Turning Point

My life turned when I decided to dance. My two left feet moved clumsily as I tried my first few steps and I realized I wasn’t breathing at all, my neck and shoulders stiff out of minding the dance too much. I was busy thinking how to finish the move that I forgot to dance. But that’s how it began.

I was on my third year into my Philippine Arts degree and we needed to apply as interns to companies relevant to our studies. I didn’t want to do the usual rounds to museums and arts organizations so I decided to do my internship in a church. Not that I intended to be converted to a new religion, no, I just wanted something new. So I found myself translating a T’boli Tud Bulul epic, one of my initial assignments as researcher for KALOOB Philippine Music and Dance Ministry, a cultural NGO based inside a Christian church in Manila. Quite some culture the church had I observed at first. During the month of May (same time as my internship) they celebrated a Pistang Kristiano. For me it was something unheard of for a “Protestant” church. I always thought they leaned more heavily on the Western mode of doing things. One outstanding highlight about their pistas and their worship I noticed was the dancing. It was everywhere. It exuded life, energy, it had vibrancy. Every Sunday during the church’s worship, a dance group would lead the congregation to spirited dancing. My feet wanted to abandon its rootedness to the floor and just go on dancing but I kept on restraining myself. I wasn’t used to it yet, being raised going to a Catholic church where they do the whole praising God ritual sans the dance.

I went even more aghast when I first saw them perform Philippine dance traditions. I was especially mystified when I saw them render dances from Mindanao. One special scene stuck until now to memory, a female dancing solo wearing metallic extensions attached to her fingernails. The dance (now I know is called paunjalay, from the Yakans) lacked the technically difficult routines that one usually finds in ballet or jazz yet it was the most hypnotically moving dance I’ve ever seen. Her slender body moved ever so gracefully, and without effort, and the movement flowed like fluid from one point to another.

So I didn’t mind too much when one early evening, after finishing my days work, I lingered to watch one of the group’s regular dance rehearsals. And just almost as casually, one or two of the dancers, coaxed me into trying it myself. So there I was in the dance floor, shoulders hunched, my hands stiff and my body sweating profusely, panting after just a few counts, unconscious of the fact that right there and then, I just rewrote my destiny.

Five years later, my shoulders still hunch from time to time, when I don’t watch it, but the dance floor became my alter-universe and the dancer I see now in the mirror my alter-ego. If there’s one thing that this decision taught me, it was to just dance with the music and go with the flow, for most of the time, we really don’t know where we’re supposed to go. But there’s always music to listen to, and the dance floor where you can chassé your way to your heart, and back to yourself.