A TIGER doesn’t need to look at the mirror / How I unlearned dancing, to unleash the wild.

It’s mid 80’s, I’m 11 years old.

Flash dance, Foot loose, and the breakdance movies just came out, Fame is on tv.

Something in my body cannot resist, like a strong pull, towards joy, towards flow, to become one with the music and the beat.

It’s like my body had to move, and I had to agree,

to surrender.

I learned the steps, but in some strange way the dance was already inside of me.

Within 2 years of breakdancing and jazz I ended up in a ballet class, (that’s a whole other story) - and there, the joy of movement met a new challenge- grace. Immense power combined with gentleness, flexibility and new interpretations of the music!

I was flying!

Within 3 years at age 16, I found myself in the school of the royal Flemish ballet, leaving my homeland and family to a foreign country, preparing to become a professional ballet dancer - ballet is my dream, it’s in my blood, it’s my whole life!

THEN… I visit Israel in my summer vacation,

I go to see the “Bat-Sheva dance company” (not ballet) preforming, and my world collapse, or my life changes,

AND IT CANNOT BE UNDONE!!!

The dancers where dancing to this beautiful Arwo Part classical music, but THEY WHERE - W I L D!!!!

It was like watching a real TIGER! from very near! The beauty of the rawness!

The TRUTH! the AUTHENTICITY!

Every single hair in my body was trembling, my breath was taken away, the guy who created that choreography and trained these dancers, just trashed my dream of becoming a ballerina, and I was in bliss.

Within 2 years, I am 19, I have joined the Bat-Sheva company, I had the privilege of working and learning from that genus choreographer- Ohad Naharin.

And my post actually starts here.

Ohad was teaching dance and movement differently, he guided the dancers to look INWARDS.

It was the first time since I started my dance education that I was in a studio with no mirrors to look at myself.

My lines, directions, and movements became much clearer when I gained the trust to fully unleash them from within.

Ohad said he was UNLEARNING the dancers of their acquired dance trainings.

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And I say- a flower, a tiger, a waterfall, don’t need to look at the mirror to see or affirm their beauty - they RADIATE it from within, they are it.

The dance was ever since inside me.

But the PERMISSION to be AUTHENTIC, and to not deem the beauty of my WILD ESSENCE needed to go trough a journey out of my comfort zone, to let go of some cultural concepts of how I “should” be.

A journey to allow myself to put aside my judgments of beautiful and ugly, and to act from inner intuition, inner movement, and inner guidance (guid-dance!).

There is profound INNOCENCE in the raw WILD, and about that I’ll share in the next post…

I’m curious to know, have you encountered your wild essence? Was it challenging? Joyful? Or both ;-)?

In the photo me (age 14) and my dance partner at the Haifa Ballet studio.