I Should Have Been a Dancer

The very first time I knew I wanted to be a dancer, I was in grade school and had accompanied a friend of mine to her ballet lesson. While I watched, I wished so hard to be in that class. My parents cut short any thought of a dancing career by simply saying that they didn't have the money for lessons. Instead, I faithfully went with my girlfriend and longingly watched from the sidelines.

In my teen years, I did some Israeli folk dancing and enjoyed teenage dances. In my mid-20s, I took belly dancing at our local YWCA. People said I was pretty good at it, and my mother-in-law and I had great fun making a costume for me. I dabbled briefly with classes in African and Caribbean dancing. But I only stayed on the fringes of dancing. Unfortunately, I didn't have any innate talent for it.

In a time of restlessness in the late 1980s when I was getting ready for another change in my life, I listened just about every night to The Four Seasons and invariably saw and felt myself lighter than air dancing to that inspiring music. Occasionally, I actually got up and tried to dance, but the vision in my head of dancing was far different from the reality, and much less satisfying.

Several years passed, along with my youth and agility. I was 56 and living in a retirement community that offered many classes. I signed up for a Joy of Dance class. The teacher was a former professional dancer who could still dazzle at 88. When she danced, the years melted away. I did feel a joy in dance, but much muted not only by a lack of talent, but also a lack of energy and mobility. Unlike my enduring aged teacher who still dances in her 90s, I was, alas, past my prime.

The older I become, the more interested I am in the mind-body connection. How even more wonderful than I imagined when I was young would it be to feel in tune with my body like a dancer does! That's the truest mind-body connection to me. So, I content myself with feeling my mind-body connection best when I'm doing yoga, or swimming rhythmically and even somewhat gracefully up and down the pool. There's the now long-ago, vaguely-remembered elation of that one time in the school playground Dodgeball game when I easily managed to elude all attempts to catch me. And, yes, there was that one successful attempt at camp to get up on water skiis and fly over the water.

Mostly, I can only content myself watching wonderful dancers do what they do best on stage. This afternoon I saw a taped performance of The Hard Nut, a modernized version of the famous Nutcracker ballet. In this version by a baby boomer choreographer, Mark Morris, there were males in drag, a ballerina dancing sometimes in bunny slippers, and sometimes barefoot, along with unusual twists in costumes and plot. These were top notch dancers who looked as though they enjoyed dancing as much as I enjoyed imagining I was leaping and cavorting among them. Since this wasn't a live performance, there were comings and goings of members of the audience, a lady who just had to answer her cell phone, and a tortilla chip cruncher behind me to remind me I must be, alas, an appreciator rather than a participant.

I usually give no thought at all to the subject of reincarnation. But I have decided that I would agree to be reincarnated only if I could return as a dancer.