In response to an acquaintance's emailed question about ballroom dancing and my feelings towards it. [Please note that this posting was taken wholesale from my other blog, http://dictionary-of-questions.blogspot.com/ with slight modifications where relevant.]
I hate ballroom dancing. And the superficial, dishonest, inauthentic, and corruptible social interactions [with other people and with our self] it engenders.
When my dancing partner and I first began ballroom dancing, we were asked what it is that we—as separate individuals and a unit—wanted from dancing and the dancing partnership. After many years dancing together, I still don't know what my partner's motivations for dancing are; I suspect popularity, ego, and a sense of achievement are parts of the package—these are the more consistent threads I see running through the reasons he gives which vary from week to week. I'd contemplated this question deep into the nights and the following answer reflects my search for understanding.
I am thoughtful, selective, reserved, sometimes repressed in emotions, which leads to frustration and inhibition of my emotions. I recognize the need to ferret out this inhibition and to express my feelings through beauty and more creativity—something I am able to do through hacking, creative writing, design [in multifaceted media]—all loner and invisible [or behind-the-scene] activities. I'd like to add ballroom dancing to this list of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual creative outlets. Yet I also need time to be alone—to meditate, to study, and to think, for in this way I create beauty from the depth of meditation and appreciation of perfection.
Poetically writing, what I feel from ballroom dancing—whether as participant or onlooker—is
An ease that might grace our necessary fictions.
There, our identities would be like Haydn's symphonies,
Structures of balanced contradictions,
For all their evident restrictions,
Crazy with lightness and desire:
La Passione, Mercury, Tempesta, Mourning, Fire.
At times, I want to move like part of the night, dark, sleek, sweeping in like a black storm off the sea. My body forms a force of nature, moving gracefully yet with the power of the wind.
Question is how do I express all that on the dance floor, among a crowd—with my emotional inhibition and need for precision and perfection? Sometimes, I envy the sheer joy and freedom other people exude in moving rhythmically and expressively to music on the dance floor.
Technically writing, what I want from ballroom dancing are improved posture, coordination, balance, precision, timing, concentration, knowing how to follow, mastering styling characteristics of each dance style, knowing how to match my footwork to the tempo of the music, and how to move in unison with my partner in a repetitive, rhythmic, and fluid manner.
My partner is convinced we have what it takes to dance competitively—to take it as far as the Ohio Star Ball and The Triple Crown and Blackpool Dance Festival—and place in the top five. I am unsure [given the resource constraints from all the responsibilities and projects am carrying now and 10-15 years into the future] but if possible, would like to partner with him on that journey. I do not fear the mental, emotional and physical fortitude the training requires of me or us [I see no point in taking on a project and / or objective with anything less than a full commitment to excellence; otherwise, why bother?] I believe the process will impact our lives for the better in terms of common vision, goals, respect for each other's rights, and appreciation of one another's efforts.
That was in 2006. A lot has happened since. Sufficed to say our collaboration has been a success and a joy as we've made my partner's dancing dream a reality: Together we reminded one another to stop floating on the surface of possibilities and selected one inspiring project on which to act; cut out the distraction of fantasies that can never come true; discarded impractical theory to roll up our sleeves and took hold of our future with a firmer hand; planted a seed of commitment for our future; then did whatever it took to nurture the dream by learning, growing, and changing in whatever ways we can to give life to our dream. And somewhere along the way our course was adjusted so radically that it no longer felt like our journey. Our journey became his journey as our priorities were reordered in light of emerging revelations about what my partner most desires and what he can no longer hide—my heart's desires were systematically sacrificed to feed my partner's body and spirit in the belief that they will certainly yield the vision [however deluded] he is seeking.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
~ Denis Waitley
I have never been a person who takes the choice to accept conditions as they exist. More importantly, I believe that to find true security, to be confident, to know real love, to be fulfilled and to be at peace with ourselves and with others, we must learn to take risks. There's no other way. Our lives improve only when we take risks—and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. Have you ever asked, "Do I need a change?" I have. And I've found that simply asking the question is a risk in itself. If I answer "yes," I must act—or be frustrated.
Act I must. In order to be, to interact, and to live with authenticity and integrity; to allow my partner's character to mature and his interests to expand, whether as a professional dancer, or a small-time business man. And whether a deeper understanding can result with a greater respect for each other [with more harmony and right action coloring our lives together] or the relationship may end in broken dreams, a [further] drawing apart, or even in a divorce court ... perhaps, that too, is right action.
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