Dance Beyond the Studio: The Mission

As someone with no formal dance training before college, I often feel like an impostor calling myself a “dancer” or answering “Yes” readily when someone says, “So you’re a dancer?” when I tell them I started a dance studio.

“No, I’m not a dancer, but I love dancing and that’s the point!” is my standard response. Some days I feel unqualified to be doing the work I’m doing with Chromatic precisely because I am not a “dancer.”

Which leads naturally to the question of: what makes someone a dancer? How much do you have to have trained “formally”? What does dancing formally even mean? How many hours do you have to dance a day? Does dancing not in a studio or “real stage” count?

Which brings us, I think to the question of, what is dance?

I hope to use this blog to explore that big question with the Chromatic community.

We ask everyone, in one of the Chromatic mottos, to dance beyond the studio. To dance everywhere they feel the impulse to, “in the streets, in the park, on the subway, at the club…” I hope this is another space in which we can engage with dance together beyond the studio.