The beautiful process is when you look down over the roundness of your belly at your own thighs that are now soft and graceful, no longer taut like Flow Jo’s, and instead of dismay you say, “These are Mommy’s thighs.” You place your fingers in your own palm and notice that they remain forever elegant, and you say, “Oh my goodness, these are Mommy’s hands.” I am becoming the things I still love and cherish about my mother, a living example of a Black woman maturing. This is what I call the beautiful process. As a dancer, this is the process I hold onto when I miss the days of being superwoman, carrying a gallon of frozen water, a thirteen-inch TV, and a large Sony camcorder in a green army duffel bag to rehearsal, marching through Brooklyn with the sack on my back so I could make sure I had technology and my company dancers had cold water to drink. Who was that woman?! I ask myself. That was me when all my walking shoes were for stomping and marching from place to place. That was me when I toted my groceries, laundry, tour suitcases, and secondhand street furniture up and down four flights of stairs three and four times a day. Those were my pre-Toyota, pre-Subaru, pre-Nissan, pre-ranch-house-with-no-stairs-and-a-quarter-acre-of-land days. I was dancing hard and I never considered anything different for myself. I only wanted to own my own apartment in Brooklyn. To have stability for all that running around. Then came the shift. After living in New York for seventeen years, plus six years dancing and touring professionally, I wanted my home to be where I could nestle my feet into the soil, press my cheek to the bark of a tree on my land and say, “I love you.”
That’s part of what brought me here to North Carolina in 2009. This is sacred ground. My ancestors since slavery have been buried in Western North Carolina. The legacy of my bones is literally in this earth. Being here, I’ve started writing a dance-play. The working title is flight of the gnarly womin. The content is derived from my present life as I find glorious ways to dance longevity into a career that sometimes blows hard wind back into my face. I want to tell you about the bumps and bruises, but I also want you to know about the joy of today and tomorrow as my feet dance me onto this stage of active reminiscing.
Oh, these feet! Don’t get me started! Palmer’s Cocoa Butter just barely smooths my soles and heels. Crevices, crevices, crevices. Softening my dancing feet is something I never would have done twenty years ago. I used to prize the fact that my feet were like Michelin tires: durable, scabbed, split, crusted, and callused with thick nails. One of my old beaus often said, “Your feet are pretty, but your toes gotta go.” In my family, these toes are legendary. They are Mommy’s toes with a slight big-toe bunion and curve. These toes curl downward, desiring the feel of soil, the earth. They were not at all comfortable when I forced them into T-straps or pointe shoes. These feet have been solid enough to endure centuries of barefoot dancing.
Maybe my hard-won dancer’s feet are the precursor to how my body now feels. The rest of me is just catching up to the feet that have known the weight of time and perseverance in dance. From the beginning of my career, I promised to love dance no matter how much it toyed with loving me back. My feet hold up and hold on. I want my body to do the same. I want to be dancing for the rest of my life. As one of my students said when I asked what dancing meant to her, dancing means the world to me. We can always serve Dance with a capital D, but as I mature I feel my dancing is something I witness, like watching a beautiful ship sail out to sea as I wave goodbye from the water’s edge. It is time to embrace loving as a move to the reality of a new embodied place.
Except for occasional dressing room chatter about scar tissue, hot flashes, and arthritis, losing dancing is a story no one prepares us to face. Physical and biological change is a personal reality. As someone who defines life by my ability to move rigorously and physically in the world, I feel it is no one’s business but mine. It is difficult to describe or explain what the changes feel like. Still, the poetry inside me dances even as I feel shy, embarrassed, or uncertain about what it looks like over time. I want to share this poetry with you. The poetry in me knows better than my ego how to love and appreciate the grace in other people, especially dancing women. Our longevity keeps us here, viable and visible. We have work to do and love.
Teaching and being around young people keeps me feeling youthful. I love being around their infectious energy and spirit. I doubt they know that the gift of their youth is also a gift to women like me. By younger, I mean ages five to forty-five years. Sometimes you listen to us, and sometimes you do not. It does not matter. You’ll all have the opportunity to know a version of my story if you are so blessed.
They say, “good Black don’t crack,” but it sure does creak. At fifty-eight, my knees, neck, thumb, wrist, ankles, bunions, back, and hips form a moment-to-moment orchestra of clicks and grinds. After forty minutes spent sitting and writing, I have the achy oos and ahs. Am I the only one who can hear this? I know I’m the only one who’s feeling this particular set of sensations, stiffness, and pains. Nonetheless, I don’t want to be in any other body or in any other time. I know pain and injury too intimately, but I keep a version of my dance-based exercises and practices going. Sometimes my joints ask me to pause, linger, and give them a chance to catch up to my spirit. My spirit, yes, my spirit gets stronger, more knowledgeable, more demanding, compassionate, and free. Yes, freedom is something to look forward to with age.
Mobility is freedom. I look down at my slender feet, like Daddy’s. Oh my, this is the beautiful process. I keep a part of him here with me in the curve of my arch that is just there, even when I don’t point my foot. Walking is pleasure. Toes like Mom’s, feet like Dad’s, and ankles, well, now they swell like Gran’s. I used to sit on the floor at her feet and wonder, Do they hurt? I would rub her ankles to soothe them as my husband does to me now. Now, I still dance, but I have some time to rest. I never used to need rest. I just slept good and hard when I needed it. When I could.
