Stop.
I grab my jacket and head out into the night.
The Solis School of Dance looks different in darkness.
Without the lights, without the music, without the constant stream of students and parents and responsibilities, it transforms into something quieter and more intimate. The hardwood floors gleam faintly in the moonlight filtering through the windows, and the mirrors become silver portals to some shadowed alternate world.
I don’t turn on the overhead lights. Instead, I move to the old stereo in the corner—the one I keep for emergencies when the Bluetooth speaker decides to stage a rebellion—and flip through the stack of CDs I’ve been meaning to donate for years.
My fingers pause on a worn case. The Very Best of Soul Classics.
Dad’s favorite.
I don’t remember him, not really. Just fragments—warm hands lifting me, deep laughter that rumbled like thunder, a voice humming melodies that my three-year-old self couldn’t name but recognized as safe.
My mother never played this music after he died. She switched to classical, to structured rhythms and precise compositions that left no room for improvisation or emotion.
I slide the disc into the player and hit shuffle. The first notes of “At Last” fill the studio, and something inside me unclenches.
I don’t warm up. Don’t stretch or mark through positions or think about technique. I just... move. No choreography. No counts. No voice in my head cataloging every flaw, everyimperfection, every deviation from the precise form I’ve spent decades perfecting.
Just movement.
The music swells, and I let it carry me across the floor. My bare feet whisper against the hardwood. My arms float up, out, around in shapes that have no names, no technical classifications. I spin not because the choreography demands it but because spinning feels good in a way I’d forgotten existed.
Etta James croons about finally finding love, and I dance like no one is watching.
This is what I lost.
Somewhere between my first competition and my thousandth critique, between my mother’s expectations and my own relentless drive for perfection, I lost the simple joy of movement. Dancing became achievement. A means to an end that kept shifting further away no matter how hard I reached.
But here, now, alone in the dark with my father’s music and my mother’s words still echoing in my ears, I remember.
I remember being three years old and spinning in circles until I collapsed, dizzy and laughing.
I remember being seven and making up dances to the radio, not caring if my feet were in the right position.
I remember the moment when dancing stopped being play and became work—when the first judge’s score replaced the simple pleasure of moving my body through space.
Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t stop. The music shifts into something slow and aching that I don’t recognize, and mymovements change with it. Slower now. My hands trace patterns in the air that feel like like a confession, like finally exhaling after holding my breath for twenty-five years.
I am not perfect.
I will never be perfect.
And that’s okay.
The realization breaks something open inside me. All the armor I’ve been wearing, all the walls I’ve been building, all the impossible standards I’ve been using to measure my worth—they crack and crumble, leaving me raw and exposed and terrifyingly free.
I dance through the ruins.
I don’t hear the door open. Don’t hear the footsteps cross the threshold or pause at the edge of the dance floor. I’m too lost in the music, too absorbed in the cathartic release of movement without purpose.
But I feel him.
That particular awareness that’s developed over weeks of partnered practice, of bodies learning each other’s rhythms and spaces and silent communications. I feel Mal watching me before I see him, and for a single terrifying moment, I want to stop. I want to straighten up and pretend this was all carefully planned, all part of some sophisticated artistic expression.
Instead, I keep dancing.
