Little Thai Dancer

I’ve been reading “Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World” by Rita Golden Gelman. I’m 20% (thanks Kindle) through the book so far, and though barely beginning, it’s already inspired the travel bug in me that never completely lays dormant. It’s been speaking to the part of me that craves immersion, that appreciates getting to know a culture and really participate within it.

I had a taster of this in Thailand. I wanted to see what their traditional dance was like, and so took a (very) short course in Thai Classical Dance. The teacher was a beautiful Thai woman, tiny in stature (if you’re smaller than my 5’4”, that’s saying something!) and very gentle. I could see the teacher in her coming out when she’d give me corrections, articulate and precise, but I think she forgave many of my foreigner mistakes. I almost wished she didn’t.

I remember my arms, wrists, and even fingers hurting – so much flexibility is required in different parts of the body to what I’m used to. My usual contemporary style felt clunky and abrasive, and there were several points during the class where I longed to break out of the repetitive and minute movement into something large and full bodied.

But I found a great interest in this resistance. It was a clarification of what I enjoy doing, but also demonstrated the differences between dance styles, even cultures. I think the teacher was amazed at how quickly I could pick everything up, but given time, I would have like to have developed this articulation… calmed my Westernised brain down enough to be able to move with grace and with minute suggestion, as she did.

What would it be like to exist in that framework for a longer period of time? Would I find it interesting, or would it send me mad? I think it’s one thing to live in a culture, soak up the sameness and differences in the framework of living, but its another thing altogether to engage in the activity that you love in a different culture… would you still love it? What would it take for me to not feel like a Westerner dancing this beautiful dance? Would they ever let me perform, or do I just look too different?

These thoughts of immersion, though I talk of a culture far more different from my own, do remain applicable when I think of this English culture. True, London is a mix of cultures, a foray into a different mix of multiculturalism I’m enjoying embracing. I wonder if there is more I can do to discover the plethora of styles present here, whether there’s any stereotypically English.

I’ve been enjoying getting into the dance scene in London, discovering the sameness and difference. I’m just starting to feel like I can immerse myself – far less of a gung-ho experience than I’d like, but a learning curve. These stories, these movies that we’re told, it’s easy to forget that often these things have developed over a matter or months or years – I wish it’d come with a warning label:

WARNING: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE MUCH FARTHER THAN THEY APPEAR