Too Hip.

“You’ll need to come off the floor, you’re moving your hips too much...”

I was dumbstruck, I was heartbroken and embarrassed, I wanted to run and sob from feeling so hurt and misunderstood.

I was 17. At a party. With dancing. An RnB tune sparked through the speakers, and jolted me into a groove.

Music has always moved me. It is at times a force too strong for me to fight, as if holding a power that dictates how my body must move in response to enticing rhythms. It can evoke the strongest of emotion which I am unable to hide on my face. It sets waves of rolling actions that want to hit the accent of the percussive drums. This force has got me into a lot of trouble, aside from the introductory story I will shortly explain, I have to date, run two sets of red lights because I was so engrossed in a song. Not OK.

So when a favorite track came on, with hints of Latino magic, my hips had no option but to move.

I was quite shy as a teenager, I found it difficult to fit in and socialise in groups, at times I still do. Making small talk, drinking and eating junk was never the lure of a party... I was there to dance. Once dancing I no longer cared that I came without a date, didn’t have many people to talk to, about the bitchy comments said behind my back or the overwhelming a large group of people comes with. I escaped into my own world of happy, of carefree, of fun and movement. I still giggle that with all my confidence issues back then, I had no problem dancing alone in a corner at someone’s wedding when no one else seemed to want to dance.

And so I was, dancing away, liberated and full of joy, when I had a tap on my shoulder. “We need to talk.” My heart sank, the tone of the hosts voice clearly indicated I had transgressed, I just had no idea how.

The parties I attended as a teenager were probably not your usually carefree gatherings. They were strictly monitored with chaperones to make sure us youth behaved. I grew up in a religious community, with very black and white ideas of morality and right and wrong. I in no way write to condemn the care that was put in to protecting values held dear, or wanting safe outcomes. But I also acknowledge that there were many occasions where innocent self expression was stifled and judged harshly.

I had been watched by the supervises, and my swaying hips were deemed to be indecent, sexually suggestive and completely inappropriate. I needed to come off the dance floor and behave myself. To be labelled with such severity when I was yet to even have my first kiss was brutal. But what hurt more, was my escape, my movement, my simple expression of rhythm and music was smothered with so much bias and dirt, misinterpreted by people completely disconnected from what it means to let go in dance.

The experience has clearly made an impression on me, thus making its way to my blog. And coming to the end of this memory, I sit here wondering what it is that I want from sharing it.

Put simply, not much. But maybe hoping the stigma that is often given to certain ways of moving and expressing the human body starts to shift. We are all human, we all have a body, it can move in marvelous ways. We can fall into a character, an emotion, an expression. And that’s OK. It isn’t improper. It just is. Raw, beautiful, sensual, strange, healing, human. And just because we don’t understand or connect with the shapes another body is creating, let’s at least hold back some judgment about who they are or should be. Instead, perhaps start to explore your own body’s groove.

Ps. Next time an RnB tune comes on, just you try to contain those hips. I don’t think you’ll manage!