Interviewer: How would you describe yourself?

Me: Verbally, but I’ve also prepared a dance.

Leave it to the internet, with its plethora of memes and assorted posts.

To look at me, and my challenged coordination, you wouldn’t necessarily see someone who has taken dance classes. I am far from a gamine, graceful ballerina.

Yet, throughout my life, I have taken a few dance classes and I have learned about the importance of dance prep. And this dance prep has taught me about another kind of prep: using your words. A big part of knowing, accepting, and describing ourselves, if we were to answer life’s interviewer, hinges on the teeny tiny, but mega word, “No.”

I have taken dance class as a kindergartener and a college theatre major. Both stints educated me on assumptions. And there are plenty of assumptions associated with communication, with how effective we think we are with the endeavor.

Dance Class: I thought it was easy.

As a six- year- old and later, as a twenty-one-year old college student, I believed, wrongly so, that dance was a piece of cake. As a little girl, I got excited about the blue tutu (who wouldn’t?) and the tap shoes. College- age me, likewise, got excited at the prospect of the “easy” class, a way to rack up credits on my theatre degree.

My kindergarten ballerina was bummed to find out that you just don’t get onstage with your fabulous blue tutu and get applauded instantly. Nope. It’s more like regularly scheduled, often tedious and boring, dance rehearsals. No one is dressed in a showtime tutu. And there is no applause. Just ho-hum rehearsals.

The college version of me viewed the easy dance class as being free from pop quizzes and research papers. Obviously, this was a no-brainer. An “easy A.” But, again, there existed the pesky classes, like those rehearsals of my kindergarten ballerina. Repetitive. Boring. I was not a born dancer, with my spirit animal being this graceful gazelle or doe gliding through time and space. No, I was more of the clumsy, awkward fish out of water spirit animal, just looking for opportunities to cut class any time I could.

Ballroom dance was lovely, just not so much when I’m doing it. I can accept that.

Prepare This Dance:

“No,” on the surface, looks easy. Maybe it’s the size of the word. It’s just two little letters. One syllable. Doesn’t take up much space. It will probably fit in our carryon luggage. No problem.

But “no” is an inevitability. We will experience it in our lives; we will hear it. And we will need to say it.

We shouldn’t let the fear of its reality, and the baggage that comes with it, paralyze us. But we need to have a healthy, realistic respect of it also.

If we approach the saying of our no with a simplistic, this will be heeded, heard and be the end of a matter assumption, we will be sorely disappointed.

As a basic self-defense expert, teaching women to protect themselves once uttered…

“When a person refuses to heed your no, they want to control you.”

“For a woman, her no is not the end of a discussion. It is the beginning of a negotiation.”

Our no will, more often than not, be met with some form of resistance or conflict.

I believe it would benefit us all to go into our “no” situations, knowing that. Buckle up. You and I will need to be stronger for our “no” stance.

Dance Class: Practice, Practice, Practice

We often hear about the discipline it takes to be a dancer. Hours or rehearsal are at the heart of that discipline.

As a kindergartener, attending my regular dance classes, I was not thrilled with the repetitive tediousness. I remember one tap dance routine we were learning as students was set to a 45 record, “Practice, Practice, Practice.” Over and over again, I would, indeed, practice that routine with my small tap shoes on the studio’s dance floor, staring at the large black satin bow that kept my dance teacher’s bun in place.

As a college “dance student,” fulfilling the credits necessary for my theatre degree, I also endured ballroom dancing tediousness, “theatre dance movement” tediousness, even some fencing tediousness, thrown in for dangerous measure. The common denominator, however, was that practicing repetition.

Prepare This Dance:

“No” requires practice. Like the different styles of dance, with their unique steps, using the word, “no,” from situation to situation, requires finesse, flexibility, and individual application. One size does not fit all.

Again, the tiny, two-letter word may appear simple, but it rarely yields a simple outcome. We don’t need to be so hypervigilant about that reality; we would, however, do better to accept it is more complicated, going in, so we can have a plan in place when things get hairy.

One of my very first “no’s” involved some individuals I had known my entire life. I thought they would certainly accept my no as final.

Can you hear the buzzer? Wrong!

I assumed that, going into this particular situation, because everyone involved was an adult, and I was coming from the vantage point of being respectful, everyone else would operate in kind.

Nope.

Instead, what happened was that I ran smack dab into other peoples’ expectations- and their perceived failure for me to have met them- according to their specifications.

