Can you tell I am in love with Tarik, and Morroco? And boy is she proud of her student. All her students. She says that she sees their bodies become free under her tutelage. Shoulders hunched forward from years of wanting to cram down into ourselves, so that we could be less of a burden on the world. Morocco emancipates the shoulders, expands chests, opens up lungs, opens up entire lives. It is astonishing. I tell Morocco that she is a midwife. She brings the stillborn women that we are, women yet unborn to ourselves. Even though we have lived long lives already, we have lived them for the sake of others, to be daughters, mothers, caretakers, and we have left the most precious parts of ourselves behind still in the womb. Through movement, the historical context and origin of every movement, not just steps, but where you got the steps, why you do the steps – the why of it is where Morocco puts you into labor. The why of it is where we are born. We are born to be free. In a short time, Morocco brings student after student after student into a new and once thought impossible world, a world that they control. A world that is entirely their own. Morocco says, “You control your body, you control your life.†And the truth couldn’t be sweeter. Dancers get into dancing with their newborn eyes and newborn lives and divorces happen. Relationships that had been stagnating for years are finally put out of their misery. Jobs once tolerable when one was stillborn are no longer when taking in our first breath of life. We are babies, seeing that happiness, healthiness, wholeness, joy, sensuality, sexual intrigue, love are all things we must have, and we will have them because now, we have the strength to speak a greatly needed and anticipated sweet truth.
Watching Morocco dance was more sweet truth that brought tears to my eyes, possibly because of her calm and serene smile that was the backdrop for her non-stop furiously perfect cymbals, layered onto a formidable ‘do fries come with that shake’ shimmy. Because she is simply too beautiful. The dance is in her heart. She is making the music dance for her. And all the movements, all the posturing, all the gestures – all are an extremely provocative exercise in freedom and a precursor to revolution. Mighty Morocco, in addition to being a diva, a dancer, a choreographer, a teacher, and a historian, is a midwife to all of us who want to leave the bodies that men made us have. For me, my constant back trouble comes from trying to manage my breasts, either to hide them because if I don’t I must be a slut, or to highlight them because I want to be seen and am sick of invisibility. But is this my sexuality or someone else’s? I have lots of old wounds. My shoulders hunch near past my ears because I lived in terror of my father and his random physical blows that were directed at me but intended for all women. All this familial dysfunction is making my chiropractor and rolfer and heller worker rich off this back that didn’t need to be adjusted, realigned or broken, merely born.
Dancing with Morocco, I am a big baby and given the opportunity to start my whole life over again, so fresh and so clean.