No sane man will dance

Dancing occupies so much of my free time, it's hard to really calculate. Between organizing, emailing, driving, dancing, workshops, teaching, choreographing, not to mention the money... it's just inconceivable how much energy I put into dance.

I started dancing when I was six. I loved Mary Poppins, and my favorite part was the dance number Step-In-Time. I watched Bert and the other 'sweeps soft-shoeing up on the roof, and I knew I wanted to do that. I've read whenever Shirley Temple came out with a new movie, enrollment in tap classes skyrocketed. It was kinda like that for me. I saw that and decided "yeah, I want to do that." What can I say, I was a weird kid.

I used to do shows in the living room on a piece of particle board. At Thanksgiving I would charge a penny, hand out tickets, set the stage, get everyone seated, and put on a show. It didn't sound like much, but I thought I was kickin' ass! My grandmother used to tap a bit. At one of my "shows" she taught me how to do a shuffle, and maybe a couple other moves. Then for my birthday she bought me lessons at Swan Ballet Dance Schools. It was weird, being the only boy. I was so shy, and I didn't get over my shyness until about halfway through high school. It's hard being a boy and taking dance lessons. It's just not something you can tell your 3rd grade friends. Barely any of my friends knew about it until high school. It was a weird double life. But I couldn't stop. I loved it too much.

I immediately excelled at tap. I was moved into the advanced class when I was 11 or so, and I was in class with a bunch of high school girls who thought I was adorable. Everything about tap just made sense to me. There was nothing the teacher could throw down that I couldn't pick up. I danced all the time, in department stores, grocery stores, in the kitchen at home, under my desk at school, even now at work in the kitchen or by my computer.

If I had wanted to, I could have gone professional. I'm sure of that. If I had had the initiative, I could have taken more classes, switched to a better school, taken theater lessons, auditioned for shows, I really could have done it. I never practiced, but I'd be willing to bet I'm one of the better tap dancers in the state. If I had wanted to, I could have made a career out of it. But I didn't want to. And I don't. I never wanted to make it about money. I love it too much to sell it. I wouldn't have been happy struggling as a performer. I'd rather do it in the comfort of my own free time. Just for me.

High school was a big coming-out for me. I was finally secure enough to admit to people that I took dance classes. Hell, I even told people I took ballet. I feel like I experienced a shadow of the courage it must take some people to come out about being gay. (In fact, I'm pretty sure there were some people who thought I must be gay.) I took up swing dancing, I tapped in the school musical, I really started to make my dancing public. It only took me the better part of a decade!

When I got to college, suddenly I had the opportunity to teach and choreograph with UDC, an then Wilson. I enjoy teaching, and choreography is OK, but nothing compares with the dancing itself. The best part of my job at Wilson is the 15 minutes after class, when all the kids leave, when I can just jam. Being able to do that makes me happy on even the worst days. There were times, around when I broke up with Mary, that that was the only happy part of my week.

Tap dancing makes me happy like almost nothing else can. Some days I'm just so in the groove, everything I do sounds good. Even swing can't match it. I still feel self-conscious doing swing sometimes, even though I know I'm pretty good at that. (Probably the best in town, actually.) But tap dancing, I have no reservations, I can just unhook my brain and dance! If you don't have a creative outlet like that, you can't understand how it feels. It makes me feel so good about myself. Sometimes I feel a glimmer of that when I swing dance. Once or twice I played a few notes on my clarinet that made me feel like that. But nothing will ever match the high I get from tap dancing.