I’ve been having a twenty-three-year love affair with a dance workout class. I haven’t always been monogamous; sometimes I’ve strayed for years. But I always return because Rhythm and Motion is more than exercise, it’s a transformative experience.
I met Rhythm and Motion when I was fifteen-years-old. As a product of San Franciscan liberal laissez faire parents, I was encouraged to be physical, but no one insisted. At age eight, I was too feminist for pink tights and tutus. By eleven, I was too defensive for team sports. I enjoyed spending hours in the pool during summer visits with my East Coast grandparents—mostly practicing handstands in the shallow end.
Then I attended my first Rhythm and Motion dance workout class at Everett Middle School in San Francisco on a Wednesday night at 6pm. The hour of exercise was organized into sections by song and tempo. Each song drew from a base of similar choreography, creating a foundation on which to build. This class was not calisthenics to manufactured music. We arched our backs and circled our hips as we warmed up to Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine”. We forward-jumped and thrust pelvises to “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls. We crunched stomachs and lifted legs to Sade’s “You’re Love is King”. Learning the choreography kept our minds busy and focused while the variety of music, from world to pop beats, invited us to dance.
Central to the experience were the professional dance teachers. They drew from the same pool of routines, but besides the general flow of the hour, teachers could arrange songs according to their own style. Teachers expressed how dance and music spoke through each of them.
When the founder and director, Consuelo Faust, raised her arms in a graceful stretch, she wrapped us in a blanket of elegant warmth. Terry Pollock had boundless energy for fast songs with high leaps. Roger Dillahunty taught the nuance of each move as if we were professional dancers in training. As Rhythm and Motion grew, Amara Tabor Smith arrived. With a committed yet playful wave from her hips and a gift for weaving music into magic, Amara radiated motivating energy that transformed each class into a spiritual experience.
While dancing, we were invited to stare at our beautiful instructors and learn the choreography of each song. In the early days there were no mirrors, so dressed in my electric blue leotard, matching leg warmers and white terry headband, I was free in the delusion that I looked good. In fact, I could fantasize that I looked really good, like the dancer teaching the class.
What could this mean to a fifteen-year-old chunky, sedentary girl?
Everything.
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