Day 29

Another day of unrelenting heat in Tel Aviv.

I’ve never been to Tatooine, a planet with two suns, but this is what it must feel like. Gathering for an evening class, I’m drained, as are the others. But not the teacher. It’s the insane teacher from Day 1.

Somehow our lethargy fires him up. Help us, Gaga teacher. We need your insanity. 

“Dance like your hips have a mind of their own!”

I want to do this, really, I do, but it just isn’t happening. I barely keep up as the teacher jumps from one crazy instruction to the next, energized by our lack of energy.

“Dance like your chest has a mind of its own!”

Oh, I see what he’s doing. It’s the Jedi mind trick. Distract… suggest… fool the mind into ceding control to the body.

It seems to be working. My chest goes to weird places.

“Dance like your tail has a mind of its own!”

The teacher’s inner animal is definitely Tigger… with a possessed tail. Having no control over his tail whatsoever, it leads him all over the room. Forwards, sideways, even backwards.

If I had as little control over my tail as him, my life would be a lot more interesting.

“Find your own dance.”

The class spins around me. We’ve lost our minds. Our bodies do strange things. We’ve tapped into our inner animal.

The teacher zigzags among us with wild eyes.

In him, I recognize something I admire in the dancers I love watching. They train relentlessly, but on the big day of the performance, they cede control. They allow themselves to be moved.

At this, I’m a total beginner.

Patience, young Padawan.