Hip Hop Memoirs, Part One

My dance mentor has asked me to write her memoirs. I think I'll say yes. What a strange project this will be. A 26-year-old white female from Minnesota with lefty politics, in whose education society has invested an absurd volume of resources, and who has read about adversity mostly in books, will attempt to capture in writing the story of a 41-year-old black female hip hop dance company director, former military woman, and personal counselor from the Bay Area whose childhood and teenage years resemble a Reduced Shakespeare version of a whole season of Oprah episodes. Our life experiences couldn't be more different. Yet ours is a convergence that momentarily silences the hum of identity politics to point out that people are capable of understanding and connecting with people who want to be understood. Simple as that.

Except that I can already tell there won't be anything simple about this project.

My mentor--call her Kim--took me under her wing almost three years ago, soon after I began taking her hip hop class at a studio in north Berkeley. Five years prior, during a summer spent in Berkeley before my junior year in college, I had taken the same class at the same studio, so my bus ride to my first class after the hiatus brought with it the comforting heart warbles and pangs of nostalgia that always accompany the return to an old haunt--and thereby to an old piece of yourself. But stepping into class, I was disconcerted to find that a tiny woman--surely no more than 4'11" in heels--with smooth dark skin, compact muscles, and explosive energy had replaced the gruff, porcelain-skinned instructor with gangly limbs who had inspired both intimidation and scorn in me many summers before. The new instructor was Kim, and her presence was arresting--it's almost as if somebody packed all the energy, ideas, and feelings of an average-sized person into her tiny frame, shrinking the container but not the contents, until her personality was so concentrated that she practically gave off sparks.

We danced. She was a methodical and kind instructor, and exhibited surprising bursts of warmth toward her students, suddenly reaching out to take Kate's hand while explaining a kick-ball-change or to touch Liana's shoulder while recommending that we do it again but "big this time, because it's gonna be much faster with the music." I always had the sense that she was grounding herself and her energy in us, and it worked. We absorbed her electricity, loved it, and kept coming back for more.

Several months after starting her class, I showed up one day to find that Kim had gotten stuck in her driveway, blocked in by a truck parked in front of her car, and wouldn't make it to class. There's a kick of disappointment that follows the phrase "Class is cancelled" that you can only truly understand if you are a dancer. Every time you go to class, you take a risk. Depending on what kind of dancer you are, you risk anxiety, isolation, humiliation, fatigue, pain, or boredom. But the thing that characterizes all dancers is, first, the willingness to take that risk and, second, the skill at self-coaching that makes you decide to get on that bus or hop in the car and Go. To. Class. Once you've made that decision, there's nothing worse than finding out that all that emotional and physical psyching-up was for naught. So, this particular Wednesday, surrounded by fallen faces, I took matters into my own hands and offered to lead class in Kim's absence. I knew all the choreography. I'd had some amateur experience teaching before. I led the group through a warm-up (feeling self-conscious about the well-mannered ghosts of WASP posture and ballet training that haunted my motions) and then went over the choreography. Part-way through: "Does anyone else want to take a turn leading?" Stares, and then, "No. This is good. How did you learn how to teach?"

Kim found out, and she was impressed. The next Wednesday, she asked me if I'd like to be her apprentice.