Meet, Eat, Move Your Feet.
Our dance community is small, but strong. Events like today are what make me proud to be a contributor despite being fairly new. In a 5-hour event consisting of random freestyling and cyphers, good food, and great people, I had an incredible amount of fun. After all of that, we all sat down with the RDT/ Debate Movement team and just talked about issues and concerns in our dance community. The topics ranged from, but were not limited to:
Why harem pants are ideal to dance in
How to shop for dance shoes
How dance is an athletic art, and deserves proper respect as both
^Why dancers should probably stretch
The amazing international quality of dance and the smaller groupings of the dance community
Choreo vs freestyle, and how we need more freestyle foundations classes for a variety of styles
The mental, physical, and social benefits of dance at any age
Why dance is never worth giving up
Probably the most involved topic of discussion was in response to the question why do you PERSONALLY dance, and what keeps dance in your life. A few people, maybe 5 or 6 in the room answered with some really passionate responses on their positions and experiences, and how really dance is an integral part of our lives and how important it is to EMBRACE that and bring it TO the community, which will slowly deteriorate if Dance is not given the value it deserves in our lives. For me, this part of the even was extremely personal, and I opened up to a room full of practically complete strangers on stuff some of my closest friends don't even know about. It's amazing what the dance connection does, and how just dancing for an hour or two with someone can make you feel like you know them and can trust them well enough based off of just that. Dance is important, no doubt about that. It's what brings us happiness. It's what helps us release. "Dance is life, and life is dance." This dance community needs the support and appreciation of all its members to continue growing and stay strong enough to support the amazing individuals and groups that are contained within it. If you follow me, or even if you just happen to see this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reblog it, in the hopes that it spreads to more dancers in our community whose support we could really use. Finally, I want to give a HUGE shoutout to the Debate Movement for hosting this AMAZING free event and giving us the chance to just bond as a community. Big thank yous to Rico, Leslie, Alice, Mikey, Tristan, and the rest of the Debate Movement/RDT team that led the event. Can't wait for the next one!