An Unexpected Dance Lesson

A Dance Class from God

On losing the thing I loved most — and the only time in my life I have ever truly, truly danced.

It was nearly twelve years ago.

The setting is a condominium a couple of blocks south of the Brigham Young University campus. My room is large and full of light, the decor fresh and inviting, morning sun streaming through the window.

Outside, it is spring. The grass and trees have gone the deepest green of the season, and the tulips and daffodils stand in a bright array of color. Birds are singing. People are out walking and laughing, and the smell of freshly cut grass drifts through the air. My friends have all left for a hiking and camping trip down south. I could not go with them.

• • •

Not long before, my favorite dance professor had invited me to her home and asked me to be part of a performing dance company she was forming. I had dreamed of exactly this for years — but I always imagined it would come much later, after a master’s degree, after I had grown good enough to stand beside her. I was only a junior, still working toward my dance major. To be asked so soon felt like a gift almost too big to hold.

I went to the first rehearsal. But if you look back at the company roll, you’ll find my name with a single x beside it — and then one long line drawn straight through all the weeks that followed. Those were the weeks I spent going from doctor to doctor, trying to understand what my own body was struggling against.

The months passed and the test results came back, each one different from the last. First depression. Then fibromyalgia. A neurologist said Epstein-Barr; another said chronic fatigue. On and on I went, searching for an answer and growing weaker, until finally my father drove up to the college, carried me out to the car, and packed my things.

• • •

Some days I was too weak to walk. Too weak to drive. Dear roommates and friends shuttled me wherever I needed to go. One of them — my very best friend in the world, and one of the most gifted dancers I have ever known — would pick me up on the days I had strength enough to go to rehearsal, even if all I could manage was the warm-up before she drove me home again. I was grateful simply to have been asked to stand among people that talented. I was even more grateful for her.

One morning she came to visit with a surprise: a CD of the music the company was learning its choreography to. I reached out eagerly to take it — and a stabbing pain shot through my gut. I pulled my hand back, pressed both palms to my stomach, and held my breath against the pain until it eased just enough to breathe again. I tried once more, and again, and finally I simply gave in to everything rising up in me. I folded in half and wept, and prayed for the pain to pass. My friend wrapped her arms around me and held me, crying too, for a long time.

When would the pain go away? When would I be able to dance again?

There was another dear friend during that season, a young man who had been a great strength to me. I remember a conversation we had one night, when I told him through tears that if I wanted enough strength to work and support myself, I would have to give up dancing — that I couldn’t be part of the company I had dreamed of for so long. He came and sat beside me and simply held me while I cried, and kissed the top of my head. We were never in a relationship, but there was such comfort in being cared for that gently by one of my closest guy friends.

Eventually the pain in my stomach subsided. My best friend and I talked a while longer; I thanked her for the CD, and she went home.

• • •

I slid the CD into the stereo beside my bed, lay back, and closed my eyes. I let the music carry me, and slowly I began to come alive inside it — following one instrument, then leaping to the next, weaving dancers and movement together across the wide stage of my imagination. There was such freedom in it. To dance that way, even if only in my mind, was the most healing thing I had done in months.

The song changed. I opened my eyes. And I knew it was time to let something go. I was ready to dance about it.

I imagined a rose lying on my bed. As I picked it up, I began the first dance I had ever truly danced in my life. Every small movement rose from a memory or an emotion. Nothing was for show; nothing was meant to impress anyone. It came from the deepest, most private place in me. It was a dance about letting go.

At the end, I gathered the rose into my arms and looked down at it the way you might look at an infant you were holding. I rocked it slowly — back and forth, back and forth — and as I rocked, I let it die in my arms. I relived all of it: the pain, the memories, the heartache. Then, gently, I laid the flower down on the bed, looked at it once more, and closed my eyes as the music faded and the dance came to its end.

• • •

I sat there a long while, thinking about how sacred it had felt. A deep peace moved through my whole body. It was the first — and, to this day, the only — time I have ever truly danced. I have never forgotten it, and I have shared it with my students ever since.

In life, as in dance, we spend so much of our effort trying to kick the highest, stretch the farthest, work the hardest, be the most gifted one in the room. And sometimes everything we love has to be taken from us before we can learn to truly dance at all.

I’ve come to think of that morning as a dance class from God. He taught me the one thing I most needed to know: how to move from a place with no thought for the world at all — no audience, no comparison — only a pure and intrinsic desire to move. No tryout mentality. No worrying about the dancers beside me. No fear of how it looked or what anyone thought. No pride, no anxiety. Only peace. Peace with exactly where I was, and when, and why.

The movement you make may be so small that others barely notice it. It may be a dance so slow that no one but you and God will ever see its beauty. Dance it anyway. And be true to your story.

“Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing… to the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent.” - Psalm 30:11–12

With love,

Steffanie :)