A good dance is like riding your favorite rollercoaster or going up one of Harry Potter’s staircases: familiar, yet every now and then you’re hit with a move you don’t know— a dip you don’t expect, a dramatic lift into the air or a flourished landing on a perfect beat. Sometimes you miss a step and your heart drops a little, you grimace (or you don’t), but you carry on. Learning bachata, an improvisational latin partner dance has been the highlight of my gap year. It’s taught me some surprising life lessons and changed my life for the better. So if there’s one takeaway I’d love for you to have from this essay, it’d be this: dance to latin music!! It’s fun and so incredibly infectious - you’ll thank yourself immensely for the experience.
Latin socials are like modern balls: girls show up glammed out in pretty outfits, the guys hold out a hand, ask for a dance, and whisk them away. It’s honestly darling. Other than being just great fun though, bachata is good for you because you become more confident with your body. Growing up, I was always concerned about my femininity and whether I was girly enough. After all, like it or not, the way a girl looks, acts, and expresses herself will always be a massive deciding factor about how she’s perceived in the world. Feeling awkward and clunky, I never thought that I could ever be a dancer, let alone a good one. A good friend of mine once even exclaimed “Mia, please stick to math!!” beseechingly upon seeing me grooving to a tiktok song in a school hallway. Was I was missing some sort of magic ‘girl essence’ that allowed girls to wink without it looking terrible and move their arms, hips, and body around easily and naturally? When I saw the other women in bachata, they were the epitome of who I wanted to be. Full of energy, wholly confident, and to be frank, super hot, they looked beautiful on the dance floor. They inspired me and their kind words and pieces of advice made me want to truly embrace my femininity until I could be like them. During classes, I steeled myself through countless reiterations of body waves and styling— spending hours flapping my hands about and learning how to touch my neck and arms during turns and quick spins.
It was a journey, to say in the least–– socials (latin dance parties) can be a nightmare if you’re a bad dancer. People simply won’t dance with you. People brush you off. On the bright side, It’s great for rejection therapy and you learn how not to take dismissals too personally! Sometimes you’re sitting and no one asks you to dance... A song passes. A second song passes. Then another song. It’s kind of humiliating honestly but this is part of the journey. This experience is a rite of passage and if you want to be successful: don’t take this uncomfortable feeling too seriously and instead use it as fuel to get better. The first few months, almost nobody would even touch me on the dance floor. When I started out, I’d be on the edge of the room pretending to stare at my phone or trying to look supernaturally engrossed by the beautiful footwork happening in front of me. But like they say, “if you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it.” And I was.
There wasn’t a moment where everything suddenly clicked. I just got better slowly, as people often do at anything they seriously work at. Fast forward 8 months, I’m now at home during socials and am regularly showered with compliments and hugs after songs. :) I can do head rolls and hair-flips like it’s second nature. I feel confident doing dips, falls, and spins in heels and some people in my classes have even called me their favorite partner to dance with. Ofcourse there’s still a lot to improve and learn, but I’ve come a long way. Bachata helped me reconnect to my sensuality, teaching me how to truly feel, let go to the music and stop overthinking. When you mess up or lose the beat, there’s no sense in stiffening up and scrambling about. You need to relax and take a deep breath to quiet your mind, smile, and eventually you find yourself again and actually enjoy the damn dance. It’s applied to conversations for me as well. When I feel an awkward silence approaching, instead of scrambling about for something else to say and racking my brains, twisting myself internally into an anxious mess, I simply choose to take a breath and be silent to actually enjoy the natural pacing of the damn conversation.
In October 1963, Charles Bukowski, the famously ultra-productive writer, poet and artist, recounted in a letter to John William Corrington how someone once asked him, “What do you do? How do you write, create?” To which, he replied the famous succinct epitaph of “Don’t Try”.
Though I read about this when I was much younger, I only truly understood what this meant recently. You have to learn how to flow... you can’t try too hard. Through dance, I learned that too much zeal, too much passion and energy isn’t always necessarily a good thing if it’s uncontrolled and unfocused. Trying to muscle and hustle your way through isn’t always the answer. Be more natural. Don’t try, but do. Feel. Get out there. This essay is not purely about dancing.
Does that sound wack to you? Maybe it does, but join a bachata class and you’ll gain a more intuitive sense of what I mean. ;) Learn how to dance no matter what you think your skill level is. If you think you have two left legs, you probably do, but I swear that after some time and effort, your hands and feet will make friends with the music and it’ll feel crazy rollercoaster levels of stunning. Learning how to dance has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. If you ever have the chance to join a bachata class, I beseech that you do. You’ll learn so many things, meet so many wonderful people, and best of all, you’ll learn how to truly connect with yourself.
I post my bachata videos on insta! See them here @mi_yanaa