All About African Dance

I am all about african dance after my second week of African Repertory: Music & Dance class. After last week, I felt like I was going to keel over and had to stop at the academic center with friends for some water on our walk home. We ingested a bunch of dust from bending over and dancing around in a circle, the beats we played on this bell with a stick were too complicated to follow and on top of that, my hips hurt so badly from jutting them back and forth, trying desperately to imitate the teaching assistant in the middle. She walked around as we danced, randomly highlighting those students who seemed to really "get it." There was one white girl from our group who was called into the middle to show off her skills. The rest were African students. And so the first week ended quite sadly...I left feeling like a stereotypical white girl with no sense of rhythm and everybody knew it. 

I practiced the past week in our courtyard and even one night at a local club, where some Ghanaian guy taught me to salsa. Flash forward to today...The drummers did their thing, same as last week, and I felt a little more confident with the moves. I looked around at everyone else in the group. Some were straining to keep up with the pace of the circle and not looking so great. Those who cared the least were actually dancing the best. I kicked off my shoes and danced barefoot like some of the other students and I just decided not to give a sh*t. I threw my head back, poked my butt out and got down with my bad self. The teaching assistant pulled me into the inner circle.