Dancing and Sketching

Modern Dance Class Notes & Sketches 1980, uploaded to my Tigrikorn Flickr site

It was on a whim that my sister Alicia and I registered to take Modern Dancing as one of our General Education courses together. It was my Freshman year at Southern Illinois University while Alicia was finishing her undergrad studies there at the same time. I saw it as one of those great opportunities that Alicia always had a way of leveraging for maximum benefit.

"Since I still have a couple Gen. Eds to get out of the way, we should take them together. When will we get the chance to be in the same college courses? It will be fun!"

I couldn't agree more. We had always been close, Alicia and I. Even though she was a few years older, my dad would often call us "the twins" because of our special affinity for one another among all six of us kids, especially when I got to be old enough to tag along on my older (and only) sister's adventures.

Still, physical movement had never been my forte. I was clumsy at group sports and could never manage on the dance floor. Lots of my high school friends would go to the local disco club, Coo Coos, but I told my self it was too "worldly" and chose to busy myself with my church youth group activites. Dancing was beneath my more spiritual aspirations.

But a college Phys. Ed, General Studies course made it respectable. And, Modern Dancing as a course of study was more rigorous than I anticipated. We studied and were required to perform classical ballet positions, warm-ups and exercises. The main difference was that the classic dance "vocabulary" of movement, and rhythms could be applied more freely in a variety of expressive styles. There was a kind of athleticism to the discipline that I liked. The course broke dancing down into an academic format with a structure my mind could apprehend.

I applied my self diligently to practice and train. At first, after an lengthy extra practice session in Furr Auditorium where our class was held, I was very pleased with my progress. Unfortunately I did not understand the danger of over-training (and not stretching afterwards). The next day when I woke up to go to class, every fiber of my leg muscles were seized with aching soreness. I don't know how I made it through the day.

But over all, Alicia and I had a lot of fun. We'd team up if we needed partners, share comments during class and laugh at our little in-jokes and observations. Some of our classmates at first thought I was her boyfriend. And I made sketches of our exercises in a journal that we were required to keep for the class (see scan of one of that journal's pages above). This impressed my instructor who gave me an "A" for my illustrated notations.

Our final exam was to perform a choreography which we each created for ourselves. I was so wrapped up in my own endeavors for the final that I can't remember anyone else's. But I got a top grade for the course.

It gave me more confidence in my own movement on the dance floor afterwards. I am still not a great dancer but I feel like I can hold my own and enjoy myself. And the feelings of nostalgia I get when I remember special sibling bond my sister and I shared as we were both on the verge of leaving our childhood behind, gives me a greater connection and perspective within the larger scope of the Dance of Life.

Sketches from Modern Dance class. © O. Douglas Jennings. All rights reserved.