Farewell Recap: My Dancing

As a part of my farewell to this blog, I'm doing a bit of a recap of where I am on certain subjects. And when I'm finished, just like I did when I broke up with my ex, I'm gone.

But I promise to leave my forwarding address...which will be another blog about something besides my now 8 month old break up. I think it's time to move on.

TODAY'S SUBJECT:

My dancing

When I was a child, I asked my parents if I could take dance classes at the YMCA. I was probably around 7 or 8 years old.

They said no. We couldn't afford it. The next year, they put my brother in soccer.

I've always said that if I had started dancing at 7 or 8, that I wouldn't have stopped and my life might be very different. I'd probably be a lot queenier. And probably way skinnier, but stronger physically at an earlier age. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy the way it worked out. I'm a writer and I am now starting to take dance classes again.

I had studied in college. Jazz, Modern and Ballet. Then I took up some yoga and hip hop here and there over the years. But now I'm getting back into both my yoga practice and my dance practice. The dancing is really just for fun these days. I take two different hip hop classes and I have to say that I dance with a lot more command than I used to. I just wasn't confident when I was younger. I was also 40 pounds lighter than I am now. So I had no strength in my body. And this dancing isn't creative or artistic. It's purely for fun.

Tonight I was in Michael Allan's dance class at LA Fitness and I rocked the fuck out of the routine. It was to some Janet Jackson song. But it was like I was in the front line during senior year and my name was Leroy...and my life was the film and subsequent TV version of FAME. This is the thing with dance, you can pour your emotion into it. And that's what I did tonight. I put everything into it...and the dance gave me back everything I wanted. It was a bit of a jazz influenced routine and at the end we had to drop to our knees and whip our heads back. And that's the kind of dance the 7 or 8 year old in me relishes.

So I got to give him a bit more of his dance life back. And from the looks of it and the comments of my friends in class, he got everything he could ever want...and more.

Tomorrow, that boy will be in heaven because I'm going to take a dance class that will be filmed for the local ABC affiliate out here in LA. It's GROOV3 and all they do is play great old 90s hip hop. It's my childhood all over again. So I'm putting on a cute outfit and I'm going to go out there and rock...the house down.