We are all tools

"The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie." ~ Agnes de Mille

Rachael Borini, a veteran dancer and a good friend of mine at UMass, would use this expression everytime we would do silly things, "we are all tools." And we used to do silly things quite often!

I want to use this point from a different view paraphrasing it "we are all instruments". It is not an unknown fact that for dancers, their bodies are their instruments or tools. More so for the ballroom dancers, who also touch the social aspect of dancing in quite an extraordinary way, their bodies become walking, talking billboards. And bodies never lie.

The other day I was waiting for the bus and I started dancing around a little bit to kill the time, and save myself from freezing in that cold, windy evening. There weren't many around there, but I still tried to hide away from everyone in order to keep away from annoying anyone. As the bus approached, somebody came up to me and asked what kind of dancing I was doing. I was surprised and a little embarrassed to know that somebody noticed that I was doing some kind of dancing even though I wasn't doing anything clear per say. It turned out that she was interested in ballroom dancing, but could not find out where to go and what to do. I tried to give her as many pointers as I could. Now I would look forward to seeing her on our Monday night social dancing.

This wasn't an unusual case. At UMass, I have seen such things all the time. In Fall 2005, we lost our regular dance space and were literally on the streets. This was one of the biggest downpoints of UMass Ballroom Dance Team, but there was a brighter side to it. Now that we had no particular space to dance, we were dancing all around the campus - any time, any place, that we could find. We became much more visible and people became more aware of our presence. This wasn't limited to the campus. Most of us were so bold, confident, and crazy that no matter where we went, we would break out in a dance without thinking who's watching and what they would think.

One time as we were stuck in a traffic jam, Lindsay and Jackie got out of my car and started dancing at the corner of the road. The cars behind me started cheering and honking for them! Many venues around the area were quite familiar with our flaring attitude about dancing. One of our favorite places was Route 9 Diner. As we walk in after a hard day/evening's work out, the staff would shine up seeing us. They knew we would not only eat there, but also laugh, dance, and do crazy things. After all, we were all tools!

Why do I dance?

"I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance." ~ George Balanchine

One of the questions I like to ask in my first class with newcomers is "Why do you want to dance?" Of course, not everybody is bold or honest enough, but the answers and their patterns are always interesting.

Majority of guys don't have a clear or convincing answer. They remind me of myself when I was a rookie. If anyone had asked me the same question that time I might have said "'cause it's something that I haven't done before and I wanted to try", or probably with a little more honesty, "my friend dragged me here." One won't be considered very presumptuous for thinking many guys join dancing for girls. That, though, wasn't true for me. On the contrary, I wasn't very comfortable with being in a close proximity with "strange" girls - one of the reasons I had issues learning Waltz! Nonetheless, I have seen enough number of cases where a guy joined dancing to meet girls. Some time back at UMass when I was pairing up our newcomers, one guy came up to me and asked if I could change his partner since he didn't think she was "cute". Not very surprisingly, he quit dancing the moment he found a girlfriend.

Girls, on the other hand, usually have better and clearer answers. Many of them have also been previously exposed to some sort of dancing like ballet, jazz, tap, etc. I still see girls whose one of the motivations would be to meet guys, but I tend to regard that as just a natural pattern.

I also like to ask the same question once the newcomers finish their first semester, provided they continue dancing. The answers at that stage are much better and enlightening. From the initial fuzzy stage, many transform to saying "I love dancing", "It's so much fun", and even "I can't stop dancing." This is when I start getting a better idea about who's going to stay and who would leave soon.

I think it is important that dancers ask themselves the reason why they are dancing. I can identify three major categories based on the answer to this question. Each category is like a stage and each stage is a subset of the next stage.

• I like to dance - these are usually social dancers. They enjoy dancing, but would not compromise much in their lives for it.
  
• I want to dance - these folks are more definitive than just occasionally doing some dancing. They want to learn and do more. Given enough motivation, opportunities, and environment, they would train for competitive dancing.
  
• I have to dance - these are hard-core dance lovers. They cannot survive without having a good doze of dancing. They would not only learn and train, but make dancing an integrated part of their lives. Hats off to these people!
  

