Mirroring

There are three middle aged women in a musty garage hovering over a computer screen. They talk to each other and over each other. It’s delayed, they say. The sound isn’t right. That’s a terrible view. How do we make it so we don’t see ourselves? Look at that lady in pink. Let’s follow her, she’s easy to see. This is their grand idea. They are taking a dance class. A real dance class, from a real professional, in New York City. They made sure their camera was off.

The warm-up is standard, albeit too short for their middle-aged bodies. They begin to learn the combo. It is fast. At one point, the movement turns around. Their bodies face the back of the garage while their necks crane around towards the computer screen. Remember, we’re mirroring, one of the women says. Yeah, mirroring, they repeat back to her. But they can’t seem to get the correct leg pattern. Is it right left right, or left right left? Between them, they have three different answers to a two-answer question.

Near the end of the class, they have the choreography well enough. They have taken out the floor work to ease knee pain. They have cut some of the turns to minimize dizziness. They still haven’t completely agreed on the leg pattern for the facing-back section. One of the women keeps yelling, We’re mirroring! Mirroring! Every time she says it, the other two affirm, Yes! Right! One of them feels confident enough to suggest they videotape themselves. The other two protest, Nooooooo. But she wants them to feel proud of what they have accomplished. We got this, she says and sets up her phone to self-record.

Afterward, they gather around the small phone screen, squinting, and watch themselves dance. As she watches, it suddenly dawns on her that the way she feels in her body is far better than the way she actually looks from the outside. This moment is like two waves crashing into each other. How can it be, that she feels so good and looks so bad? Who is that silly lady on the little phone screen? Not her. No. It does not compute. The two other women, who seem to have understood this body-crashing-into-itself conundrum all along, just groan and say, Delete that immediately. That could have been the end of it. They could have closed the computer screen and called it a day. But instead, one of the women asks, You want to keep going? Yeah, let’s do it again, the other two reply in unison. Don’t forget, WE’RE MIRRORING, one of them says. They do it again. They can’t stop laughing the whole way through.