My father, the dance machine?

Everyone discovers dance at their age. Some realize that they want to dance as children, most realize that they would like to know how at some point in their adult life, and then there are some who never seem to feel the need.

I’ve been wanting to dance since I was 3 years old. You would think it was genetic, right? Not at all! (Or so I thought!) I have had the strange luck to be born to two non-dancers. My parents tell me that they never had the wish, and I accepted it, since they accepted the idea of ​​their daughter becoming a professional dancer, and not a doctor or lawyer.

Imagine my surprise when I looked up from my plate of baked salmon and asparagus, at my brother’s wedding two years ago, and saw my father shaking it on the dance floor! Fortunately, I had swallowed the food, or it probably would have dropped from my mouth in front of the entire table. The idea of ​​my father doing something that was not related to his work or the computer never crossed my mind, simply because I had never witnessed it before. And if I had, dancing would be the last thing I would have imagined doing!

As I watched my father dancing with Michael Jackson, I felt my brother touch my shoulder. What is dad doing? Apparently, he had never witnessed such a spectacle!

This is a true story that I tell my students when they say they don’t think they can learn to dance. The desire and the ability to dance is within everyone. (It has to be if even my father felt the need to!) It’s just a matter of finding the right time, the right music, and the right place. You don’t have to be a “dancer” to want to express yourself through movement. On my brother’s wedding day, my father danced, because he was happy. For all we know, it may have been the first time in his 50+ years.