I had decided to perform a dance at the October Student Showcase and dedicate it to all of the good times I had with my father. He passed away on October 12th, 2013, of cancer. I wanted to honor him in a way that he would have loved. The showcase was exactly two weeks after the day he passed away so I knew that this was something I needed to brave through. I honestly didn’t know another way to mourn or to celebrate his life better than with a dance. When I introduced it, I started to cry and I explained to the audience that this is how I deal with pain or sadness. A woman got up from her seat, hurried to the center of the studio where I stood, and hugged me. She said that she had lost her mother recently and she understood what I was going through. Even though this was extremely personal for me to do and even though I cried in front of complete strangers who had never set foot in the studio until that night, I felt that it was important for me to be vulnerable in front of others to show that it’s okay to feel and dance and cry to let the emotions show through the body.
This was a great reminder of why I opened the studio. I wanted it to be a place where people, men and women, could let go, have fun, and experience releases if they needed to.