I have had two unbelievable experiences of spiritual oneness specifically related to my professional ballroom dancing. Actually, now that I think about it, the realizations of what I could be to my students, as well as what I could create with a group of people (the audience), are surely and specifically why those four or five years of my life happened the way they did. From a spiritual perspective, you could say that if I hadn’t had these specific experiences before cancer, I would never have approached cancer as an opportunity for personal growth the way that I did, and if I hadn’t tried to treat cancer as an opportunity to open my experiences, emotions, and heart throughout cancer treatment and since with the Cielem’el Cancer Journal, then I would not be writing this today, sharing everything about my life to give others inspiration in their own life trials and efforts to grow as a person.

Interesting. Well, even if you don’t believe all that, these two experiences were beyond profound, and are fundamentally why I believe in myself and what I believe is My Purpose In Life, to inspire people.

When I danced professionally (well, probably socially too, now that I think about it), judges always commented that they could see my joy and love of dance in my face and in my movements, and it was surely a good part of why I won so many of the lower competitions (I never made it to the big time, cancer, well neuropathy really, pretty much ended my dance career). While I was technically very precise, there were definitely things that other people did better in addition to having good technique, but they didn’t win. I think the love I put out in sharing my energy (which I had only recently learned to do as sending general and constant unconditional love all around me, giving myself the energy of unconditional love in the process) is why judges would rate me the top scores in a competition.

I didn’t realize right away that this is also why the audience connected so well with me when I performed. They saw and felt the bright energy I was trying to send from myself into the world. Seriously cool.

Once I comprehended that the reason they saw and felt my “love of dance,” was because I was intentionally putting unconditional love out there, I was ready to take the next VERY big step and give myself a big goal in my spiritual development. I was going to actually open my heart with the most personal thing I had, and see if they felt it.

Opening My Heart

Of course, the most intimate thing I had to share was the deep grieving I was experiencing in my heart. Even two years after Artie’s death, which is when this first experience took place, I was still very deeply rooted to the grief. I mean come on, two years is nothing in terms of recovering from the death of the love of your life, especially when you have only a superficial sense of spirituality.

I first truly opened my heart on the dance floor in a waltz routine with Bobby Gonzales, a pro at Arthur Murray. The song we danced to was “Angel” by Sarah McLaughlin, which you may recall from earlier stories was the song Artie’s brothers and I listened to on the way to Artie’s funeral. As a result, I have an intense emotional bond with the music and the very deep emotions it makes me feel to this day.

The waltz, when we performed it at the competition, was unbelievably emotional for me, and everyone from our studio, because in the competition performance of it (this feeling never came over me in any rehearsals), I felt like Artie was there, just past the reach of my fingertips. The pro photographer actually captured of one of those moments, and it’s a little freaky for me to look at that photo even though it’s beautiful. I didn’t know my sense of when Artie is near actually shows on my face, but it’s captured in that photograph.

The routine, for me, was about opening up my heart to let everyone really feel what I was feeling. And . . . they did.

That routine ended in a hug instead of a fancy dip as you would expect in a competition performance, but it was exactly right given the music and the mood and the movement I wanted us to create. As we came off the floor, I nearly collapsed from the emotional release and I had to hug Bobby again and thank him for what the dance had meant to me, and man, when I sat down with our crew the emotion really came out and I had a good cry like I hadn’t had in a long, long time. And everyone around me, only two of whom knew about Artie’s death, was feeling it with me. I swear to god there were ten crying dancers around that table for a good ten minutes. We were so closely connected in that emotion, it was unbelievable.

A Higher Awareness

I kept putting myself out there when I performed, and it captivated audiences even though they weren’t sure why. After several years of this, I was ready to take it much, much further.

The next time I went for a massive goal of spiritual connection with the audience song was “The Prayer” by Josh Groban, which can be hugely emotional for anyone that’s lost someone and every funeral I’ve ever been to since its release has used the song somewhere in the ceremony. The dance was Bolero, which is a more intense, more sensual version of rumba, which every calls the dance of love. When I would teach students about the different emotional concepts of the different dances and the music and movements for each, I used to describe it this way:

• Foxtrot – flirting – fun as well as with that spark of newness when you are initially attracted to someone.
• Waltz – falling in love – constantly turning and changing while also being gently rolling waves in a calm and beautiful flow
• Rumba – the engagement – you are in love and you’re committing you heart to this person so it’s sensual and intimate
• Bolero – the wedding night – emotionally connected with your partner, beyond Rumba in intensity and emotion
• Swing and ChaCha – the honeymoon – joyous happy love and having fun together
• Argentine Tango – an argument and make-up sex – American Tango is somewhat like this but not as, umm, intimate and sweaty, if you know what I mean

The bolero performance was an experiment for me because I wanted to get even closer to the audience than the waltz where I opened my heart to them and they all felt it. In the bolero, I was really putting it all out there . . . my partner was playing Artie’s ghost for god’s sake, and before our routine in the show I would read my Artie letter (wow, I had forgotten that) to bring it all right to the surface so the audience would feel it as soon as they saw me, saw the roses, and saw my face as I walked across the stage in the darkness that the routine began in. But I didn’t just want them to feel it; I wasn’t just opening my heart for them to see this time. I was opening my heart and I was taking them in.

Taking Them Into My Heart

The goal for me in the bolero routine was to reach every person there who had ever lost someone and bring them into my heart where they could feel the grief from inside me, within themselves. The story in the choreography was intensely personal and emotional. I’m going to write it out, but if you want to skip down to the next part, I won’t be offended. The story of the dance is a bit detailed and long.

