Remember how I shared my struggle with figuring out what my purpose is in dance, a long time ago? How becoming a performing artist is, typically, the most obvious choice, but not for me, no matter how much I wanted it to be? How I keep getting more teaching opportunities than performing ones? I still cannot give you a clear answer as to what my purpose is, exactly, but I got an unexpected glimmer this weekend! Welcome to today's post, dancer friends.
I was at a rehearsal and some of the dancer friends needed help with the choreography. I was happy to help them out and go over what wasn't making sense as many times as needed. It felt very natural and effortless to want to bridge the gap for them and I didn't think twice about it. Later that evening, one of them shared a clip online of us practicing and captioned it " so patient, I love me some gentle teaching." It was a lovely message, but I didn't realize just how much it meant to me until much later.
If you know my dance story, you know that I did not have a great learning experience in the beginning. What was meant to be a wonderful exploration of this newfound love for dance, ended up leaving me feeling demoralized and scarred for the rest of my dance journey. So once the words " patient and gentle teaching" dawned on me, I got a lump in my throat. Oh how the younger version of me would have loved to receive patient and gentle teaching at the time I needed it the most. Oh how much more confident and open to being imperfect in my art, I imagine, I would have been...And now here I am, somehow becoming the teacher I needed, the teacher I desired, the teacher I hoped for.
How healing it is to be acknowldged in this way. How beautiful it is to change the script. How wonderful it is to give others an ideal experience. How crazy it is that those words have let me in on what my purpose might be... a patient and gentle teacher. I am in awe of how God turned this around and I shall now go ahead and remember this compliment for the rest of my life...
Keep creating & sharing!
~your dancer friend
I relate to this so much.I also struggled so much when I started out my latin dance journey. A teacher literally pointed out that my partner and I were doing shenanigans in the choreo we had to do to graduate as a beginner. I felt so hurt and nowadays I still struggle to go to where I first learnt latin dance since it reminds me so much of how I almost hated myself and how I almost gave up and the bad experiences I had as a beginner in dancing. Thanks for sharing this it has made me feel that I wasn't alone