I have never been known to be the most punctual person on earth; or in the United States, or in Pennsylvania, or in Philadelphia, or even between the three other girls that I live with at Temple University. But I like to leave at least forty-five minutes early to make it on time to my dance studio, a commute that has never taken longer than twenty five minutes. Something about being forever “on my way” to a destination is intoxicating to me. I like to sit and sink in the feeling of anticipation as I’m on the train. I like to step to the beats of songs in my earbuds, bouncing up 21st street to the studio. I like to center my excitement in my abdomen as I wait on the bench outside of Studio A and listen to the bass of the class before mine rattle the floor and walls.
The first time I walked up to and through the doors of Urban Movement Arts (UMA) was undeniably daunting. I’ve been dancing for most of my life at my small suburban studio, but I’ve never been one to feel any sort of comfort outside of my comfort zone. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to work up the courage to purchase the $45 intro month package that the studio offers, and I consciously chose to spend the extra money on a month’s worth of classes rather than buying one class as a way to promise myself I’d give UMA a worthwhile shot. But as I walked through the doors and up the stairs and into the studio, I immediately knew that $45 and one month would only be a fraction of the cost and time I would spend at UMA. I felt at home.
There is a freeing feeling that comes with dance that you can’t feel from much else, at least in my experience. I’d imagine that other people understand “transcension” through whatever art forms they find passion in, but I’ve never found anything that makes me feel the same as it does to move in tandem with a certain song, or even just a certain sound.
For me, it’s the connection. The connection to the music. The connection to the other dancers. The connection to the movements. It’s all there. And within all of this connection, dance gives you an opportunity to disconnect from everything else. When I set my bag down by the window and climb out of my sweatpants and sweatshirt, I leave that clothing in a poorly folded lump, along with all of the stresses that the studio allows me to strip my mind of.
The thought of being watched, perceived while dancing, is the one affliction that used to linger in me. At the start of class, everyone seems hesitant to move toward the front of the room, like being in the front is something reserved for top-of-the-class, advanced, professional dancers- to be clear, I take beginner and intermediate classes. But when the music comes on and the bass starts to vibrate through the floor and sting us through our shoes and stream through our bodies, we are completely pristine. There is nothing left to think of except for being present in the music and the movements. As someone whose mind is constantly preoccupied with fear of judgment from other people, dance is the one thing that dissolves the entirety of those fears.
We cheer each other on during across-the-floor, we scream and applaud for other dancers when we’re split into groups, we so loudly root for every single person in the room. We act like a family, even though a lot of the time we’ve only just met within the last hour, and so many of us are entirely different from the people we dance next to. People with no experience dance with people who have tens of years of experience, forty year olds learn the same choreography as eighteen year olds.
In many ways the inside of the studio is a reflection of the outside, a reflection of Philadelphia. And by no means is class diversity limited to demographics. The differences in the way that people choose to execute choreography is one of my favorite things about dance, specifically HipHop. Everyone is able to move in a way that makes sense to them; one dancer’s interpretation of something so simple like a hip roll or a shoulder pop can change the feel of a combination so immensely. It’s motivating to be around people who are performing the same combination as you, but are doing it in a way that feels so much more powerful and intriguing.
When you’re dancing and lost in the song, you’re so focused on yourself; your body, the steps, the song, and the energy, that you can’t always imagine how incredible the number looks as a whole. Sometimes when I stop dancing and I switch my focus from my reflection in the mirror to everyone else, the combination makes more sense than it ever had. I feel hypnotized by the performances of the other dancers; transcendently inspired by their movements. Everyone is choosing to move in different ways but it always works so beautifully together. Sometimes I think about it and put myself back into the picture and it’s such a vitalizing thought to realize that I am a part of something so beautiful and something that works so well, when I had just been lost in the individuality of my mind and body a minute ago.
At the end of the hour, my instructor Alexis will say “that’s class” and we all clap for ourselves, proud of the way we shook the floor. And then I walk over to the window where I keep my tote bag and my water, and if I wasn’t exceptionally sweaty that night I put my sweatshirt on over my dance clothes. I look out through the window and down toward the sidewalk on 21st street- the studio is on the second floor of the building. Some nights it’s seven o’clock on a Tuesday, others it’s nine o’clock on a Thursday. No matter what day it was or what time it was, the street never lacked foot traffic. I look at the people walking by and think, “they have no idea that there are twenty people above them who just danced together for the last hour”, and then I think that I also have no idea what the people walking by were doing before they passed either; where were they coming from, where were they going? And then I pick up my things and thank Alexis for class. I convene with my friends and we all walk out of the studio together, talking about class that day: what challenged us, what choreography felt the best, if we would see each other come next class. And then we walk down the stairs and through the door of the company, greeted once again by the city. We say our goodbyes and turn away from each other, and head back to our prospective corners of Philadelphia, joining the 21st street foot traffic.
Sometimes the walk back to City Hall was my favorite part of the night. It wasn’t long after I started taking classes at UMA that I realized I preferred walking the six blocks to 15th street rather than taking the trolley line to the station. I liked listening to my music and weaving between strangers on Chestnut street, pretending I was on my way back to my Center City apartment, not to my dorm room five train stops north of City Hall. It was during these times that I felt like I was really part of the city; all of the commuters and the shoppers and the daytime city spenders had gone home and it felt like the only people left were truly of the city.
Those post-dance walks to the station weren’t just fueled by the life of the city. I was still riding the high from having moved in or out of sync with ten or twenty other people, all of us connected by the music.
I think in a lot of ways, the way it feels to be in a dance class is the same way it feels to exist in the city. I used to leave my dance studio in the suburbs feeling incredible, but the feeling would start to fade the second I walked outside through the door and was winded by the Havertown soul-feeling of settling and staying. Walking out of UMA and into the city is like walking out of a flower shop and into a garden; the setting changes but the feeling stays the same.
In the same way that there is beauty and connection through the diversity of dancers and movement in any given song or performance, there is beauty in the functionality of a city like Philadelphia that is fed by just as much dysfunction as there is productivity. There are so many different people from so many different places doing their own thing: going to work, going to school, going home. Everyone is so busy and caught up. We are all so busy and caught up that we have little time to pay attention to anyone else. But if we were to step back from the dance of the city for just a minute, and observe the way that we all move together, we’d realize that we are all just dancers doing what we need to do for the music, for life, to make sense to us, trying to work together to make something beautiful. We’re all just dancers who are connected not by the music, but by Philadelphia.
I am inspired by the city just as I am inspired by dancers. I look up and out at the buildings stretching through the sky and I feel potential; the same potential I feel when I’m drawn to the energy of a dancer who puts so much intention into the way that they move their body.
Dance has been an outlet for me for as long as I’ve known what it is to be upset or overwhelmed. Through whatever I was going through at any time growing up, I at least had the comfort of a few hours of dance every night to take up all of the negative space in my head and cast a shadow over my mind reapers. When I graduated from high school and moved to Philadelphia for college, I no longer had dance as a constant and immediate escape; I started escaping to the city instead. I didn’t have the comfort of a few hours of dance every night, but I did have the comfort of a ten minute train ride to Center City, followed by hours of aimless walking or sitting in Rittenhouse, people watching. Dance cleared my head, allowed me to feel free. In the studio everything goes quiet and I can drown in the noise of the music instead of the noise of my thoughts. Philly does the same, but instead of drowning in the noise of a bass or a melody, I drown in the noise of city traffic and corporate conversation and train blares, floating in the feeling of potential, and being forever on my way.