Everything, Until It’s Not

Dance Class and the Desire to Belong

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What calls me to examine the function of dance class within contemporary and experimental movement practices is not just personal history, but the ongoing work of clarifying what I am actually looking for when I step into the studio. What do I expect of this space? What do I assume it will give me? What unspoken contracts have I made with it?

For a long time, my answer was simple: everything. I asked dance class to be the center of my world, the thing that held everything together. It dictated where I lived, who my friends were, how I saw myself, how I ate, how I rested (or didn’t), what I aspired to, and what I thought I was owed. I treated it like a compass, a church, a therapist, a proving ground, a social club, a career pathway, a form of salvation.

It was never built to hold all that.

And yet, desire is not rational. I have entered the room looking for proof of something—a confirmation, a sense of recognition, an invisible door swinging open. Dance class, in certain contexts, carries an implicit contract: if you show up, work hard, and give yourself over to it completely, you might be enough. The terms, of course, are never clear. The class does not owe me my future. It does not owe me belonging. It does not owe me clarity. It does not owe me love.

And I am still returning.

Not because I believe in it blindly, but because I believe in the process of becoming clearer about what I am actually engaging with. I am not here to convince anyone to return if they have done the hard work of reflecting and determining that dance class is not for them—more on that in another essay. I am also not here to romanticize it. Dance class improves upon the skills of dance class. That is its function. It is neither a lie nor a promise, but an ongoing framework to work within. If a person feels belonging, activation, or expansion in that space, they should continue showing up.

For me, dance class is at its best a room of proposals. Proposals to move as if, to move in reaction to, to move with the question of. A place where movement exists not as a fixed truth but as a series of invitations—to try something on, to let something move through me, to see what happens when I follow one thing and abandon another.

And necessary to that exchange is my own internal dialogue. The proposals of the room are only half of the equation—what I bring in response, the questions I hold as I move, the way I engage in an ongoing conversation with myself inside that space. This is what actually animates the learning. When I am clear on that, dance class becomes less about proving something and more about being in a generative state of attention, action, and reflection. I am not flattened by the space, but uplifted by what I bring into it.

There is a moment when desire turns from something luminous to something grasping—when the wanting is so deep that it starts to take over. I think often about that edge. What happens when the longing for something—recognition, clarity, breakthrough—becomes more present than the actual act of dancing? I don’t know a single dancer who hasn’t encountered that moment, who hasn’t found themselves performing the role of “good student” or “promising dancer” instead of simply working. There is a thin and slippery line between showing up for class and performing your own participation in class, and I have, at various times, fallen directly into the latter.

Some of this is about unlearning. Some of this is about accepting that dance class is not a mystical portal but a structured space to work on movement. It is possible to step into a room, move, and engage deeply—without requiring it to hold the full weight of who you are.

And still, dance class matters. It is a system of knowledge, an archive of bodies, a site where dancing is passed from one person to another. It can also be something more ineffable—a place where you glimpse something larger than yourself, where something shifts inside you in a way you can’t quite explain.

There is something I always say: class is a lineage of love. What I teach and share are the teachings I have loved—the ones that have changed me, moved me, and reshaped how I understand dancing and being in a room with others. Dance class is an oral history, one I care about deeply. It is not fixed, but carried forward—through bodies, through time, through the act of showing up and offering what has been given.

I have started treating dance class not as something that owes me anything, but as something I can ask questions of. David Whyte writes that good questions are ones that can never fully be answered, only asked again and again. That is the space I am writing from—not to resolve something, but to clarify more questions, questions that deserve to always be asked.

With that in mind, I want to share a collection of questions that emerged from working with dance artists at American Dance Festival in the summer of 2023—questions that continue to shape how I approach movement, teaching, and the spaces we create for dance (you will have to zoom in, but I love to see their handwriting here).