Confessions on the dance floor

Tarinaa tanssimisen tuskasta, kun tanssija kuuluu samaan ikäryhmään kuin Madonna.  
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Sometimes dancing is nothing but pure agony. You are feeling clumsy, slow and have absolutely no sense of rhythm. Your short term memory leaves a lot to be desired while practising a new set of movements. Everyone else seems to be doing  allright. At the end you are just trying to survive through the class.

And then there are those days when different parts of your body are aching and preventing you from doing this and that. The amount of kinesiology tape you wrap around your feet, ankles and wrists could easily support a pharmacy for sometime. A professional dancer said once, that if you wake up one morning without any pains somewhere in your body, you are probably dead. Don´t know about that.

And then you think of quitting it all. It doesn´t seem to make any difference what kind of dance you choose, modern, classic, jazz , after the class you still feel like a fish out of water. Joy of dance – screw you.

But you won´t quit. You just have to accept your limitations and do your best.

In my case it means, that I am now more than 30 years older than when I first started dancing. There was also a break of almost twenty years before I found and could attend a dance class again. Age is not a limitation, but it certainly makes a difference, if you have been dancing for the last twenty years or you are just a beginner.

I am also a slow learner when it comes to dancing. I just have to take my time and repeat, repeat, repeat … It also means that the moments of success are quite rare: it just takes time to catch the moments, when you feel your soul dancing, not just your body.


Inspite of the difficulties and the moments of dissatisfaction I still think that one fine day I ´ll find the rhythm and the movement, that comes right out of my soul. I dream of the day, when I can really and honestly express something through dancing, to perform, not just struggle through the class. Until then - I go training, training, training as often and as much as I can.