Play Time/Let’s Dance
I’ve been thinking a lot about play lately. Mostly because my friend and empowerment guru Jennessa Durani has been talking a lot about it on her podcast and in her community A Daily Practice. Play and I have had a complicated relationship. My childhood memories mostly feature hanging out with adults and feeling wildly out of place with other kids.
That is except when I was dancing. I discovered my love of dance in the De Pere Middle School cafeteria at the 7th grade dance, where I worked up such a sweat my shirt was soaked through and others thought someone had thrown water on me. Not exactly becoming for a 7th grade girl, but I didn’t care. I needed to move. On the dance floor I could let loose, let my body do what it wanted to do.
In high school my best friend Kelly and I would drive an hour, one time in a blinding snow storm, just to go to dance clubs. We weren’t drinkers, but we were certainly dancers. In college I traded the house parties for the Saloon, the Gay 90’s, and First Avenue. In the 90’s there was no bottle service and the clubs were mostly dust filled black painted boxes with sticky floors and nasty bathrooms. Major upgrades seem to have occurred in the subsequent years, which I discovered the one time I went dancing in my 40’s and I have to say I was a little disappointed. Dance to me is something to do in the dark of a sweaty, simple place.
The photo above is of me, with my HUGE silly smile, either before or after going out dancing at the Gay 90’s, in the 90’s (note the dark lipstick and the chocker). It’s not a great photo, I recognize, but I love the oversized smile. If I had to boil that picture down to one word, I’d say free, but as they say, pictures are worth a thousand words, apropos of the brain chemistry joyful moments induce..
Once I had kids we danced in our living room, running circles around the ottoman to MGMT and Brittany Spears, but then middle school hit and the kids became too cool and I began my decent in to a midlife crisis, but that’s a story for another day.
Now as my children are about to go off to college I have rediscovered my love of dance with a program called Body Groove. My basement is a long way from a dark, sweaty club, but I love it just the same. I am reaquainting myself with my body and the ways it wants to move and that feels a lot like play to me.
In the end, I believe we all need things that help us connect to those creative little kids that still live inside of us, whether it’s some sort of visual art, singing, dancing either alone or with a partner, riding a bike, or playing hopscotch, our hearts and brains crave connection to silly activities that make us feel alive.