Mary Helen Porter

This I Believe: Subway Dancing

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I am not a good dancer. Even after taking many ballet classes my pirouettes are horrendous and my natural turnout is, well, too turned in. My attempts to master hip-hop dance fall incredibly short, and I am not artistic enough for modern dance. I am not a good dancer, but I still dance.

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I remember my first dance class at Interlochen Arts Academy. I was a seventeen year old boarding school student at the arts academy and had not taken a dance class in four years. My roommate, a very skilled dancer, let me borrow her blue tights. They were stitched up the back from the arch of my foot all the way up my leg. I was worried my bun was not prim and proper enough, so I let a friend slick my stringy blonde hair back with bobby pins the size of my pointer finger. Even though the dance class I signed up for did not require previous experience, I was scared out of my mind.

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Six months after my first ballet class, I found myself freezing in Mt. Saint Michel, France. Mt. Saint Michel is a compact village in northwest France that encircles an ancient monastery. The massive monastery lives on top of a mountain and is holy, sitting high in the clouds. Water surrounds the monastery and village making the journey to Mt. Saint Michel an adventure. The village is picturesque. I was attempting to warm my hip joints beneath the French flag by doing dégagés and tendus when my friend Jay asked me to teach him “how to do dance”. Jay is a large six-foot-something guy and I, five feet two inches tall, was teaching him the difference between fondus and frappés. Only months before, had I gazed into the distorted mirrors to see myself clueless in the world of dance.

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Our tour ended up in stinky, dirty, beautiful Paris next. It was midnight and the subways were almost empty. We were navigating the subway tunnels to the Tour d’Eiffel for one last glimpse at its sparkling intrigue. Our tipsy British tour guide yelled, “Bing bong! Wakey wakey!” at least twenty four times and the rest of the chaperones giggled and mimicked her accent each time. It was nearly impossible to keep the not-so-sober adults from making fools of themselves as they stumbled dangerously close to where the train would meet us. They wobbled like I had wobbled in my first ballet class, except I was balancing my weight on my big toe alone.

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There was a saxophone player on our last train transfer to our destination. Something about the brassy music that made my worries about the adults fade. I was too busy dancing through the almost empty subway to recognize the tune. I was dancing like a classical ballerina, very controlled and poised, then I stumbled into a funky rhythm and my arms flailed. All of a sudden, I stumbled and caught myself on one of the rails just to get back up to dance. I was moving my jostled body in distorted ways and I had never been less graceful, even before taking ballet classes, but I also had never been so joyful. My cheeks were sore from smiling. My hands had developed blisters from catching myself on the unsterile rails. My eyes were tired, yet wide with excitement and exploration.

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I believe that everyone should dance in a Parisian subway. Whether it be ballet, bomba, breakdancing, or ballroom, I believe that everyone should experience the emotional weightlessness and terror of dance. Everyone should experience an unfamiliar place and learn how to dance on that unstable ground. Only then can someone truly understand that living is not about grace, but about dancing within chaos.