As we moved through the story of the dance, I first came out alone, the room entirely black, I, entirely in black except for the Mai Lei pearl necklace Artie had given me, which was the only soft glow of light in me. I walked across the dark stage with three roses in my hand (I have three roses put at Artie’s gravesite every week), with grief all over my face and in every fearful step I took to where I knelt next to a white motorcycle helmet and, shaking and almost crying, set the roses on the grave and slowly rose shrouded in grief, my arms clasped around myself, my head down and taking deep deep breaths trying to get my emotions under control at the funeral. As the lights came up a bit more and I slowly start backing away from the grave, unable to tear my eyes away from it, my partner would emerge from the blackness behind me, angelic in the flowy whiteness of the shirt he wore. He was Artie. As he reached out to touch my shoulder to comfort me, the movement of the actual bolero began. Bolero, when done well and with emotion, conveys a deep connection and unconditional love between the two partners, the two parts of a whole. In the bolero routine, the dancing was me getting lost in my dreams and memories with Artie, avoiding the grief, and for a great deal of the dance actually we were simply dancing in sync side by side, not in a dance embrace. At one point I leapt into his arms though, curled up and enveloped in his embrace as he held me like a frightened child and I clutched my arms around his shoulders, burying my face to his neck. We spun a few times, slowing until he gently set me down facing the grave and much closer to it than we had been during any part of the dance, which I wasn’t ready to face. I wouldn’t let go of him, and there were a couple of moves together in an Argentine embrace (with a heart-touching-heart connection) as I tried to get away from the grave and he moved with me but brought me back to face it. He had to force me away, sending me in a triple spin toward the grave, and catching my arm behind me after the third one so I was stretched up and out on my toes, reaching my free arm to heaven then bringing it down around my neck, realizing I would have to live with the grief. But then the Artie angel turned to toward him and closed the gap between us to gently guide me in a slow spiral so that we were in a full body connection with his arms wrapped around my waist and my arm wrapped on his exactly like an old photograph I have of us together. Except in the photograph I was looking back and up at him in adoration (seriously), while in the dance routine I was facing the grave, feeling him behind me with one arm reaching back and up around his neck, making sure he was still there even though I could feel him all around me. We took three long steps together, in body connection all the way from the side of my foot touching his, up the leg and the entire body. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do actually, to move like that with someone and follow his lead by feeling the connection all the way to the tip of your toes and let him step under you taking you off your axis to put you forward over your foot to reach out the other in another slow connected step forward. After three completely connected steps like that, he gently backed a little bit away from me so I could realize where I was, looking directly down on his grave. I turned back to him for one last grieving hug, our legs entwined, and we spiraled down together, our legs and bodies twisting in a yin-yang that reached up through our bodies, and the spiral ended as if we were sitting together on the floor holding each other, and the audience was seeing my face as I had my chin on his shoulder and held on to him, letting the tears come.

Unbelievably, one of the four shows was on the 19^th, and our routine comes up around 10PM in the show. When we were backstage and I was about to go on, my dance partner was giving me a hug and he told me that he felt Artie there that night (I told him later about the date and time of Artie’s death, and he said he was glad he didn’t know that before we danced that night because it would have freaked him out then to feel Artie’s presence). This particular night, something other-worldly happened. As he sent me in the triple spin toward the grave near the end, he missed my arm to give me balance for a sharp stop. That one catch was ridiculously important, because when he missed it in rehearsal I practically fell down with the momentum of the spins and nowhere to stop. So the freaky thing is, in that show on the 19^th, he missed the catch. But I still stopped on a dime, sudden and sharp, my body doing exactly what it would do if he’d made the catch. My balance was completely there, and to me it felt like Artie had caught my arm, even though my dance partner in the routine missed. So I stayed there reaching upward and then bringing my arm down to clutch myself the same way I did in all the other shows, but since he didn’t have my arm to turn me back toward him, he improvised and came up behind me without me realizing it, so when I turned around on my own (since he wasn’t holding my arm and leading me to turn back to him), he was right there to hold me in his arms instead of bring me to him for that embrace, and it totally freaked me out. It wasn’t my dance partner. It literally was Artie, his frame, his height, his face and hair and strong arms and everything. It completely shocked me, though as my partner led me in those last forward steps together and into our spiral down in the last embrace I was able to follow his movements like in the other shows. But it completely freaked me out that I had actually seen Artie, it was Artie. And even freakier, my partner and the audience could feel that I was feeling that. A couple other teachers commented to me about it later that night. It was a powerful, powerful spiritual experience.

Spiritual Oneness

Four shows, and for every single one, as we spiraled into our last hold and the lights slowly dimmed to blackness . . . it was completely silent. People were crying, but no one applauded. Everyone was so in the moment, so in my heart and so in the heart connection with me, they forgot where they were and just experienced the emotion. So not clapping was actually the best way the audience could tell me that they got it, that they felt it.

It was a stunning silence, so many hearts connected. I had a lot of people talk to me about losing their loved ones after that series of performances ended. Even a year later, this would happen. They told me how they felt every ounce of what I was feeling, experiencing it themselves from inside me because they had experience and could share in my grief and love and hope and loss. I kid you not, more than one person actually said basically that to me. And no one, not even my dance partner, knew I was intentionally trying to create this with every moment of the routine and very fiber of my being: to connect us all on a spiritual level.