And this was where hurt feelings, name calling, and personalization ensued. I was called everything, except a child of God. It was probably easier for them to scapegoat me, to paint me as a villain, l than it was to accept my displeasing “no.”

With the loaded “no,” that is par for the course. I didn’t quite understand that concept until I was in the middle of it, doing my best to tread water.

Dance Class: Step on Toes.

As a kindergarten ballerina, during my first dance class recital, there was another fellow ballerina who screwed up the class dance performance onstage. While everyone else “finished” the dance program of twirling in their tutus, this lone ballerina still kept a-twirling. She did it, not because she wanted extra limelight. She thought there was still more dancing to be done.

There wasn’t.

And our dance teacher finally had to yank her off the stage, furthering the humiliation factor. The lone ballerina cried offstage, embarrassed.

Unfortunately, the dance teacher was also embarrassed, and yelled at her for making her dance studio look bad and unprofessional. She yelled at a six-year-old ballerina.

That was one form of the stepping on of toes.

As for the college dance experiences, another was more literal. I completely sucked when it came to ballroom dancing. I stepped on each dancer partner’s toes, no matter if he was a fellow student or the Czechoslovakian dance instructor himself. One-two-three…(step on toes), one-two-three…(step on toes). It happened with and without practice. It happened to me, and I watched it happen to others as the bystander (or the by-dancer, depending on how you view it).

Both eras of my dance experiences taught me the stepping on of toes is universal. No one gets out of here alive.

Prepare This Dance:

“No” WILL offend and displease. We will step on all kinds of toes for saying that infamous, two-letter word.

Again, it comes down to managing expectations, dealing with them, and, yes, often dealing with them despite not meeting them perfectly for others, and even for ourselves. “No,” like my kindergarten ballet recital, can leave us still twirling, because we didn’t know we would be left alone, to dance by ourselves… and then get yelled at for saying “no,” and going against the grain.

“No” can be lonely. “No” can also be empowering, freeing, healthy, and loving. Most times, it’s all of the above, while simultaneously being in that lonely place.

Dance Class: The Music Stops and/or Changes.

Everything has its season. My kindergarten stint at dance class ended before the start of my first- grade year. Dance didn’t quite “take.” For me. I’m not sure why, exactly, I was in the class in the first place. But I don’t remember missing the class once it stopped.

And, years later, as I took dance class in college, primarily to meet my theatre degree requirement, I was not mourning the cessation of ballroom steps, “theatre dance movement,” and the sheer awkwardness of me stepping on my partner’s toes, or my constant bumping into the ballet bars. Dance class, here, was a means to an end.

Both times the music stopped; the dance class stopped. Life changed.

Prepare This Dance:

As it was for dance class, so it is with this two-letter word.

“No” can and will change things; be ready for that.

When we start out in life, learning how to walk and talk, the toddler versions of ourselves are passionate, insistent, and defiant about the word, “no.” We stamp our feet; we pout. We throw tantrums and scream bloodcurdling cries whenever our no is disregarded.

And then, somewhere, along the way, we learn to become more “civilized.” We become polite, docile, quiet.

We learn that, in order to get along in a civilized society, we need to say no to using the “no word.” We learn that “no” breeds conflict, and, oftentimes, conflict is akin to danger. Depending upon a multitude of factors and conditions, like gender, socioeconomic backgrounds, money, and power, we accept that “no” is displeasing, ugly, unreasonable, shameful, disloyal, and an unacceptable option we are forbidden to use in our lives and our decisions.

I’m not quite sure how we come to learn these dance steps, but we learn them all the same.

Perhaps, what we should focus more of our attention on is the importance of how our “no’s” change, not just the application of them. We learn, over time, that certain things that were once considered to be unacceptable and forbidden, no longer are. And vice versa. What are those things then? And why have they changed?

No matter what, it’s okay to have our “no’s” be different. Nothing stays the same. All things are subject to change.

How would you describe yourself?

Verbally, but I’ve also prepared a dance.

Doing life requires dancing. The “No Word” is a dance step in that routine. We need to speak up and out. Saying no is a learning lab to discovering who we are. We make mistakes with this two-letter word, but we still need to imperfectly implement it in our lives.

How are you dancing with no?

How are you dancing with the reaction to you saying it?

How do you feel about hearing it?

How would you describe yourself?

Copyright © 2021 by Sheryle Cruse