M. Suzanne Terry

One of my favorite ornaments from the year I decorated my tree with shoes and booze. 

When I was a little girl, I was pretty serious and quiet (more so than now). My mom wanted to get me out of my shell a bit, so she encouraged me to try different things. Other than church activities and choir, one of the earliest activities I tried was dance, and I fell in love with it. I was *cough*am*cough* pretty clumsy, so I wasn’t great at it, but I loved having something to do with my awkward energy.

Dance still gets me out of my shell.

People say that you’re supposed to get more comfortable in your body as you get older. But I still feel awkward as hell. I haven’t felt this awkward trying to maneuver myself around since junior high (when everything is just terrible). When our new building was in the earlier construction stages, we took a tour. Some of the spaces were hard to get through, and I felt dumb. I’m grown. I should be able to walk around places generally unencumbered by unease and self-consciousness. It’s like I was in someone else’s body, trying to figure out how to move it around.

The only time I remember being truly comfortable in my skin was when I was dancing on a regular basis. So while it may seem weird to list dance as a core value, it is for me. it grounds me and reminds me of how this body – the one I have in reality, not the one I used to have or want to have – moves best.

Dance is the embodiment of emotion. As someone who isn’t naturally expressive, I learned that it was okay to let my feelings show and that doing so could actually be a strength from dance. It taught me to pour out frustration, love, sorrow, and joy, and it taught me that they all could be beautiful.

It also taught me how to fall down less frequently. That part’s nice, too. Who knows how many more injuries I would have sustained over the years without specific training on how to achieve a certain amount of balance?

Even when I’m not taking formal classes, the occasional outing or lesson is enough to remind me to be present with what is true and real now.

“Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it’s free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it’s at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.” – Eve Ensler