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Hi, I’m Ren or “Dirt” (they/them) of Danceground Western Mass and I’m inviting you to cozy up and learn some fun facts about me, the gooey and tender goofball who holds space for, facilitates the experience of, and plays with you on the Danceground. So here goes… I am a white, genderqueer, femme witch, a poet, a creative and spiritual coach, a human on a quantum healing journey, a lover of nature, play, and my inner kiddos, equal parts living room, forest, desert mountain ridge, and oceanside dancer, INFP, Enneagram 4w5, and emotional mani-gen in Human Design, to name a few things. These identities are present at this moment and will continue to shift, evolve, and dissolve as I do this human life thing. Are there any of your identities you’d like to share with me? If you feel comfy, go ahead and hit that reply button and let me know - I’d love to learn about you. My body still remembers the feel of humid heat on an early summer afternoon in New England, and the low din of excited conversation amongst fellow dancers, subdued by the sound of strategically placed box fans on recital night in the late 80s. If I close my eyes I can almost smell the slight waxy scent of lipstick mixed with the sickeningly sweet aroma of spilt juice box and hairspray, feel the itchy scratch of sequins hugging my collarbone and the momentary relief of silky polka-dotted fabric just below. I swear I can hear muffled musical tones accompanied by rhythmic thump thump of baselines attempting to keep up with my own beating heart, amplified with each opening of the heavy metal high school band room door. I began choreographed dancing at age three and a half and stopped at age fourteen. The particular cluster of memories in the previous paragraphs were from my “Greased Lightning” tap dance year, at 5ish years old. This body is not three and a half, five-ish, or fourteen anymore. It has been a wild journey since then. I’m pretty sure fourteen-year-old me was just tired of taking directions, annoyed with sitting still while others painted and staged a version of me that they wanted the world to see. Perhaps parts of you can relate to the “Don’t tell me who to be or what to do” edness of this? Ultimately I am glad that fourteen-year old me made the decision to stop. What happened since then has been a gradual coming back to and remembering how to trust this body, this home. Dance and play have been here in this body all along, will continue to be for quite some time, and are at the heart of the Danceground and many of my offerings. I am thankful for the experiences little Dirt had - the dance lessons, the friendships, the play, the costumes, the recitals, and also am so grateful for now. In the chasm created by turning away from choreographed dance, and also basketball a few years later, I got lost for a bit, dipping in and out of the shadowlands, facing addictions and deeply ingrained belief systems, and also... I found so many things: freeform and ecstatic dance, pleasurable and consensual touch, nature bathing and walking meditation, dance floors full of hot and sweaty queers, qi gong and yin yoga and intentional intuitive stretching, breathwork and rest, harmonizing and healing tones, that I vibrate at the frequency of a cello and melt into a puddle when a cute queer plays a stringed instrument, that I also am that cute queer who plays a stringed instrument, that my body benefits from acupuncture and craniosacral therapy and earthing, and deep belly laughs, that I am not separate from nature, among other things. Play has often been at the core of who I am and is embedded in the gifts I bring to this existence, including and especially, Danceground. Do you have an experience or belief system that you chose to let go of, even though it was difficult, which ultimately led to greater expansion and connection in your life? If you feel comfy, go ahead and hit that reply button. I’d love to learn about you. I’ll share more with ya about my ancestral roots and the place I call home, about my schooling and lived knowledge, both of the body and outside of it, as well as other little gems, in the next email to land in your inbox titled, “Meet Your Danceground Facilitator: part 2!”
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