Tits Out. Shoulders Back: What My First Burlesque Class Taught Me About My Own Embodied Sexuality
All hail the goddess of movement, bodies, sex, and desire and let us pray.
Last night I took my first burlesque class*.
*[This class was led by the incredible teacher and performer Nadia Crimson at the amazing Creator’s Space Studios - check them out!]
I badly needed this push out of my comfort zone. I’ve been craving it.
The fuel of novelty and newness and discomfort creeps past the numbness and disconnect. It fills my creative cup and reminds me that I will always return to being the woman who says yes.
After years of saying I would do this thing, I finally said yes.
I drove across town and I showed up and walked into the studio—the wood floors and wall of mirrors immediately invited me back into the world of dance - one of the first places my childhood self ever felt fully at home.
I was a dancer before I was ever anything else, did you know that? It was where I first found expression for the depth and breadth of feeling that lived in me. Although I have not been a dancer for a very long time, there is never a time that it does not call me back.
And so there I was. In my first burlesque class. Nervous and so entirely ready for what came next and for who I might have a chance to become along the way.
Toward the end of the class, we did an exercise.
We were instructed to partner up, lock eyes across the room, and v-e-r-y slowly walk toward our person.
Tits out. Shoulders back. A deliberate sway in our hips.
Step by intentional step, inhabiting our bodies in a new way. Each step a conscious seduction set to the beat of the music.
In this world of constant rushing, purposeful slowness is its own big ask.
In this world of perpetual disembodiment, entering our bodies like that and daring to possess them in their entirety can be a space of its own enormous risk.
And yet, asking and risking - that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
When we eventually crossed the floor and arrived in front of our chosen partner, most of us wholly strangers, we were to maintain eye contact and call sensual attention to a part of our body that we loved and wanted to celebrate.
For an entire eight counts.
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
6…
7…
8.
An eternity of space and time to fill with performative self-adoration for the sole purpose of calling in the attention and desire of the one who was watching.
The music began and the teacher counted us in. I shook out my body and took a breath and started walking with as much confidence and surety as I could muster.
When I reached the mirror I bent over, holding eye contact. “You’ve got this, self”, the performer in me pep-talked. My partner smiled and flirtatiously winked, silently cheering me on.
I trailed my right hand lightly up my leg from ankle to mid-thigh. But what felt like forever was really only 2 or three counts. How was that possible? This was my entire plan. This was supposed to last longer, right?!? How the fuck would I fill the remainder of the time?
Instead of the instinctive and embodied sensual being I imagined I would be, I was awkward and ill at ease. Deeply uncomfortable in my skin.
Instead of one sweet and supportive human watching me, it felt like there were hundreds.
I felt the panic and nervousness turn to anxious laughter. I dropped the sexy posture and folded in on myself. I shrugged, unsure of myself. How could I ground back in my body and invite attention for even longer? I was surprised I did not have the slightest idea.
I grew up in dance studios. My body holds the muscle memory of having life and movement counted out in eight-beat measures. But never has eight counts felt so impossibly long and challenging to fill. And then we had to do it again, and again.
Christ.
Three separate parts of our body, chosen to highlight.
Three separate slow struts across the room and back again.
Three separate eight-count measures spent deliberating calling attention to a part of us we—in spite of an entire world telling us not to—still found ourselves somehow able to love.
To choose a part of me worthy of that kind of attention.
To lock my gaze on someone and invite them to watch.
To say—with only my eyes and my movements—“Do you see this part of me? It is holy and so very worthy of your worship”.
It was impossibly tender. Painfully awkward.
But more than that, it was a reminder of just how much of my life lately has been spent outside of my own physical experience. Of how deeply I have been removed from my sensual nature, my inherent seduction, the embodied sexuality that has simmered, always, just below the surface of my skin.
That embodied sexuality, the one I’ve often taken for granted? Throughout my lifetime it has shifted from a source of shame to a place of pride. A sin I once tried desperately to hide and deny, ultimately transformed into a wholeness to be proclaimed, celebrated, and seen.
But just because I have claimed the birthright of my sexuality and sensuality a thousand times over does not mean I have not lost just as often.
And it does not mean I will not stubbornly grasp it and then let it slip-slide out of my grip a thousand times more.
Just because I know and name myself worthy of worship does not mean I don’t all too often forget to consecrate my own altar.
Knowing a thing and living a thing are entirely different matters, I am reminded once again.
In recent months my sensual self has been buried deeply. A period of dormancy, an accidental-on-purpose estrangement from the elemental nature of the bones and breath and heat and want of me.
Sometimes the want of me becomes a source of pain as much as pleasure. Sometimes, without intention, I subdue that want so as to manage the experience of holding it all inside this one very human body of mine.
But when I lose touch with the goddess in me, I lose touch with all of it. I know this. My muse, she dances away. My work loses its magic. I constrict and contort. Everything feels distant and lacks sparkle.
I tend to forget that this can still happen, but it does. And still, even at the most far away, there is no doubt the whole of me will return. It’s always just a matter of working the right incantation to release the wild one from her bindings.
I’m not always the one who ties the knots, but I do know how to set her free.
And last night in burlesque class this simple exercise was calling me back to the portal of my body, my skin, my own innate awareness of the power that pulses within.
It wasn’t easy or comfortable or even, at that moment, entirely welcome. But hell if I won’t name it holy.
Sink into your body.
Eight counts across the floor.
Eight counts of entirely conscious movement.
Eight counts back.
Repeat three times with intention.
No words were spoken out loud, but I’m fairly certain this has the makings of a powerful spell.
So Mote It Be, the witches say.
And so it shall be.
It’s just another way of saying amen, really.
Because what is returning to the worship of our own bodies if not a sacred prayer?
What is being witnessed in the full power of our seduction if not an ancient sacrament?
What is the reclamation of our own empowered sexuality but a wild hymn flung to the heavens?
What is burlesque, then, or all movement meant to highlight the power of our unbound nature, but a pathway to a religion of our own making?
All hail the goddess of movement and bodies and sex and desire, I say, and let us fucking pray.
Yes. The class was uncomfortable and awkward and consensual and queer and beautifully inclusive. And it was precisely what I needed.
I’ve been playing a very small game lately, you see, and as Maureen definitively sings in one of my life theme songs from Rent…
“This diva needs her stage, baby let’s have fun”.
It’s true, I’ve never been a back of the auditorium kinda girl, and this Scorpio season has me remembering that I’ve always been pulled back to the spotlight.
It has never behooved me to fold myself into constriction, and yet I find myself here, again and again. Pretzeled by forces of my own unintentional design.
But the call into the light is undeniable.
When the wolf of me begins to howl, and the edges sing their siren song, I know exactly what it means. I’ve spun the spiral of this cycle more times than I can count.
I feel the cyclone in my belly building force, begging for release.
It’s past time to play a bigger game.
It is once again time to shine.
xo,
jlb.
Tonight was a deeply tender night, and so I did what I know to do. I wrote into the heart of some of the most tender spaces. If you - like me - feel a pull to the story that lives at the center of you, consider this your invitation.
On November 1st I open the doors to the Wild Heart Writing community for the first time in four years. For 30 days we will gather together, to write our way wild, write our way free, and write our way back home.