Dancing to the beat of my own drum
Words by Mariana Cid De Leon Ovalle
There’s a grace that I always admired in ballerinas. As a child, I watched them with wide eyes as they flowed across the stage, long legs stretched out as they jeté across the stage.
I used to think the more time I spent at rehearsals, the more I could become like them. I began ballet in elementary school, and with a lot of dedication and discipline, I became a solid ballerina, but it was still not what I pictured for myself. I wanted to look the same as them but I never reached the levels of grace I imagined. But there was something that separated me from reaching those levels and it took me 20 years to figure it out.
Looking back on that time in my life I can now say with confidence that I was killing it. I performed at the Texas Folklife Festival! (Did I mention I trained as a Folklorico dancer too?) I also performed in The Nutcracker at the Lila Cockrell Theatre several years in a row, and each time felt just as surreal as the next. I got to spend some of the most formative years of my life watching the art of dance, taking part in it, growing up in it, being shaped by it, and being healed by it.
They say that when you reach your 30’s you start to reconnect with what you used to like as a kid, it’s usually the things that you left behind when the stereotypical teenage concerns flood your mind.
For me, that was dance. I’d left it behind once I reached high school age, so it was only natural that once I hit my 30s, I started to feel the itch that only dance could scratch.
Now, I’m a member of a local organization of badass people who cultivate community. The Diva Dance Company of San Antonio is a body-neutral, queer-inclusive, safe space for people looking to enjoy community while expressing themselves through dance.
It took me two decades, but with the help of the Diva Dance community, I have learned that the way I interact with dance is what makes it special. It’s not about fulfilling a specific formula, not for me anyway. Dance was never meant to shape me into the perfect, graceful, ballerina. Because I was never meant to be that way. That didn’t mean it wasn’t meant to teach me something, but that I still had much to learn from it. That remains true to this day.
Dancing at Diva Dance San Antonio, with the amazing coaches, ambassadors, and fellow studio members is an experience that taught me to let go of my negative self-talk because most times that’s what holds me back the most. It’s taught me to look at my body as the brush and the dance floor as the canvas. It’s taught me that I will always perform a dance in my own unique way.
In painting, you have to learn to hold your brush and to be mindful of the pressure you put on it. You’re reminded that sometimes the paint, the water, the brush, the canvas, and the curve of your hand, all have different ideas. And that sometimes those ideas don’t align with what’s in your mind. You’re taught to accept that and to embrace it. To lean into it. To expect it, and to wield it.
Dancing is much the same. It’s only when you get out of your head and stop worrying about what others think, it’s only when you lean into your own unique flavor, that the dance becomes something more.
That’s when I feel my ancestors. It’s when I feel alive.