nia.
Early one Sunday morning, I saw my friend Elena leave her apartment in flowy pants to head to an alternative dance class called Nia. When she explained what Nia is, she immediately sparked a curiosity. Nia is a dance class that is a mix of aerobics, dance, healing, and spirituality. From the outside, it would look like a group of women in yoga outfits trying to find their chi, but it was more than that.
I walked into the bright studio the next week with Elena with the Sunday sun shining in every window and reflecting on the yellow walls, brightening up the space. Women clad in bright, flowing outfits smiled at the newcomers as they stretched on the wooden dance floor. I was completely nervous that I would make a fool of myself, because if anybody knows me, coordination is not my forte, but despite my lack of skill, I do like to dance so I decided to attack my inhibitions and take a place on the floor.
During the hour of the class, I felt that every aspect of me benefited. I did not realize that I had so much tension in my body until I shook it out of my body and felt instantly more relaxed. I did manage to attack my inhibitions even with the mirror in front of me. When the teacher told us to shake our hips to Mustang Sally, I shook the best I could, when she prescribed specific dance moves to the empowering music, I followed her, not quite with ease, but I managed and tried to put my own shakes and twists when I thought I had the moves down. When the soothing music came on in the end, I relaxed and stretched my inflexible thigh muscles the farthest they could go. I cleared my mind, my body, exercised, gained confidence, worked on finding the centre of my body and felt good as a woman during the class. I am ready for next Sunday to clad myself in gaucho pants, a bright headband, and a focused mind and body.
dance empowerment.
Friday night, after a full day of school, volunteering, rain and dinner, we walked over to the Baxter theatre to see the Cape Town Dance Festival. The festival was advertised as a dance show full of different types of dance from modern to ballet to meringue. The show was not just a dance recital or even just a dance show, it was a political, social commentary that transcended “art for art’s sake.”
The show began with a video screen of a news broadcast, spitting out statistics of rape and domestic violence in South Africa, with are very high statistics. A very intense and moving modern dance followed. It was effective in sending a message because it was not too explicit or graphically about rape, but the choreography and attitude of the dancers made their point very clear.
Another dance that was very powerful was about Long St., which is the street in Cape Town comparable to Adams Morgan of Washington D.C., or Boylston St. in Boston, completely lined with bars and young people at night. The dance was accompanied with a speaker, who told a story about girls on Long St, which involved, fun and dancing, but also violence and drugs. Not only did the dancers and speaker make some other important points about the problems and dangers of South Africa, but the dancers were almost inhuman. The way they moved their bodies with such precision and synchrony was hectic, as a South African might put it.
Along with the pieces with messages, there were also dances purely for fun and show: including a group of curvy women with huge smiles dancing a meringue type dance, and a group of young women and men in all black dancing a slinky routine to an Edith Piaf song.
Overall, I thought the show was very empowering to women. News casters reading off statistics to not show the true nature of the dangers that women face in Cape Town. Dance is a way for women not only to be empowered, but to use art to comment on and inform others of the terrible social situations that will not get into some people’s minds in other ways but to see it through art.
