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I looked at myself in the mirror one last time before my dance class, which Classpass described as being about “building confidence and appreciating the way your body moves,” adding that heels were encouraged but not required.
I wore a black Beyoncé shirt with black leggings. I pulled my boho box braids up into a high ponytail that grazed my butt with every motion of my head. I grabbed my orange-red, strappy, suede heels and threw them in my bag.
As I walked the 20 minutes to the dance studio, I imagined the instructor Black like me, or, white, Asian, mixed, tall, short, thick, thin, loud, mean, annoyed, annoying, nurturing. I imagined the other students: regulars who were all best friends or everyone separate, shy and new to class.
I looked up at the palm trees gently blowing as I made my way. It was my fourth summer in LA, the city of dreams, but I hadn’t done much to chase mine. I had spent the last year in a burnout fog, then was laid off shortly before my 35th birthday, leaving me with lots of time to reflect on the fact that I wasn’t quite happy. I needed to do something to get my zest and passion for life back.
My relationship with my body was the longest relationship I’d had, but it was a contemptuous one at worst and disconnected at best. Some days I loved my body and felt proud to be in it, other days I hated it and hated myself for hating it, and a lot of the time, I ignored it entirely. I put my body through years of undereating, overeating, extreme dieting (once I went on a diet where I only ate 6 ounces of salmon for every meal) and working out to the point of injury, and years where I didn’t move it at all.
I wasn’t sure what it would look like, but I wanted to begin our relationship anew. I wanted to feel connected to my body again. So I rejoined ClassPass and slowly started working out again. I decided if I could work out three times a week, it would signify my commitment to myself and to this relationship. A vow renewal of sorts.
Catching my breath at the end of a good strength training session, feeling muscles I didn’t know existed the day after a Pilates class, or noticing the way my body seemed to relish sweet sleep after a long hike felt like glimpses of my body waking up and coming back to life. Something in me was saying more, more, more.
That week, I went to my Tuesday strength training class and Wednesday morning Pilates. After a quick scroll on ClassPass, heels dance seemed like the perfect option for workout number three. I mean, what says zest and passion for life more than dance?
The last time I had been in dance class was ballet when I was 11. Back then, I loved the idea of dance and was so excited to sign up. In class, I delighted in the feel of the air against my legs and the wooshhhh of my body landing after leaping.
But every other girl in class was at least four years younger than me, tiny and white. The thought of doing the end-of-season recital, where strange adults would see that I was too big, too different, too Black, too old, too wrong, made me want to leap right into myself and disappear altogether.
So I ran home and flung my 11-year-old body down at the mercy of my parents. “Please, please, please let me quit. I’ll never ask to quit anything ever again, please!” My parents thankfully acquiesced.
That was the year I left my body. The year my body began to shift and change. It was also the year I began going to school with white kids for the first time, and my body became subject to discourse and scrutiny.
Photo Courtesy Of Renée Reese
At school, I dodged false rumors that I was stuffing my bra, and learned the art of the placating smile as the rumor-starters touched and asked questions about my hair. After school, I was messaging strangers in AOL chat rooms, “What’s oral sex?” I was desperate to figure out if that’s what my friend’s teenage brother was doing to me when he routinely cornered me during hide and seek.
I got increasingly sick of the roving eyes on me and the careless comments on everything from my hair texture to my outfit choices to my pre- and postpubescent breasts. The more my body became an item of fascination, the more divorced I felt from it. I couldn’t tell where my body began and what everyone else thought of it ended. My body became the sum total of every touch, remark, gaze and wound.
My heart pounded as I got closer to the dance studio that night. I knew dancing would mean letting go of the coat of numbness I wore and letting my body take the lead.
When I arrived, I introduced myself to the instructor who was white with sculpted arms and giant silver hoops. She was friendly enough, but I was still nervous. There were three other girls in class, two white, one other Black girl, all with tiny, classic dancer bodies. We began our warm up with jumping jacks and I looked at myself in the mirror as if I was looking at the camera while filming a mockumentary. What the hell am I doing here?
