So You Think You Can Dance?

The year was either 1969 or 1970. Take your pick. I was in junior high school at the time. Good old JHS 52. New York City had a penchant for numbering their schools. I went to PS 98 for elementary school. In fact, schools didn’t have actual names until we hit high school. To this day I wonder where in NYC one could find PS 1 or JHS 1, two schools who can truly say, under any circumstance, “We’re number1!”

JHS 52 which sat on the aptly named Academy Street took us out of the bubble we had been growing up in which was Irish with a large side order of Jews. Most of the Irish kids went to Catholic school anyway. There were Latinos from a different section of the neighborhood, and there were kids coming to school by train because schools needed to be more integrated. They came on typical NYC grafitti marked trains. As you recall it was either 1969 or 70. The dam was bursting. Civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights and of course there was the war in Vietnam. Black power was finding its expression in kids exactly our age.

So there we were, my best friend and I, sitting on the stairs somewhere in that building. Probably during lunch break. There was a group of girls on the landing below who were dancing. They were kids that came to school by train. Black and proud. As we sat talking we must have been staring at them. Inevitably came the “what’re you looking at?” I could feel my throat go dry. Thankfully my friend had not lost her ability to speak. “We were watching you dance. It looked cool.” I held my breath.

“Do you wanna learn how to do it?” I exhaled and headed down the stairs with my friend close behind me. I didn’t have to think twice. I loved to dance. I can’t explain why this short interlude stayed stored in my memory after all these years. It lasted only for a few songs. Until we got the steps down and then we all had to get back to class. I don’t know if our paths ever crossed again. I am grateful for two things. Learning how to move my body in new ways and the fact that disco had not yet arrived!