Mia Michaels

So today was the most amazing day. I have some pictures, a video blog, and some words to leave with.

I can't explain what happened to me today. Words can't be used. You can't think about it. You can't vocalize any part of the experience. I can tell you what happened but I can't tell you what happened to me. Dance is a language. It's a feeling. You can't think about it or else it becomes unnatural. It becomes unraw and unreal.

Mia Michaels is tough. Her choreography is not easy. But it's real. It's not someone telling you this is where your arm goes. She tells you that this is the movement and wherever your arms lands is because the movement of the dance brought it there.

Technique class kicked my butt. I will be a whole lot more sore tomorrow morning than the first day. But this soreness-- I don't want it to leave. It'll remind me of how tough it is to choose this profession and how tough you have to be to survive. It's not easy. It's actually one of the most physical and mental experiences that you will ever come across.

Can I just say that her assistant-- Katie-- is one FIERCE dancer. I loved her. She's the girl with curly hair int he pictures. FYI.

Her composition class was more of a repratory class because she taught us a routine that she taught to the people who got a call back on So You Think You Can Dance. 180 dancers were done with the competition after this piece. I was doing fine with it. I was focused. Until half way my brain started to think; to dwell. It started freaking out on me. She suddenly stopped and told the class "STAY WITH ME. YOU'RE WASTING MY TIME IF YOU DON'T STAY WITH ME." I got my s**t together and I pushed myself to my limit.

By the end of the class she just let us imrpov whatever we were feeling and people had to step out because they didn't know what was going on. The San Marcos crew knew all thanks to Karen. She made us freeze and started up music again and came to us individually and touched a part of our bodies and we had to react to it. It's called contact improv. I CONTACT IMPROV-ED WITH MIA MICHAELS!

Everyone was in it. It was emotional because all you can feel is yourself letting go. Just letting go of your mind, your life, your world and just freeing yourself to be embraced by the dance. Something like that can't be choreographed. She sat in the middle of all of us. I was crying at this point. She sat there and everyone was dancing all around her. I can't really paint the picture for you because I just remember being so overwhelmed. Mia was crying. She explained later that it was the first time she had ever done that with any group. WE WERE HER FIRST.

I wish we could have kept her around, but she's busy. She hugged us all. She kissed us. She embraced us and held our hands. It was such a freeing experience and I wish you all could have shared it with me.

I left giving her a hug and told her "thank you so much, you are my inspiration." She gives the best hugs. They're the kind that you know that she has faith that dancers like us have a place in her world--her heart.

And most important lesson that I learned from her:

Our imperfections make us WHO WE ARE. The mistakes we make in the studio, on stage, while performing-- they make us REAL. We are human. And to dance like a human, that is what connects us all. I am imperfect. And I love it.

Enjoy the rest of the day.
I plan on dancing like that for the next week and a half.

Love Ck the DANCER
xoxo