” Racism during dance class is really about controlling the rhythm of the Black women’s body.”
Welcome to my personal story of how I’ve personally found the blend of being a woman who just happens to dance and a woman who just happens to be Black and how the world often uses my “Blackness” to ruin my experience of dance. I love style and fashion and I also love dance. One thing that I hate about dance is the kneepads. Whether or not I’m in a cute dancers outfit I hate the color of these bulky black knee pads ruining the entire look of my outfit.
I’ve tried searching for kneepads that match my skin color and they were $50, which even if I saved up to spend $50 on kneepads (which I probably embarrassingly will because their so gorgeous), I’m equally embarrassed that I’m spending $50 on knee pads knowing that their only good for a certain amount of time before I have to rebuy them and that the price for knee pads is usually $8-$25. So using my creative homeschooled brain when I saw that there was a high end brand of white colored knee pads on sale for $12 I just bought them and dyed them brown. And I thought they looked great…until I walked into my pole class and saw another Black woman with the $50 knee pads and they looked gorgeous on her!
At the end of the class I complimented her on her knee pads and she thanked me and told me where she found them. Ok, at this point I have to dive into a little explanation for the reader. If your someone who doesn’t believe in spiritual awakenings, psychics, or the neuroscience of people’s brain waves syncing up this next part that I’m about to say isn’t for you.
As I spoke with the woman I noticed the instructor who was white getting upset that the Black people were cliching up and talking and leaving the white people out. I read her mind. Well the next pole class – the same Black woman was in it, and she had been sent to police me to make sure that I was “integrating the class” in the right way.
I was wondering why she was all over me, watching me like a hawk, monitoring me, everything I said and I how I responded when someone white spoke to me. And I know, I know, this sounds like nothing and like I’m being a baby and making it up but frankly it’s exhausting. I didn’t need to be psychic, her eyes were saying enough. I was also wondering why when someone else pointed out that her and I unintentionally matched (our clothes matched, we were both dressed in all black – pun intended) she was quick to brush it off and tell them that they matched with the person next to them. All of this and my intuition tells me that she is reporting to the white instructor.
Then we have my original dance instructor. A Black woman who brought up my inner sensual energy and then along with her white counterparts at another dance studio threw me away when my vibration, aka my dancing got to be too much.
For that story see my post, “Nobody put’s Baby in the Corner.” I had arrived at that studio battered and broken and a lot of the women sensed it and they went in on me – students and instructors. However there were two women, both instructors – one of them Black one of them White who saw that even though I was dancing I was dancing in pain. They both took me under their wings in their own way, however the Black instructor was limited in how she was allowed to take me under her wing.
I used to wonder why she was speaking to me in whispers and only when no one else was around, why I felt like I was her “Dirty little secret.” And then I realized that we weren’t allowed to talk if non Black people were around. Isn’t that fucked up?
Another Black woman was thrown out of her dance class. And a few months later I was thrown out too.
“Control of any woman is overall control of her body. And whether a woman is Asian, Hispanic, Black or White when it comes to dance there is this underlying fascination of picking the woman who is dancing in a way others can’t handle down. Of quieting her vibration, making her mute and wiping out her rhythm, her beat from the group of dancers.”
One of the last dance classes that I took at a dance studio before I transferred out of it – the instructor wanted to make sure that I didn’t show up the class with the way that I danced so she overpowered the room. And the saddest thing about that wasn’t even what it did to me.
There was this gorgeous Asian woman in front of me who could really dance. And as the instructor cut me down I saw this woman get quieter in her movements too. Her hatred for me quieted another woman’s body.
I’ve had dance instructors dance all up on me, grinding on me – it felt like a form of sexual assault which I’m sure it is.
The pressure that I had of walking into an all white dance studio or taking all white heels chorography classes and people looking to see “What the Black woman can do because we know she can dance.” When meanwhile I’m living in the same stressed out world they are in and I just wanted to be able to dance without being put on display.
I’m naturally shy and quiet however when I don’t talk and mingle with others I’m seen as being racist and monitored often by others of my own race to integrate more.
I’ve had teachers treat me like an ape.
And on more than one occasion I’ve been put down, ignored, and silenced by a dance instructor of my own skin color in order to make “the white people” feel more comfortable.
Being silenced by someone of your own race hurts your essence, it makes you bleed in the spiritual realm.
This is going to seem like an unrelated cosmic jump here so put on your seat belt. I work online as an Aphrodite in the Bedroom and the #1 question I get is if I like white sausage. And I get this question so often (5-10x a day) and it’s not about white meat or dark meat but about whether or not the meat has rhythm, has spice (if you know what I mean). I always tell them it’s about swag.
And because there’s all this stigma that comes with sex work it might sound like the strangest analogy in the world but the same goes for the women whose dancing in the kneepads, just like I began this story sharing about my knee pad saga. At the end of the day knee pads are knee pads (if I had my way my knee pads wouldn’t be white, black, or brown they would be covered in glitter and rhinestones – I just can’t figure out how to do that in a way that it won’t scratch up the dance floor…if anyone has any ideas let me know).
However at the end of the day it’s not about the kneepads. It’s about the energy of the woman who is wearing them.