Dance!

"If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving" (D & C 136:28).

"Attempt to be creative for the joy it brings...Select something like music, dance, sculpture, or poetry. Being creative will help you enjoy life. It engenders a spirit of gratitude. It develops latent talent, sharpens your capacity to reason, to act, and to find purpose in life. It dispels loneliness and heartache. It gives a renewal, a spark of enthusiasm, and zest for life." (Richard G. Scott, “Finding Joy in Life,” Ensign, May 1996, 24)

“The great principle of happiness consists in having a body” (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 181).

“It is expedient that all things be done unto [God’s] glory” (D & C 78:8).

As you all know, I love ballroom dance. I think there is something very satisfying about trying to use the body Heavenly Father gave me to create beauiful movement. And I think ballroom dance is so beautiful. I really do believe that dance can be a way of glorifying God, of praising Him.

I also love how ballroom dance requires two people, a man and a woman, to work together. There are so many parallels to ballroom dance and relationships. These parallels often come up in my classes as the teachers try to illustrate dance principles or techniques. Here are just a few, some of which have come up in class, and some of which I have come up with:

1. While you should always maintain connection with your partner at certain connection points, you also need to stay out of your partner's space in some areas. If you start leaning into that space, the balance is thrown off and you don't look good.
2. In dance, the man is a gentleman and the woman is a lady.
3. The gentleman should lead, but that does not mean that he should push or pull the lady around. In fact, if he did, the result would be terribly ugly. The lady can, and must, move on her own in order for the partnership to be smooth and beautiful. The man leads by subtle movements, and the lady should be attentive to those movements.
4. You have to communicate with your partner. Your partner often doesn't realize that what he is doing is making it harder for you to do what you need to do, so you have to tell him. But you also have to tell him in a tactful, courteous way that is not accusatory, but explanatory. If you tell him in an accusatory way, he will be even less inclined to change to help you out.
5. Sometimes you just need to get out of your partner's way.
6. If you try to dance on your own, it doesn't work. You have to listen to what your partner is telling you through his movements, and adapt to those movements as much as you can.
7. You have to loosen up, to relax. If you are too tense or uptight, it's not going to be a pretty picture.
8. Ballroom dance takes a lot of practice and patience. You are not going to achieve a sense of smooth synergy with your partner right away. This is especially true when you are learning a new, more difficult routine together. But the more practice you have with a partner, the easier it is to maintain synergy with him even in the face of the challenge of learning difficult figures.

Ballroom dance has brought so much joy to my life in the last two years. Just as Elder Scott said it would, it has brought into my life gratitude, friendship, renewal, and enthusiasm. These results haven't always been immediate--sometimes I have gotten extremely frustrated and discouraged. Sometimes I have lost the vision of why I dance, and have gotten bogged down in the stress of not feeling good enough, not getting high enough scores, and not performing to the level that I wish I could. But during those times, I have had to remind myself why I dance. It's not to be better than the other girls in my class or to win first place in any competition.

I dance because it's fun and challenging. It's rewarding to learn how to do something I couldn't do before. It's exciting to see something beautiful, and then improve in my ability to create that beauty myself. It's refreshing to step away from my studies and just dance to beautiful music, to just enjoy using the body Heavenly Father gave me. I think that if everyone in the world took an hour a day to dance to inspiring music, the world would be a much better place!

P.S. I got this picture from http://dancesportinfo.net/DisplayGallery.aspx?eventId=4132. It is of Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova, the #1 standard couple in the US. I got to see them last March at DanceSport, and they were amazing.