DANCE CHURCH by Erika Veurink

The following are direct quotes from Dance Church (an all abilities movement class that offers a fun and inclusive approach to dancing) leader Lavinia Vago on May 27, 2020 at 8 PM EST. 

“On this Wednesday evening, we dance.”

There was a time when we didn’t dance on Wednesday evenings. But this is now. It is so helpful to have someone remind you what you’re doing, like a conscious or a husband of many years. Narrating my own life seems pitiful. But hearing someone else do it feels like art. And the leotard I’m wearing helps. All the lights are off. We dance. 

“Say “yes” to your choices. Say “yes” to mine.”

Believing in choice, as an exercise. 

“Find the edges of your bubble.” 

I prefer the middle. I reach for the threshold tentatively. Now that I’ve found it, I can go back to the center. I don’t understand risk takers or skydivers or celebrities who answer questions while eating hot sauce. If you’ve found something comfortable, why not burrow into it and mistake that softness as stability? 

“We’re going on a dance journey.” 

I already miss the bubble, so I’m taking it with me, like an RV. The luckiest people in the world are the ones in tiny houses on wheels. It’s possible they’ve slept through all of the pandemic. Or maybe they feel left out of the collective trauma. Even minimalists find something to miss.

“Let your pelvis talk. Let your hips speak. Listen to Ciara.” 

My body conversation makes it hard for me to think about the person who died. My arms are sharp and they cut and disrupt. I am surprised when I hear them. They are working hard to distract me. 

Something I never used to do was start sentences with, “Listen.” I became a nanny and that changed. I dated a man who was deaf in one ear and that changed, again. When I say it now, it hardly means anything.

I used to listen to Ciara’s “Body Party” while I shaved my legs at seventeen. The song made me feel that I was preparing for someone else’s touch. I hadn’t been to any real parties or had any real touches. I shaved with the lights low, nicking my knees. The darkness was a part of the process. I taught myself to worship anticipation. I knew it was the safest place. I still do. 

“Enjoy the sweat dripping between your fingers and your toes.”

Enjoy the responsibility of having arms and legs. Enjoy the privilege of dictating their purpose. Enjoy free will. 

“Gold sparkly rain is falling on you.”

The amount of magical realism I’m reading has led me to consider all living as dreaming. I would rather be dreaming than sweating. When a person tells me they don’t dream, I distrust them. When a person tells me their dreams, I feel bound to them. My own dreams feel real enough that discussing them feels like betrayal against my Dream Self. 

“We get little like eggs.”

My apartment is small and without hallways and only mine. But I wish it was smaller. I wish it was so small I had to curl my wrists in like swan necks under my chin just to fit. I wish it was so small the ceiling could whisper to me, that I could touch the ceiling, that we could be there for each other. 

“Reach further beyond the screen, beyond the walls.”

We wrote Bible verses on the wooden beams of the houses we seemed to always be building growing up. In my bedroom, I wrote the name of a boy I was in love with. Luckily, his name was a book of the Bible. I wrote the name of a teacher I hated in the guest bedroom, then drew a cross over it. My feelings have always felt structural. I can’t wait to own a home so I can transpose onto its foundations. I hate remembering my apartment is rented. I can’t bear one more temporal thing. 

“More rain”

“Everything in moderation,” is what my mom used to say. It saved us from so little pain and kept us from so much joy. I think I’ll tell my children, “Everything in excess.” I hope my children never see the hesitation I stomached to welcome them into this disaster of a dimension.   

“Bring the love behind you and through you and let it sparkle.”

If I could conjure love and direct its movement, I wouldn’t be willing to let it go. I would lasso it into a skein of yarn and knit myself into a cocoon. I would ride in that cocoon down a stretch of highway somewhere between Montana and Wyoming. I miss open roads. If I’d ever been inside a cocoon, I know I’d miss it now. I miss the way everything used to seem so fictional. I want to feel the low, slow heat of a bad decision. There used to be accidents, I think. 

I rarely regret working out.