Stage Fright

I did something really dumb in bellydance class Monday night. We were doing a chorus…two people go in a duet, and the rest of the class is in a semi-circle behind them. The duet does their thing, all improvised, and then they go to the end of the semicircle and the next two people in line start their duet. While you stand in the semi-circle you also have to do a little step-in-place to keep time in the music.

I am way out of my league in this class. I’ve been in classes under my ability for far too long, and so now that I’m in one that is a little closer to what my ability should be after four years of dancing, I feel completely in over my head. I’ve fooled myself into thinking that I was a good dancer because I’d mastered the beginning moves, but now that I’m doing harder stuff…well, it’s just really hard. Last night we were doing all this crazy stuff, like trying to undulate your lower body while shimmying your lower body and if you don’t do tribal dance that made no sense at all but trust me, my darlings. It was very difficult and I had a really unattractive scowl on my face the entire time we were practicing.

Our teacher, Sharon, said we were going to do a chorus after that and I immediately froze up. I had actual stage fright, there in a classroom at a community center, with no audience except the other women in my class. Other women who are lovely and talented and supportive in every way, other women who love to dance and are always complimentary to one another. Not, in short, people to be afraid of. I was, though. I tried to maneuver myself in the circle so that I wouldn’t have to lead right off (you can tell who’ll you’ll be in the duet with and who will lead just by counting. Kind of like third-grade PE class). When it was almost time to go up, I asked poor Sharon if she would lead me in a duet. “No!” she said, smiling at me, trying to encourage me. “You can do it! You lead!” I was cringing at this point, about to pee with nervousness. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to get up there and dance in front of my class, to have to think up what moves to do and execute them properly, in time to the music. I couldn’t hear the beat of the music very well either, which was also stupid because, you know, it was ALL DRUMS. Lots of beats from which to choose, you know? In drum music?

I had the girl I was dueting with lead first, and I followed her okay. I was hoping she’d just dance off to the end of the line and I wouldn’t have to lead, but she didn’t, she did as she was supposed to, she danced around me until I was in front. I tried a move (a basic Egyptian, for those of you playing along at home) and couldn’t get it on the right beat. I tried again. People were smiling and nodding, encouraging me to go on. So what did I do?

I full on stopped dancing, put my arms down and said in a shrill, terrified whinny: “I can’t do this! I’m too nervous!”

My poor duet partner, bless her heart, just kept smiling and didn’t freak out. Sharon said “Do what you know! Ghawazi!” and smiled at me some more, telling me I could do it. I was about to cry. I did a ghawazi and some other move and then some other move and then I just hip bumped out of the center, wishing a big hole would swallow me up.

Why this is, I can’t tell you. It wasn’t a performance. There was no audience. It’s no secret that it’s my first time in this class level. The other people in the class are nothing if not nuturing and supportive. And also, hello, it was maybe a sixty-second section of the chorus. I followed fine, I just couldn’t lead. So why the acute shame? How is it that I’ve barely held off from emailing Sharon to tell her I don’t , in fact, want to perform at Trolloween, that I can’t do it, that I can’t dance well enough? This is all such small potatoes, it’s ridiculous. And I know that I’ll never improve if I don’t practice, and that I should perform, and I’m going to do all that. I know what the right thing to do it, and I am also aware that this really is not the end of the world. Yet here I sit, beating myself up over it, reliving every bit of it. I thought I was good at something, I thought I was better than I am. I have seldom been more embarrassed.


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