As a second semester senior about to graduate in May, I’ve suffered through my fair share of all-nighters spent finishing term papers, cramming for exams, whipping together Powerpoints and doing all the other things a college student does in his free time. And I can tell you that it’s hard work.

But about a month ago, I enrolled in my first-ever ballet class, bought my first pair of jazz shoes and started rehearsing pieces of Twyla Tharp’s Eight Jelly Rolls. And every single day that I’ve danced since then, I have felt a kind of full body exhaustion and naive excitement that I hadn’t felt since I celebrated my ninth birthday at the local Chuck E. Cheese’s. And I can also tell you that working on EJR has taken my notion of hard work to a new level.

I have never felt as fully worn out and giddily fulfilled than I did after our first rehearsal – which was also my first intensive dance rehearsal, ever. I learned how to feign understanding of fancy-sounding ballet terms (i.e. rond de jambe. Granted, before I googled it, I thought Katie was saying “rounded jam,” and had no idea what that referred to) and I quickly learned that looser fitting, stretchy pants are better to dance in than slim-fit khakis.

I’ve also learned that dance is like learning a new language. But unlike the five-days-a-week of intensive Chinese that I’m taking, I can’t just show up 30 seconds before class starts – hair disheveled and barely awake – and sit, on my butt, for fifty minutes of passive grammar review. Dance engages your body and brain in a way that writing papers and memorizing new vocabulary doesn’t. For me at least, it requires being well-fed so that my brain works well so that I can read movement clearly and fully engage my body in expressing something meaningful. And it takes a lot of repetitions of viewing archival footage, watching a real person recreate it and then doing it myself in front of a mirror before I can fully internalize the choreography – and that’s before I can even free up a few brainwaves to start thinking about style, the kind of character I’m trying to portray, the little details (Foot extended? Right wrist bent?) and everything else that makes choreography more than just a series of mechanical changes in weight and rhythm.

I’m hoping, through these blog posts, to trace the triumphs, foibles and revelations of a novice dancer learning how to learn how to dance – and in the process, hopefully doing justice to EJR, his fellow dancers (who have been all too friendly despite the number of times I have stepped on their feet) and his two very patient teachers.

If anything, I’ve learned that it’s not about success or failure. It’s about commitment and gusto – of which I have plenty, and which I’m hoping will make up for my lack of dancing experience. And when all else fails, there’s nothing that a good chuckle at myself (or curling up in the fetal position for a few minutes) can’t fix.