The Divine Goddess of 5, 6, 7, 8!

Every Friday she goes to dancercise. She was trying to think of a time when she felt like a divine goddess. But dancercise was quite a few bars below that. Most of the time in dancercise, she flails around. But sometimes there is a moment when she smiles and sees in the mirror all the other dancercisers flailing around with her, red faced, puffy, and smiling too. Maybe not smiling in their faces, but smiling in their bopping, sliding, swinging bodies. In their sweat. In their aliveness. In their showing upness. The moment never lasts long and often doesn’t come at all. Most times, it’s just dancercise. But the moment does come. She knows and feels it. While she was trying to think of a time when she felt like a divine goddess, this was all she could come up with.

Once, she took her spot in the front row of the dance studio. When the class began, a short brunette scampered in late and, in a halfhearted apologetic bow, said to her, “The teacher likes having me in the front, because I used to be a dancer.” She smiled politely and dancercised her way through the class watching, from behind, as the spunky little former dancer clicked her heels in between jumping jacks and punched the air with rubber band snap tautness. Bless her, she thought from the back row, I am a dancer.

Dancercise, she understands, is a provocation because, mostly, the world wants her to fade away, go gracefully, as they say. She knows that choosing to step forward into the front of the class is a chosen humiliation. Chosen, it becomes a way of loving herself, and a way of giving the finger to the world. So, she goes to dancercise every Friday to flail, to stay ungracefully, even in the back row, because goddess damn it, she can shine her divine light from anywhere in that dance studio, just give her that good ol’ 5, 6, 7, 8!