Touring was one of the most magnificent parts of being in a professional dance company. But sleep and rest were always in short supply. With five minutes here, twenty minutes there, I could sink into any hotel bed, fiberglass airport bench, cold marble airport floor, tour bus seat, find any creative rest position, anything to comfort my muscles and bones. I napped in dark, backstage corners on cold, dusty floors. I dozed under warm dressing room lights between tech rehearsals, dinner breaks, and shows. Any surface could cradle my weary dancer’s body enough to get me to the next thing. But oh, the damage it did. My body stood up to it for quite a while. I was resilient. I bounced back, able to keep going through a necessary cycle. But now I wear the road on each individual vertebrae and on my shoulders. My body needs constant attention, warm, not hot, baths with apple cider vinegar and arnica oil, occasional physical therapy, visits to the acupuncturist. Now my life is all about being kind to myself. It’s about saying thank you and I love you to this body and the spirit that gifted me the flight of dancing.
When I danced with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, I remember dancing in section three of Arnie Zane’s “Freedom of Information.” Dressed in black and wearing jazz shoes, I soared across the back of the stage in successional split leaps. That was one of my shining moments. I couldn’t get enough! The bigger the stage, the better. Northrop Auditorium, oh my! Michael Jordan’s had nothing on me. I swear it. Those moments live in my visceral memory and my vertebrae. I remember what it feels like to hang in the air like an eagle. I don’t really need to be there now, my priorities have changed, but the memory of flight vibrates through even my most subtle dancing gesture and I’m hoping I never forget.
Feeling physical change is internal and it is real. Acknowledging and nurturing my body with movement at this real age is a true part of the beautiful process. Nonetheless, I cannot admit to aging gracefully. I’m stubborn, but it’s not what you think. I am not anxious to hold on to what was. I fight to be able to rejoice in what is. I am proud to be growing old(er) and owning the privilege of age, not masking it. I’m not interested in substituting other words for “old” or “older.” My kneecaps are literally fifty-eight years old. I can’t shop at Forever 21 to dress up the stiffness and creaking. Even as I feel honored to mature, sometimes I still try to do what society encourages women to do, always look and feel young. My resistance is enjoying my curves and how my weight settles into new places on my body.
On this journey, I continue to find so many beautiful openings in my life. Teaching, playing musical instruments, writing, studying, and attending occasional dance classes fulfill me. I still perform, but I create work around my joy and my body’s new and beautiful wisdom. Nothing is missing or lacking. Well, maybe an understanding from others about what this stage of life is like. You need to understand that the beautiful process is about embracing the future and change. Let’s talk about menopause. Menopause, well, it’s no joke. Did anyone tell you it comes with temporary memory loss and shortness of breath for no reason? Of course, you still must keep up with breast self-examinations and regular GYN appointments, all while the medical profession is no longer interested in you because you are no longer fertile. They think we are now operating from a biological, emotional, and spiritual deficit. This needs to change. As maturing women living out various truths, we can retrain the world to see and understand us as desirable contributors, innovators, and producers. Maybe it is this very effort to re-choreograph our expanding bodies and spirits into a society that brings about days of exhaustion. The drop in energy catches us by surprise because we are accustomed to being unlimited. Not too long ago, I felt jet lag simply walking from the kitchen to the living room. But don’t worry: The perimenopause and menopausal energy crisis flips at a certain point. Most women don’t even understand what perimenopause is or know when it is happening to them. You will regain confidence and a wellspring of unstoppable energy that leaves people wondering, How is she doing all these things? It is the beautiful process through which we stay present.
I try to refrain from referring to myself in the past tense, but looking back, I remember choreographing and performing a solo in which I recited the Song of Solomon, then played the flute. The movement, words, and music just tumbled out of me. Now I struggle to remember names. I refer to everyone as my dear. No worries. There is also the gift of menopausal sensitivity, where you feel the wind blow between the hairs on your arm, the heat of your breath as it leaves your nostrils. You begin to know your true self. I am a dragon. I am a swan sailing through cool waters. I am a dragon and a swan at the same time. I am graceful and angry. I am cunning, delicate, brave, and mean when I have to be. Do you want to test me? If younger women were aware of this cycle ahead of time, they may have something to look forward to. The beautiful process comes with wisdom, creativity, and energy to accomplish what you envision. The beautiful process is an assurance that only you need to trust.
I usually know what I am talking about and why, but people do like to test me. Maybe it is my head of gray hair. I have to teach people that the gray symbolizes confidence and experience. As for my experience, I see my head of hair as electrifying. A friend once told me that each hair on my head is like a tiny antenna spindling toward heaven, sending and receiving messages. I feel it! This hair has been tested by the storm of longevity and springs forth in a gorgeous afro. It has proven itself to stand and dance the test of time along with me. Now gray hair is even trending. Imagine that!
So here I am, head to toe, testifying and doing the dance of the beautiful process. I’m in it and still dancing my truth as best I can. Maybe that’s just my style. I dance in the cooling shadow of Mary Hinkson and Sage Cowles. I dance under the willow tree of Abby Lincoln and Blondell Cummings, who asked me, You got kids, Andrea? Freeze some eggs, freeze some eggs. All along this journey, I am dancing lessons taught by Pearl Primus, Jeni Legon, Algia Mae Hinton, Norma Miller, and many others. They let me know I can be artistic, athletic, intellectual, sassy, multitalented, complex, and on the beat. Or I can be Jill-Scott-silent if I want to be. Growing is healing. Healing is growing. I’ve been given the blessing of time to do both. I wish that your feet should be so blessed as to step into and love the dance of time in your own way and in your own style, too.
