I've been sick with a nasty cold for over a week. I missed last Monday night's 5Rhythyms session because of it. I was registered to attend Sara's "Motion, Rhythm, and Life" workshop today, but after spending the morning helping some friends and doing very light physical work I realized that my energy tank was empty. These colds tend to linger far beyond what one expects. It was apparent that I could not and should not try to spend the next six hours dancing, so I canceled.
For the last few weeks my dance experience has been less than joyful. Mostly due to a niggling knee problem with its persistent, relatively minor yet nagging pain, I have been unable to let myself go into the dance and enjoy the simple freedom of movement of my body. When I got home today after having called someone to tell them that I would not be at the dance workshop I found myself to be deeply disappointed. It wasn't so much missing the opportunity to dance as to not be with the people. I had been so looking forward to seeing my regular dancing friends and perhaps other friends from out of town, that to miss that experience was very painful. It made me realize what a precious resource my dance community is. The dance itself is the common bond, but the community provides love and acceptance that I rarely find anywhere else.
In a sense, then, I am grateful for this miserable little virus that grips my body because it has shown me through deprivation how meaningful my dance community is to me and how deeply connected I feel to the people in it. As I've said before in these pages, there's a lot of love in that room and today I missed it more than ever.
