mirrors

well, there aren't any. (mirrors, that is; at the studio, by the way.) At least not the traditional, reflect-your-physical-image-from-a-looking-glass kind anyway. But there are plenty of reflections of other sorts to be found. Once a week I work (for lack of a better word) there. And my view and interactions are totally different from what I see&feel during the time I'm in the studio moving. Whereas my own dance moments are mostly internal, the places I go during the work-dance are mostly observant. outside-in. I find myself thinking "I've been you." When a woman comes in for an intro class and nervously says "I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm not a dancer." Yup, I was you three-and-change years ago. Or when someone is signing up for a session and asks "What if I have to miss a class? How will I catch up?" Oh, my friend, I've been right there with you in that worry. Or when a level one student suddenly panics and says, "Am I good enough to go on to level two?" And, indeed, I have been inside your wiggling self-confidence. And no matter the responses, none of this is small stuff in that moment, because of course all that inner dialogue is investigation. Gets us where we need to be.

And because the studio becomes such a comforting and safe, yet still necessarily challenging, place to be, a lot is rolled out into the space. (Some of it completely and absurdly hilarious. Like the time a UPS man arrived with some new chairs for the classrooms and asked for an able-bodied guy to help move them from the truck, but instead was met with a couple of half-clad ladieS jumping up and down, clapping and saying, "The lap dance chairs are here, the lap dance chairs are here." At which point the very kerfluffled man in brown made an executive decision to do what he could on his own. He acquired the strength of Atlas to move those puppies into the studio all by himself. Until the amazing lady who maintains all things clean in the studio went down to flex her capable muscles. When all was done, he still looked a bit shaken, yet hopeful maybe for a demonstration. But I digress...)

I often find myself startled by a reflection from someone else that looks a lot like one i've tried to avoid noticing in myself at various points in my life. And I'm Alice climbing through the looking glass to see the view from another vantage point. A particularly poignant moment happens when it's someone's heart that seems to be breaking. I want to hold the person and tell them it's going to be fine, but of course I don't know that, nor would I expect anyone to believe me. And I watch them trying to keep it all together. Trying to focus attention elsewhere as the veil falls down to reveal the cracks. And I want to say, Yes, let it all come down. That's the only way. But I remember the times when I wanted more hands to keep up the mask, more fingers to stave off the flood, more humor to distract from the schisms, more tuck to roll away from the feelings, and I watch them, realizing it's all a beautifully blind journey.

And now when the conversations start, when we're all sharing and yearning and hopeful. When I talk about my current joy quietly, yet proudly, with these women who I've grown intimate with, most of whom I know only for these few hours a week, I see how their happiness for my falling and rising and staying with it is reflected back. My very own house of mirrors.