I have been dancing since I was five. Not as a hobby. Not to fill time. As a practitioner, which means I have organised my life around it across every season it has moved through. Education. Deaths. Motherhood. Corporate. Rebuild. Without pause except childbirth. It also means I study it, commit to it, be a student and make it as part of the learning journey.
At some point someone said to me: no one cares if you don’t dance. It sounds harsh. But it was the most liberating thing I ever heard. Because it removed the audience from the equation entirely and returned the practice to me. The relationship became mine to define.
And that is when the real thing began.
Not performance. Not validation. Not the prestigious programme or the perfect aramandi or the likes on a reel. Those are real and good and needed, they are the first layer. But they are only the first layer.
What lives underneath is something quieter and more sustaining.
A Bougainvillea noticed mid-class in Praveen’s studio. The quiet satisfaction when an aging body renders a difficult session and holds. The younger women I practice alongside whose views on the art delight me in ways I didn’t expect. Decades-long friendships with fellow artistes that have survived everything life has put through them, and through me.
Each one a marker of what it means to practice joy rather than perform it.
This is what a 45-year relationship with an art form actually looks like. Not the stage. Not the certificate. This. The noticing. The showing up. The quiet accumulation of a practice that belongs entirely to you.
Let art permeate your life. Not as achievement. As breath.
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