Yay! This time I did not land on my a** or facing your fears

At the end of January my posse of aspiring dancers and I will have our first show.

We will take the stage. We will savour our 3 minutes and 49 seconds of fame. We will bask under the glorious limelight.

And when that moment comes – that momentous 105th second of the song when we are expected to perform what I call the elegant “sit-down” – we will pray not to plop on our butts.

I use the collective “we” when I really mean “I.” I will pray not to plop on my ass like a sack of potatoes thrown off a truck, like I did in practice the other day – a move that earned me a nice, fat, black-and-blue bruise on my right butt cheek.

This was two weeks ago. We have choreography practice every other week. In between we take classes that should enhance our limberness and refine our technique. By the time the choreography class rolls around I have usually forgotten all we’ve learned two weeks before. (But interestingly my body often remembers – it needs just a jolt, like that initial beat or a single step that jogs this corporal memory and we are back in the game.)

What I did not forget, however, in these two short weeks between our sessions, is the initial surprise of accidentally landing on that hardwood floor with more force than expected. And that bruise was also unforgettable. So before going into my class on Friday I seriously contemplated attaching (with a bit of a string) a small, soft pillow to my backside.

I thought better of it, for the sake of appearances.

So let’s talk fear. I do not mean only this trepidation for the wellbeing of my rear area but this general apprehension that comes with executing some movements that my cautious adult self is reluctant to make. That is the difference between, say, learning to ski as an adult or as a child. Skiing was not part of my winter sports repertoire as a kid growing up in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austrians, on the other hand, are practically born with skis on their little newborn feet. So when I’m sharing a bunny slope with 3-year-olds who are intrepidly whizzing past me I cannot but be conscious of the y(f)ears that separate us. Granted, the height from which they’re potentially plummeting into that snow pile is significantly smaller than the distance my head (or butt) has to travel to land. So you see, my fears are comprehensible.

Nevertheless, they are a hindrance to my dancing. I am perhaps more disinclined than my classmates to take that “nosedive” across the floor, but it is a move that’s part of our choreography and I can either do it or, well, go home. And I don’t want to go home just yet.

So this Friday I left the pillow idea in the closet, where I decided to also deposit all my anxieties about broken bones, pulled tendons and bruises. My muscles warm from the two hours of some hard-core salsa side steps I was ready… or as ready as I would ever be.

The momentous 105th second came…. and…

Lena landed…

Without a thump…:) 