Burlesque class teaching me to love my body, embrace my sexuality

Burlesque class this week was the hardest class to date. Not physically; my body is getting used to the different movements I ask it to perform. I’m also getting used to accepting my body: the shape, the size, the way it moves. My acceptance about myself physically will always be a work in progress but it is progress. 

Tonight’s class was all about stage presence. About inviting people into my space. About making eye contact, sultry glances, playful energy with my eyes, while moving seductively with my body.

It’s incredibly difficult. First, I had to acknowledge that I even have a space. To be secure in myself to smash through societal norms regarding body shape and presumed biases on how that shape should move. That my body is deserving. That I’m deserving. While it’s tied to physicality, it’s a mental barrier. I can accept my body but by inviting an audience into my space, I’m risking that they may not accept how I look. That they may enter into my space with an intent other than to enjoy my performance. To mock. To be an outlet for their own insecurities. My instructor — an incredibly gifted woman who is very secure in herself — put it this way: “I’m fat. I know I’m fat. But my body  moves in all the ways I want it to." That was very evident in the graceful, powerful way she demonstrated exercises throughout class. We were all mesmerized by her and the control she had over us. She invited every woman into her space because she knew she had one. She claimed her space and she commanded the studio. 

With that in mind, we spent the class working on connecting with each other. Making eye contact and holding glances for extended periods of time. Bumps, grind, gentle hip sways. Poses. Moving through a dance of seduction as old as time but having an outcome with a twist: not an actual seduction but an illusion of one. For that to happen, the audience must be invited in.

And for the audience to be invited in, they need to feel the space I’m welcoming them into is worth sharing. That they are wanted. They need to know I have a space and I own my space. 

My fellow dancers and I were too guarded to be completely vulnerable. I don’t trust that I’ll have a safety net yet in place if my vulnerability gets dented. But I did try. I flirted with my eyes and my body together to the extent that I was comfortable, which was admittedly not much. It’s easy to move my body in seductive dance moves but making and maintaining eye contact while doing so was where I faltered. I am just not confident in combining the two to command and captivate an audience. I’m not sure I ever will be but I’m going to work on getting there. If I can master that skill, I believe that I’ll accept myself the way I want to see myself: graceful, powerful, sexy. 

My instructor has 15 years of burlesque. I have 15 minutes so it’ll take time to build myself to the place where I feel good about where I dance, not only for my audience but for myself. Actually, most important, for myself. 

This was both my most and least favourite class for the same reason. It challenged me to accept myself as a dancer and a woman in ways that I’d tucked away and not acknowledged. This class asked me to move forward with boldness, with confidence in myself sexually. Burlesque is undeniably sexy. The burlesque dance performed is unique to each dancer — the act, the disrobing. But the sultry, sexy seduction is prevalent in each performance and to engage the audience, I need to be able to tease and flirt. And for that to happen, I need to believe that I’m desirable and sexy. 

It’s the most challenging task I’ve been asked to work on in a very long time. It means growing out of my comfort zone and accepting a piece of me that both I and society as a whole prefers to bury. The acknowledgment that I — we — are sexual creatures. Wow. 

Our last exercise of the night was sitting in front of a full-length dancers mirror and truly looking ourselves. It was about thanking my body for what it does for me. Loving my body for what it does for me. It was about doing that especially for the body parts I love the least. It turns out that when they are loved — when my space includes my whole body — the most beautiful things are possible.