Why I Continue Dancing

People sometimes ask me why I continue dancing.

After more than ten years, I still do not think I have a simple answer.

I do not continue because I believe I have mastered something, or because I feel certain about where it will lead me.

In many ways, dance has brought me uncertainty. It has asked me to face limitation, doubt, loneliness, and parts of myself that I would rather avoid.

But I continue because every time I enter the process, I encounter something I could not have reached otherwise.

Through movement, I sometimes discover emotions I did not know I was carrying.

Sometimes I notice tension in my body before I understand what I am afraid of.

Sometimes I realize that what I believed I wanted was only a story I had created about myself.

The body often seems to know something before the mind does.

For me, dance is not only performance.

It is not only choreography.

It is not simply about becoming better.

It feels closer to a process of listening.

Listening to memory.

Listening to fear.

Listening to desire.

Listening to parts of myself that exist beneath language.

Perhaps that is why I continue.

Not because I already know who I am, but because I still want to meet the parts of myself I have not yet encountered.