Though my posts have been sporadic this year, I have mentioned one of my new favorite teachers more than a few times. At this point he’s STB famous for his revelatory insights (remember remove expectations from the studio and make the perfect mistake?) and in class yesterday, he rattled off another little gem that went something like this:

Allow yourself to dance. Technique is the means, not the end. Technique allows you to dance. Dancing is the point we are after.

Whew, let that sink in. It’s one of those suggestions that seems obvious when you hear it. Of course we are here to dance. This is a dance class, after all. But between the calisthenics of barre and mind-numbing-mirror-staring-nit-picking of center, somewhere that idea gets lost. We stop moving for movement’s sake and start moving for…technique? We’ve got it backwards.

The point of dancing isn’t to make your technique perfect, the point of perfecting your technique is to be able to dance. The more proper your placement, the easier your pirouettes will be. Lengthened muscle work leads to a lighter adagio. It’s not about jamming your body into positions until it breaks. It’s about practicing those technical aspects in the pursuit of dancing. Ah, dancing. It’s so pure, if you allow it to be.

Are you waiting for me to turn this into a life lesson? Some kind of “dancing through life” encouragement? Me too. It’s a concept I still need to put mindful effort into practicing. Perfectionism has ruled my life for as long as I can remember, and in fact, it’s one of the things I fancy most about myself! But perfectionism for perfectionism’s sake (say that 10 times fast) is unfulfilling. Perfectionism for the sake of living at your best, that on the other hand, is a worthy cause.

This lesson is about finding the “why”. Not a groundbreaking concept, but one worth repeating nonetheless. When our days blur into weeks and actions become routines, we tend to go about our business rather blindly, our subconscious convincing us it has a purpose. But often times, we’ve lost sight of the greater purpose as we struggle with the minutia of the micro-tasks that make up the “work” of our lives. We stay up nights worrying about decisions, making pro and con lists, considering every angle, and suddenly we’re imprisoned by the stress of details when the ultimate point is to feel free.

If it’s not glaringly obvious by my lack of clear direction in this post, I have not yet figured this one out myself. I still struggle every day with focusing on my “why” and keeping a looser hold on the perfectionist details. I have been confined far too many times by indecision. But I’d like to remind myself, and whoever else needs to hear it too, that sometimes all there is to doing it, is just doing it. Sometimes, dancing can just be dancing. Take a step back, look at the whole picture, and for a while, enjoy the slightly alarming spontaneity that comes with putting the technique in your back pocket so you can just do some damn dancing.