I was really intrigued by the idea that a body holds not only organs, veins and bones, but also history, culture and experiences. Before working with Reggie, I assumed that the latter three were stored in the mind: we remember our history, contemplate our culture, and recall experiences. And yet I failed to realize that muscle memory, that which is so crucial for dancers to develop, remembers more than just choreography. It actually inhabits my history, my culture and my experience.

I made this connection between mental and corporal recollection during the first week. Our first class consisted of footwork and hand clapping. At first I was a bit crestfallen about the fact that we weren’t going to plunge into full-body, sweat-inducing contemporary dance. But then it hit me that I had previously studied a dance genre that also concentrated on footwork and handclapping: flamenco. Coordinating my hand- and footwork tickled my brain at first, but then I realized that my mind and body were engaging in a form of movement that was vaguely familiar and becoming increasingly more so. It’s as if I had been assigned to flex a muscle that hadn’t been activated for many years. My flamenco memory was dormant but had been awakened with the gumboot choreography.

But the culture that is instilled in my body has been alive and well. I’m in love with the music that Reggie uses for class and the primary reason is because it’s so familiar to me. Puerto Rico, where my father is from, is a Caribbean island whose music and culture was very much influenced by Afro-Caribbean music so what is a popular African pop song sounds a lot like a merengue or a Brazilian samba. When I don’t even think about my, my body just enters Latin-mode and I’ll instinctively start doing some merengue or samba steps before my mind realizes that the music isn’t actually from Puerto Rico or Brazil. It’s fascinating to hear it though because one can see the rhythms and singing styles that crossed the ocean along with the slaves long ago.

But with Reggie’s repertory, particularly with Clement’s solo, I feel the ballet muscle flex too much. One of the challenges has been letting go without letting go. A chronic problem for me is that I grip just about everything , but when I “let go,” my alignment and core go away too. It’s only recently in ballet and modern classes that I have increasing the strength of my core and using it to liberate my movement. With Reggie’s work, though, the focus is less on the core and more on the pelvis. Because my pelvis and I don’t really know each other in a studio context (we’re best friends on the dance floor when it comes to Latin dance!), I fall back on my default problem: grip my quads and glutes. It’s become a challenge to realize that focusing on the pelvis is key to being able to let go in the proper sense, to be able to enter this state of flow and inhabit the dance that is embedded in the music without losing the base level of control that allows you to keep your balances and shift your weight successfully.

I initially thought that this emphasis on the pelvis was particular to Reggie’s work and movement style, but after taking my first Limón technique class today, I realize that the pelvis is like a passport into a whole new world of fluid movement, and I’m still filling out the paperwork to understand what it means and how to use it so I can explore this new world. I’m curious to find out how the pelvis guides Akram Khan’s work in the next segment of the workshop.