me that I would see people of all shapes and sizes (and colors and skill levels, which was what I was worried about). And she was right. I was, by far, the least-flexible dancer there, but that was really the only way in which I stood out. And, after a while, even this stopped bothering me. As we started to move our bodies to the rhythm of the music, it was like coming home.

The class was accompanied by a group of drummers and led by a woman that looked like she'd just stepped down from the throne of some African kingdom. Her posture, her tone of voice, everything about her was regal and powerful. After almost an hour of warming up, we started to move across the floor in small groups, building on our steps as we went. The movements were unlike any I'd done before, but they felt more and more comfortable as the second hour wore on. My pale, bare, high-arched feet took a beating as we bounced and shimmied and jumped our way down the line to the often frenetic beating of the hand drums, but I didn't care (until the next day).

The NY Moment came as the afternoon sun was sending its last rays through the high windows and I looked at the eclectic group of people around me, with nothing in common except for this love of moving to music, and I realized that I was taking a community dance class in New York City! Me! For many days after, I was incredibly sore--I'd moved body parts I hadn't moved in months, maybe years. But I earned every achy muscle and rediscovered that I am, in fact, a dancer.