The B-Side

Chapter 4: Possibilities

Dance class.

No, I am not abandoning writing. One of the advantages of having your heart broken and starting a road to self-discovery ala-Eat Pray Love style is that it produces more stories and more blog entries, which make my production outfits, editors and directors all so happy.

But I still have to pamper myself, right?

Aside from baking and other cooking classes plus some piano lessons, one of my weird ways of coping is heading to dance class. I have taken a bunch before—hiphop, jazz, ballet, pole and belly dancing, and Latin dance. Today (and for the next sixteen sessions in two months), I’m doing contemporary.

Just to add something in the list. And to keep my belly flat after all the eating I’ve been doing.

You see, I binge eat. Especially when I’m sad. And stressed. And heartbroken.

So to compensate for all the eating I’ve been doing, I’ve been working out… through dancing.

Contemporary.

If you watch So You Think You Can Dance like I do, you would get why I went for this genre. My most favorite performances are mostly contemporary—Mia Michael’s Gravity (Addiction), Travis Wall’s How it Ends and Fix You, Mandy Moore’s Falling Slowly, among others. There are some hiphop routines as well, and I can go on forever about my favorite routines, but I won’t bore you with that (but please do check Napoleon and Tabitha D’umo’s Outta Your Mind routine danced by Alex Wong and Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss. I would gush that Alex Wong is a ballet dancer. Quick, Google!).

So since I covered hiphop, jazz and a whole other slew of dances, contemporary was the next one.

I walked into the classroom in all its mirrored walls glory, greeted by a couple of my classmates who were already stretching on the bar. I deposited my gym bag along with the other bags on one corner of the room, took out my water bottle and my towel, and walked over to the bar. I was greeted by small smiles by the other students in the room—Tempe and Michelle, seventeen-year-olds who are studying Fine Arts but have a passion for dancing as well, and Grant who is an aspiring ballet dancer. There were a couple other students that I have seen before but I didn’t know who they are because they aren’t the sociable type. 

And then there is a new student.

He was at end of the long bar, at the other corner of the studio, his head leaning against the bar as his legs are in a 75° angle. He took a couple more stretches and then moved to the floor. And that’s where he did the split.

This is not a normal student.

He has a lean figure, like he has been dancing all his life. He doesn’t have a buffed body, but he has a dancer’s body—the lean but strong frame, all muscles. There were earbuds stuck in his ears so he couldn’t hear the silence that echoes around the room, save for a couple of grunts and cracks from bones that weren’t stretched for a couple of days. I traced the earbuds and found the source of his music to an iPod that was strapped to his arm.

I couldn’t see his face. I need to see his face.

As if on cue, he looked up, his eyes targeting my face as if knowing I was the one who was staring at him.

And my breath just got caught in my throat.

His face.

The guy looked like he was in his late twenties to early thirties and he has this swagger—like hey, I’m confident because I am experienced kind of swagger. And he looks astig. The kind of astig that already borders on angas.