"Remember your dance?
The young girl inside me
calls out,
"Remember?"
Dad told me how, as a baby,
I sat on the floor rocking side to side,
just smiling.
Later I was known to start the day
with only one shoe
my frustrated mother shaking her head
while the school bus left me behind again.
I was a girl who thrived
climbing trees, running through woods
I wasn't hyperactive, just a mover.
Running brought temporary relief.
The only dancing I knew growing up
drill teams of painted girls,
performance dancers
that wasn't me.
Finding social dancing in my 20's
was like a drug.
Swinging partners in dancehalls
escaping thoughts I didn't know how to turn off.
Anxiety, the never ending loop of ideas.
I found myself in the music.
I floated free.
It is never too late
to turn the music on
find your sway, sashay
surrender to internal movement
Your body has not forgotten.
Your brain has many incredible ideas
but your heart is the one who knows
how to dance with the world.
Listen inward
find the place
where your freedom
resides.
© Ali Grimshaw 2021
“When Gillian was 8 years old, her hyperactivity — which earned her the nickname Wriggle-Bottom — led her mother to take her to a family doctor. While he examined Gillian, the doctor put on some music and asked Mrs. Pyrke to leave the room with him. “Out they went and the minute they had gone I started to dance to the music, even going up on his desk,” Ms. Lynne wrote in her autobiography, “A Dancer in Wartime” (2012). “What I hadn’t noticed was that his door was one of those beautiful old glass ones with etched designs through which the doctor and my mother were watching.” As they observed Gillian dancing with abandon, she recalled, the doctor said: “There is no trouble with this child, Mrs. Pyrke. She is a natural dancer — you must take her to dance class.” – Gillian Lynne, Choreographer of ‘Cats,’ Is Dead at 92 from The New York Times
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