I grew up learning to be a solo dancer. I never got in to ballroom or pas de deux or any other form of partner work. Now, as an adult, I am a dance fitness instructor and I am constantly leading others in dance, but always from the front of the room or on a stage as if I’m really dancing by myself, just surrounded by people who all happen to be smiling at me and doing the same thing I’m doing… for the most part.

But lately I’ve been learning to dance salsa with a partner… and I’m completely enthralled by it. To dance while communicating with someone else through touch, the eyes, and even breath… it’s nothing short of thrilling. Moving together or purposely away from each other without needing to utter a word is a rare form of beauty. The synchronization of two bodies in a NON sexual way is romance — not with each other, but with life, with being human, with the rhythm of the world and our shared existence in this one moment in time.

And then…

You find someone with whom that synchronization becomes a union that you visit time and again. That union becomes a rhythm of it’s own. You marvel at the things you can communicate through this rhythm without having to utter a word. You learn to anticipate. You learn the way their body feels when they’re about to move and you can close your eyes and move with them still, beat by beat and breath by breath.

And suddenly you realize you’ve become a partner.

You are no longer a solo dancer.

It’s like you’ve learned a whole new language, but not really because the words, the steps, and movement, are the same you’re just learning to use them in a totally different way. You’re tantalized by learning to speak this language with new flair. You spend hours studying, learning new phrases, practicing, practicing, practicing…

There’s just one problem. Being a partner dancer means you need to rely on another person. Partner dancing doesn’t work alone. Sure some steps can be done solo, but the most beautiful moments in true partner work are when both people have to rely on the strength of the other to perform some movement they couldn’t do otherwise. And in so doing you open yourself up to be dropped, let down, disappointed.

So how does the solo dancer turned partner find happiness in being a soloist once again now that she’s learned the language of partnership and tasted the beauty of it’s potential??