I am FIRST, a Dancer!

#1

I am FIRST, a dancer!!!

And, It goes way beyond clubbing,

Though that scene continues STILL

To release the wilderness within my heart

And, the untamed empathy coursing through my bones, 

That aches for constant expression.

Dancing has always fed my revolution;

The starter gun shot for my quantum leaps of consciousness.

It’s personal.

It’s political.

It’s spiritual.

I dance my way through every moment of this life;

A whirling dervish of integration!

Paddling, cooking, gardening,

No matter,

It is the way I relate to the world on the most fundamental level.

It’s about being free in this woman’s body,

To move my body,

no matter its size, its shape, or the approval of others…

With Absolute. Fucking. Joy.

Isn’t that an innately political act of resistance?

Turning dance into a delightful treachery,

A treason to the patriarchy!

Isn’t THAT the first revolution for any girl?

Dancing is so necessary,

I have been teased by friends for wanting to know how a person fucks,

Before I am willing to dance with them publicly…

Am I dancing to screen for sexual partners?

Or fucking to screen for dancing partners?

But why think, “either/or”?

Like any good post-modern feminist,

I am a both/and kind of girl.

I become irresistibly drawn to those with whom I find

A viscerally luscious connection;

Sealing a merging destiny with those that feel me coming…

Long before we pencil each other in on our dance cards,

Long before that first dance,

For however long our rhythm sustains it…

 

#2

Ohhh how these dancing bodies continue to shape my heart’s surfboard

Upon which she will ride through the next best adventurer’s wave.

My preferred sexual partners

Have always been those who meet me in the dance,

The ones who can lead with a rhythm safe and steady,

And strong…

Their leading spirit MUST be strong!

Even scrappy…

Able to tempt and tease a softened follow out of me

Rather than a capitulation or a surrender

Until I match their beating heart and catch on.

Oh the irony embedded within this dancer’s resistance.

This co-created rhythm…THIS is true intimacy for me;

A thread that,

When you’re in it…

Deeply…madly…thick up in it…

Becomes a thread that runs easily through the daily interactions

Near or far…no matter

Keeping intimacy and love

Passionate, present, NASTY…

And…ALIVE…

So, so alive.

So vitally exciting…

And, that’s nothing I can change…

Even if I tried.

It is this dancer’s proprioception that shapes every relationship into which I enter:

Sexual, emotional, spiritual…No matter…

Before the start.

Dancing is how I made my way back

To my own sweet sexual essence…

Cutting a rug with my evolving sexual identity

And a sea of sensations that could no longer be silenced

The juiciest parts of me…of all women

From which our creative fire is born

A fire from whose fertile ashes we continually rise.

Those parts of me were waiting for this reawakening…

This reawakening

Only my journey as a dancer could deliver.

 

#3

Can you hear how dancing and sex, for me,

Have always been inextricably linked?

Dancing taught me the difference between

Acting sexy and feeling sexy.

And, when I feel sexy dancing,

I lose myself in it

And my body once again becomes my own,

Regardless of who is watching,

Or touching,

Or attempting to take me home.

You see…in a life of victim filled stories,

Dancing freely has long been my embodied rebellion;

Has always been a reclaiming of revelry stolen

By each seed of criticism, contempt, and containment sown

By another’s reaction to my body’s awakening, untamed undulations;

Adding my movement to a long history of rebellious dancing women

from Emma Goldman,

And the Andulsianas,

And the arpilleristas de Cueca Solo of Chile.

Perhaps, this IS the first revolution for most women worldwide…

In some way…

Unearthing the self-love required to

“Free your ass and your mind will follow”

Dancing was ALWAYS, for me,

The first counter-attack,

A pathway to empowerment…

Divine fucking

My resistance

My revolution

You see in a life of survivor-filled stories,

I dance to release what was once forbidden.

And I fuck to reclaim what will no longer be taken.

Fucking as a form of radical resistance!

And, swaying as a form of sweet emancipation…

Fully connected to Self

Because, I am FIRST,

A dancer!

~ xoT