by Dora Gelerinter
The moving, melodic voice of my hip-hop teacher carries me up from the ground and toward the sky. I don’t buy into her endless preaching on spirits and chakras and energy. She tells a boy across the room to get up, to not “give his energy to the floor.” She tells the girl next to me to stand up, to not “give her energy to the wall.” Neither I, nor they, subscribe to this metaphysical rhetoric. Yet, when I dance down the Soul Train line, I feel the message of her words, even though I haven’t truly heard them. “Peace, love, unity, and having fun.” At first I’m staggering the awkward steps of a baby hip-hop duckling with little to no swag, but as soon as I hit that pique turn, and that battement, and that sissone, the crowd goes wild. In that instant, the space transforms, and this is my home turf. The shouts and claps of people I’ve met only twice soothe my ears. And if someone were to take a snapshot of that moment, we would all be bulbs of energy: glowing, pulsing, alive. Although suspended in time, the smiles on our sweaty faces would speak volumes. Soon we will be dismissed, and the spell will be broken, the lightbulbs will be shattered, but their light will permeate into all corners into the room, into the hallway, into the inevitably crowded elevators. The glow will manifest itself as unabashed compliments for one another: “Hey, you killed that ballet stuff. I wish I could do that.” Compliments that run through me and force themselves to be passed on to the next person, coaxing the kind words out of my open mouth on a string. I am no longer in control. I am caught up in this movement. Today, in the 7th floor dance studio of Thomas Hunter Hall, we are all lightbulbs on a chandelier, fixed to the ceiling, hanging on effortlessly, unwilling to come down from having reached the heavens and having knowingly winked at the caged people we once were.