Photo Courtesy Of Renée Reese
“OK, ladies, this is called a bevel. It’s how we’ll start the dance. Turn that ankle out. Pop your hip. And we’re going to walk. Make it sexy!”
We crossed the wooden floor, the boom clack of our heels mostly in unison.
No one is watching you. You’re fine. Just walk. And breathe. Be sexy.
“Shoulders back, ladies!” the instructor said in her loud, sing-songy tone. “Remember, heels dance is an offshoot of ballet. Keep those lines tight!”
It’s OK. Just one hour and you’ll never have to come back.
“This time with the music!” The horns of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” began and my body hummed with familiarity. We boom clacked our way across the floor once more. After a few choreographed moves that I barely got the hang of, the instructor said, “OK. For the ‘uh-oh uh-oh’ part, we’re gonna twerk. You can put your hands like this or like this, and go one, two….”
I tuned her out. I didn’t need a white girl telling me how to twerk.
I threw my hands straight up, elbows locked, fingers interlaced, palms facing up. With the absence of choreography, I finally lost track of my thoughts and everyone else in the room, and my butt and hips relaxed as I let them take the lead. Fiiiiiiiinally, they seemed to sigh, as I let them take the lead. For the first time all day, and perhaps in a long time, my brain was silent and my body was sovereign.
I closed my eyes and felt. And oh how much I felt. I didn’t need to steal a glance around as I danced this time. It wasn’t about how I looked or who else was around, it was just about being connected. I began to sweat, breaking out in my first smile of the class. After our first round of twerking, the class collectively giggled and relaxed, ready to do it all again.
“See you next week!” I squealed as I exited the doors to nightfall and the cool summer air. As I made my way home, I felt every breath, every muscle and joint turn on. I felt the slight arch of my feet bounce as I walked. I felt the gentle wind nuzzle my sweat-dried skin.
I reached the sole lamppost on the street, the light only touching the tree directly above it, and I stopped and watched as its leaves tussled. I looked up just behind the lamppost to the crescent moon curled comfortably in the blue-black starless sky. I beamed, and it beamed back in equal measure as if to say, “This moment in time was carved especially for you.” Nothing else but my body, the moon and the wind existed. I had never felt more connected and alive.
Photo Courtesy Of Renée Reese
Months after becoming a regular at heels dance, I felt the urge to sign up for a Beginner’s ballet class. I was curious if I would like it and how it would feel to be in that type of environment again. Maybe it would be a nice full circle moment for me.
This time there were about 20 people in class, a group that was diverse in both race and body type. I was no longer the only. It felt calm and relaxing to enter this friendly space. When the instructor asked if I had any ballet experience, I said, “Uhhhh…. A long time ago. Very briefly.”
I took my place at the barre as class began. “Toes turned out! Ron de jambe! Attitude. Fifth position! First position,” the instructor began to cry out. I surreptitiously looked around, copying the person in front of me, but I was getting lost.
What’s that move? Oh, wait, they’re turning around? How are they doing this so quickly? My calves are burning now. Oh, my God. How long is this class?
I was back in my head, missing the feeling of being in my body. I left class that night, my skin sweat-dried again, having been reminded just how much I don’t like choreography. And so I quit ballet for the second time in my life, not because I felt too different or embarrassed by my body, but because my body likes a different type of movement.
In “The Body Keeps the Score,” trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk says, “In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”
With every leap, jump, shake and drop of sweat, I feel the tyranny of my past drift further away. In “My Grandmother’s Hands,” Resmaa Menakem put it another way: “Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than fear, everything shifts.”
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I’m no longer afraid and am instead ever curious about what this body can do. Now when I pick up a weight, or dance around my room, or take a long walk, I get lost, the good way, and my body says thank you. Maybe it was never too big, too Black or too old. Maybe it was always an entity of its own ― free.
Renée Reese is a native New Yorker, lawyer, and writer. She runs The Creative Year and Black Women Writers on Substack. She’s currently working on a multi-generational novel that explores themes of identity, body politics and Black womanhood.
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