Amy Condren recalls her awakening.
I will never forget the first time I heard ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears. Too young to enrol in classes, I sat on a lap in the middle tier of a school hall for Dynamic Dance, at the end of year showcase in 2005. My spectacled older sister wore cowboy getup and tapped her feet nervously to ‘Cotton-Eye Joe’. When her chaps fell down on stage, I remember my mother’s tears. My brother wore red and pink lycra for his Gwen Stefani number: ‘What You Waiting For?’. His freckles were smeared with too dark foundation, his hair fixed in spikes with a can of Cedel hairspray that went on to last our family years. I remember the cloying smell and thinking that I couldn’t wait to be older— older kids get to dance.
The older you get, the cooler the song.
The junior girls bounced in graffiti-printed unitards to ‘Lip Gloss’ by Lil Mama, yet my toddler brain found it lacking some je ne sais quois. The girls in ‘Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikinis’ didn’t impress me. Kylie Minogue’s ‘Locomotion’ didn’t move me. Something in my chest stirred when the intermediate kids stepped out to ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’, but I can’t recall a single detail about the performance. All of it paled in comparison to Britney.
Those high-pitched strings swelled in my ears, and the first sequin was sewn in my infant soul.
When the curtain peeled back on the senior jazz girls, I think my life began. I blinked away the blur of babyhood and was utterly present for exactly three minutes and nineteen seconds. The impression of it is still a crystal bead in my mind. They wore turquoise butterfly tops, flare pants and those platform dance sneakers – the ones with the split soles we could never afford. They spun and rolled on the floor like vipers, their arms long and faces shimmering with an intensity I couldn’t yet comprehend. Later, I would know it to be adolescence. Watching them made me feel like there could be nothing better than being a girl if I could be patient.
Suddenly there were facets on the surface of my spirit, twinkling. I, too, would dance.
You ask me, why then? Why ‘Toxic’? I couldn’t tell you. Why does a moth careen towards a flickering light? I can’t help what lights me up inside. I understand now that at my core I am very simple; I know it when I see it. From that moment I’ve loved dancing, and all my life’s greatest joys have been in motion.
I would watch the DVD recording of that showcase all the time. I’d come back to it, even when the smell of Cedel hairspray filling my lungs was from my bun and it was my turn to leap on stage. I felt this glimmer tightly in my heart as I grew; many styles and many songs have worn my body. I danced because it was stitched into my being, but I realise now the strength it takes to treasure the lustre of something when the people around you don’t. When my mother looks back on that night in 2005, I know she doesn't think of ‘Toxic’. For her and my sister, it was a calamity. So I can’t blame anyone for pinning other sparkly knick-knacks to my chest and saying, “But look here at the better ways there are for you to move through life.” I put many there myself, just to see them rip away chunks of me with them as I matured.
Still, I wish you could experience ‘Toxic’ like I did in 2005; a new soul, totally unmarred being adorned with something iridescent. The way that light in me has never ebbed. Maybe you could understand it.
I think I remember the day the can of hairspray finally ran out, but I can’t remember the last dance class I ever took. My muscles betray my mind now in ways they never used to, but that sequin remains always fixed to my insides. Sometimes things we love are difficult to sustain, though they sustain us. I’m always dancing in my way. And I still fucking love Britney.
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