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The performing arts building has a long hallway, multiple studios, and a massive auditorium. There must be several hundred dancers here from high schools all around the state. In a way, it’s a trial run for this summer’s workshop—if I get in.
Saturday morning is devoted to technique classes, with the afternoon open for electives. I’m taking a choreo workshop and an experimental modern class, and then more choreography tomorrow morning.
My enjoyment of a technique class hinges on the teacher. Growing up, I had one teacher who rarely even played music in class because she wanted us to focus on keeping time with each other, not the music, and it frustrated me so much. Most classes, you warm up as a group, do a couple steps and phrases across the floor, with time for some choreography at the end. I was always waiting for the choreography. I wanted to master the steps, sure, but more than that, I wanted to string them together and create something new.
After my ballet and jazz technique classes and sandwiches in the college dining hall for lunch, it’s time for choreography.
The teacher is a curvy woman with dark skin and a mass of black spiral curls, a professor of dance who introduces herself as Collette.
“Welcome, welcome,” she says as we shuffle inside. Montana’s in this one with me. “Let’s start with a dance icebreaker, since we don’t all know each other. I’d like us to stand in a circle and introduce ourselves along with the first style of dance we ever learned and a short phrase that represents that style.”
My very first class was a toddler tap class, so when it’s my turn, I do a shuffle-ball-change with my bare feet. I liked tap, but it’s the kind of class, sadly, most dancers swap out for advanced ballet and jazz as they get older. That’s what programs want to see when you’re auditioning. Most other dancers say ballet, but some say jazz or modern, one hip-hop, and one who surprises us all with merengue. When it’s Montana’s turn, she executes a flawless double pirouette.
“Wonderful. So you’re all here to learn about choreography,” Collette says. “Choreography isn’t just about being a technically good dancer. Not all the best dancers are the best choreographers. It’s a very special skill set, and while a lot of us might start out imitating other choreographers, it’s all about finding your voice as an artist.
“Who are some of your favorite choreographers?” Collette asks. “No need to raise your hands.”
“Martha Graham,” Montana says immediately. “Of course.”
“Of course,” Collette agrees with a smile. “But why?”
“She revolutionized modern American dance. She’s an icon.”
“Who else?”
Other dancers offer up names: Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Katherine Dunham, Bob Fosse.
“Twyla Tharp,” I say softly, surprising myself. I never volunteer answers in groups like this, and definitely not without raising my hand. I am a new kind of Sophie this weekend.
“My favorite too,” Collette says. “They all have a distinct style, yes? Their own voices. You could probably describe them using a single word or phrase. By the end of today’s class, I want you to come up with a word or phrase for yourself. You’re not married to this for the rest of your life, of course,” she adds after a few nervous giggles pass over the group. “But I do want you to be thoughtful about it.”
Collette breaks us into four-person groups, and at first I’m anxious that Montana and I are separated. We all get the same song, and each person is charged with choreographing sixteen counts. It’s meant to test our teamwork abilities with people we’ve just met and our cohesion as a group. Collette circles the room, offering advice.
At the end we perform our pieces, and she asks us to write on a whiteboard a word or phrase we’d use to describe our voice.
Unexpected, I write.
This workshop makes me want the summer program so much more, a want that scares me a little. I am so accustomed to not getting what I want that it’s terrifying to think it could actually happen.
Maybe my onstage and offstage selves aren’t as different as I thought—because right now I feel like the best version of me.
When we pile back onto the bus on Sunday, my muscles are sore but happy. I throw my head back and sing along with everyone else. I don’t care that I can’t carry a tune. I know this song and this is my team and right now I love all of them.
I open Instagram to post some photos from this weekend, but first my thumb lands on a post from Peter.
It’s a photo of his band, all of them sitting in a booth at the Early Bird Diner. It’s Peter and Chase and four people I’ve never seen before, and all of them look extremely cool. That’s the only word for it. It’s not even a recent picture, thanks to Instagram’s bonkers algorithms. That’s even stranger, that Peter was in this picture a couple weeks ago and I didn’t even know about it.
The hashtags, though. The hashtags are what kill me.
Diners Are Forever
#diamondsarefornever #latergram #dinersofinstagram #grease #bandbffs #amidoinghashtagsright
I have to stare at them for a while, waiting for my mind to unscramble the letters. My stomach rolls over. This weekend I’ve been so consumed by the workshop and these people I didn’t think liked me but really do that I’ve barely thought about him. Suddenly, though, I wish I could reach into the screen and grab him and hold him close. These strangers—that’s what they are to me even if he’s hashtagging them #bandbffs—don’t know him, cannot possibly know him.
The photo makes this very separate part of Peter’s life feel so official. It summons back the ugly thoughts, the ones that make me wonder why he doesn’t feel the tug of the invisib
le thread between us, whether he’s with them right now, and whether he’s having more fun with them than he ever has with me.
