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Amazing

(Source: 500daysofgeekery, via cuntenvy)

emilygould:

eatingstuffinsouthasia:

When I was a kid I used to always demand that my mom sign me up for dance and then I’d always immediately hate it and demand she let me quit, which sometimes she did, but whenever she didn’t it just resulted in months of dragging me to class and paying for shiny Lycra outfits so that I could barely fumble my way through the recital, of course in the back row. (I also played right field in softball.) This kind of continued into my senior year of college when I would sometimes spend cold Maine evenings enjoying [something that is perfectly legal now in WA and CO] and then eating English muffins with like half a stick of butter on each one and watching Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew and just being completely mesmerized and thinking about how I needed to dedicate my life to dance—unlike all my earlier performances this time I’d be great, I was sure of it.

You guys, I’d serve the world better by dedicating my life to eating English muffins. That year I took a Bollywood dance class because at my college you had to take two gym classes before they would give you a degree in political science. The reasoning behind that requirement is almost as mystifying to me as why I genuinely believed that I would be really great at Bollywood dance just because I’d been to India before. I was not and at the end of the class it was just like back in my early days of dance—running around, flailing about, hopefully in vaguely the same direction as other, more talented people, my experience eating authentic curries notwithstanding.

I didn’t forget about these failures when I started doing dance class here in Sri Lanka, I just once again thought that this time they didn’t apply. Since college I have acquired a lot of experience freestyle dancing all over the place—hipster clubs in DC, swanky clubs in Delhi, rural villages in The Gambia, closed bars in Seattle, the American Red Cross, everybody’s houses, everybody’s cars—and I thought that now I was a pretty fly dancer. But first of all, I’m probably not. And second of all, I should have known from my unsuccessful attempts to watch Beyoncé’s videos and copy her moves that this is all still just some fumbling and flailing—when confronted with real choreography I am completely undone and want to throw a temper tantrum, just like in my early ballet days.

I was working as a bartender before I came to Sri Lanka and that job was so hard and mentally taxing and as I was about to leave someone I know said, “Oh restaurant work is great if you want to just have fun and not use your brain,” and I was like WHAT?! Office work is far better for that cause all you have to do is write enough emails to keep your head above water and then you can watch Hulu the rest of the day. Bartending was having to know what thirty different kinds of beer taste like and how they were made and where they are from and what they taste like in relation to every other beer ever made that some beer nerd has tried and rated online and then doing that while running around on slippery hardwood floors for eight hours in an outfit that is uncomfortable enough that it’s cute enough to get tips and then keeping all these beers and which beer nerds wanted them and when you lasted talked to them all in your head. And also not crying when people are mean. That is not mindless work for me.

I’m telling you this to say that I now have this same level of appreciation for the intellect of the Rockettes. Right foot forward, left foot forward, right foot forward, right foot back: that is like literally all there is to this one step and I did not ever get it down. Even the few moves I actually knew would completely fall apart as soon as I let any thoughts float through my head that were not The Drum Beat and My Arms and Legs. Class was in the afternoon when it is real hot in Sri Lanka so I spent four hours a week being really bad at something, getting yelled at in Sinhala for being really bad, and sweating the whole time. I wanted to quit every day and every week it got worse not better. But even though my mom wasn’t making me stick with it I still did. Know why?

Because I wanted to wear the outfits and the makeup and take lots of pictures and post them on Facebook and Instagram and get lots of attention. That’s it, that’s the only reason, nothing about perseverance or hard work or anything like that, just a weird kind of vanity. During the dance I of course did a really bad job and messed up a lot and couldn’t stop laughing, but I the pictures got a lot of “likes.” These costumes were way better than the shiny, sequined Lycra of my youth.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

lol literally been there done that worn those costumes. heyyyyyy ISLE

whatever, it was really fucking fun. (it was also really fucking hot!!)