Drawing class begins earlier than usual this week, at 5:30 p.m. sharp. We’ve adapted our timing to accommodate that of the dance class we’ll be attending—where we will, hopefully, be able to take some inspiration from the dancers and their movement.
Everybody’s eyes are a bit wide as our professor walks us once again through the task of the day. We typically draw static models; how the hell are we going to manage to capture anything while our models are busy dancing? We take off our shoes and shuffle inside. As we settle along the walls of the studio, our professor takes her own seat and has a go at reassuring us: “Just try to focus on one aspect of the movement.”
The dance students start to trickle in, and it’s clear that they’re intimidated themselves by this set-up, by their audience. Clusters of students speaking in low voices form in the center of the dance floor.
Soon enough, our collective suspense is broken. The two professors give a short joint introduction, and class begins in earnest. Pencils are raised; dancers form duos. This class, it quickly becomes clear, is extremely intimate. In the first exercise, one partner stands still while the other warms up their muscles for them, moving their hands up and down their partner’s arm, then in circles on their back. I do not think I could handle this dance class. Still, it’s a good warm-up for us drawing as well—one person static, the other moving slowly, a clear point of connection between the two.
Once everyone is feeling a bit more at ease, the main exercise of the day begins: partner dances, but with the table as one’s partner. “Be intentional with each of your points of connection,” the dance professor tells her students, as the dancers lay their hands on the table top, drape themselves across it, roll below the table, and intertwine the table’s legs with their own.
I shift into an investigatory mode, on the hunt for pauses in motion or moments of clarity—something that I could reasonably draw. This hunt is simultaneously a practice in mindfulness, especially for a perfectionist. I take to drawing the outlines of the body as soon as I see it, before I can make sense of the dancer’s shape. If I take a moment to understand where each leg is before I draw it, I’m already too late. “Be present!” the dance professor tells her students, and I take her reminder for myself as well. I fail, and I start again. A series of vaguely human lines fills my page.
When one of the older students takes his turn with the table and builds breaths in between each of his sequences, those of us drawing collectively perk up. We may perhaps stand a chance at transposing this person onto our paper.
During a break, the dancers ask us what it is that we’re doing; it’s true that there’s a transparency imbalance between us. A few of my classmates speak up to shed light on their approaches. One classmate is tracking only people’s feet as they traverse the studio. Another has covered their pages in a rough graphite foundation to represent the space of the studio, and is illustrating movement with her eraser.
We discuss the difficulty of the task before us, how we’re all on a constant look-out for a pause. The dance professor likes this point, and takes it up: indeed, she says, one’s movements are given meaning and shape by the pauses between them.
When the dancers return to their practice, they shift to a new exercise, now attempting partnered airplane lifts. The last people I’d seen do this were my little cousins, and there is a distinct comedy to watching these adults balance with their hips on their partners’ extended feet. This practice in controlling the transfer of your body weight, or supporting someone else’s, is seemingly much more difficult for adults than for ten year olds. To support her struggling students, the professor interrupts one duo and demonstrates the technique herself. She instructs from upside down, propped up on one of her students’ legs. “Do you see what I mean now?” Suddenly, she pitches her weight to the side. “At worst, you fall,” she finishes from the floor.
By this point, many of us from the drawing class have worn ourselves out, our finite concentration spent drawing the same table with its changing dance partners. We hold our pencils and charcoal casually as we look on, pretending that we have not devolved into simple voyeurs.
Class ends with everyone standing in a circle around the night’s drawings. People bend down to point out their favorite details, and students move in slow orbits to take it all in. With the many pages illustrating the prior two hours’ movements on display, the room is filled with a sense of heavy excitement. We amateur artists, practicing once a week in our tired state after long days and doubting ourselves as we do so, have nonetheless managed to create something quite unique together.
There is a camaraderie to the shuffle of putting our shoes back on, and our goodbyes are warm as we leave.
Rylan Shewmaker (‘21) calls herself a geographer, though none of her degrees substantiate this. After growing up in Texas and studying in Grand Rapids, she moved to Brussels, Belgium, for her master’s degree in urban studies. She still lives in Brussels and works for a housing non-profit. She enjoys audiobooks, bike commuting, sunny days, and learning new things.