When I teach dancing, nothing is better than having somebody from the last category. These people are self-motivated and much more disciplined than casual dancers. They are also "contagious" in that they inspire others too.

As far as I go, I disovered long back that I HAVE TO dance! :)

Ballroom - better than football

I still remember the first time I met Matthew Ashby. It was the spring of 2004. On a charming early morning of a Saturday, UMass team was looking for the ballroom competition venue on Yale campus. It was my second competition and I had transformed from a casual dancer to a little more serious. While most of us were trying to locate the ballroom, Matthew came out of nowhere.

"Follow me." He knew what we were after. Who else is crazy enough to be wondering around with backpacks and cloth bags on an early Saturday morning on a college campus?! More likely, he could recognize us as he was also carrying the similar stuff and looks; he too was crazy!

Because of his friendly nature, I connected with him pretty soon. The whole day we were not only dancing, but also talking and joking around. As an advance dancer he was very kind to offer some helpful tips to a rookie like myself.

The next I saw him was at the MIT competition, which is usually the biggest competition of the year. While one gets lost in a huge crowd, especially newbies like me, Matthew dug me out from the haystack. Once again, he gave me some useful pointers on my dancing. This slowly became a tradition. Every compeition Matthew and I both would look out for each other. I'd ask him to watch me dancing or he would do it anyway. And then he would give me some feedback on how much I had improved from the last time he saw me and then what I should work on next. He was one of the friends who saw me growing up as a dancer.

And I remember there was one time when out of ordinary, he asked me to watch him at a competition and give feedback on how he was doing! I found it very flattering, but only little later I realized that it's nothing to be bragging about. This is how we do it in ballroom dancing. We help out each other without pride and prejudice - just like Matthew did for me. I also remember the time when I competed against Matthew. I can't remember what exactly he said, but I sure remember that he was proud of me for making it there from the rookie that he saw the first time. I was proud - not so much for making it there, but having an honor of dancing with Matthew.

In this regard, I consider ballroom dancing much better than football. Dancers don't win by bringing somebody down. They help out each other even if they are competitors. As Robert Lipsyte wrote in USA Today article, "Compared with football, a profession that lures many overweight delinquents, ballroom dancers are trim and civilized. The men seem unafraid, unlike football players, of having their manhood challenged, even though the women are capable of doing everything a man can do, and doing it while traveling backwards." He further says, "Dancers are my heroes, and I find sadly comic the bogus macho of those big-bodied boys who dance only after they knock someone down."

Dancing and self-realization

Those who are born dancers would probably not realize how dancing shapes their lives, but the rest of us do experience this. To keep things simple, I would just talk about the physical layer. One of the first things I that happened to me physically, was the realization of some of the muscles and other body parts that I never knew existed in my body! "What? There are balls in my feet?" "What you mean my arms are not connected with my back?" "Use my inner thigh muscles to drag? Where are these muscles? In my inner thigh? Where's there?" The list can go on.

One of the other things that happened was the awareness of my posture. I started realizing how bad my posture was and actively corrected it. My best friend Bernie was also the best dancer on UMass team. He had given me this "homework": sit and walk with good posture - shoulders down, chin up, etc. Since I used to hang out with him all the time, he had many opportunities to critic on my posture (which mainly involved yelling at me in German tone - "where's your homework?" and punching my back or pushing my shoulders down). He also gave me some other "assigments" like practicing standing on my toes while waiting for the bus to work on calf muscles. I changed my office chair's setting so that it can no longer recline even a little bit.

It took me a while to develop the habit of being in a good posture without even thinking about it. Some of my friends who knew me before I started dancing did notice these changes. I'm not claiming I achieved perfection, but I do know that I've certainly changed.

In the time that followed in which I got opportunities to train others, I was told the similar experiences by others. Being a witness of their progress, I have also seen them from being a complete unaware about their posture and body parts to the point where they have a good realization of such things. Of course, one can easily escape this kind of training and changes. But I think it's really worth letting dance change your life.

The best compliment

Long back I asked my coach Gunnar what was the best compliment that he ever got. He told me that as a dancer the best thing you could ever hear was when somebody comes up and tells you that you inspire them to dance.

I never forgot this little thing. I still believe, and try to live up to the philosophy, that the best thing I could do as a dancer is to inspire others to dance.