My name is Daniel Holt, currently residing in New York City. Went out and did some dancing the other couple of days.
Hit up the outside of the Municipal Building (right off the Brooklyn Bridge, on Chambers st.) and promptly got kicked out by security for dancing on state property. I probably danced for about five minutes before the authorities deemed me a bad egg. :)
But it took about 15 minutes for me to gain the courage to even start dancing. I've been dancing in random spaces (on a weekly or daily basis) for about two years now. I've done it a lot. I should be over the hump of caring at all what people think of me. Obviously not the case.
Not only was I dancing in a new city, I was doing it on a rainy day (who dances on rainy days, other than Gene, right?!) I was doing it completely alone, and I had actually skipped dance class that morning...so in quite the guilty mood. AND some old Chinese business people were standing right next to where I wanted to dance! What would they think of this crazy American as they conversed in their perfectly measured, tailor-made suits?
Social pressures of what was normal...always hard to forget about when any other factors of "maybe this isn't a good idea" are present. The social pressures we grow up with...so hard to move past, no matter one's own belief at the inaneness of most such pressures.
In the end, why did I choose to dance when all this adversity (mental or otherwise) was present? The same reason I think I dance ever, and the only thing that keeps me going through the days I question what I'm doing with my life (a plight many dancers can relate with I think, at one point or another.) I fuckin' wanted to! When I dance, I carve through a space, I become an active part of my environment, I can begin to lock my kinetic/conscious into the little life forms in the air, and feel all that presses itself on my skin.
All of which is to say, it's just fun, man. Mmhmm, good enough reason for me."
