I have tried many names and many incarnations of my particular "brand" of fitness dance: Pleasure, Power, and Movement; Feminist Fitness; Just Dance; Organic Dance (the biggest failure); and, most recently, Mind/Body Fitness Dance.

During the fall semester I previewed Mind/Body Fitness Dance at UMA-Bangor. I had positive feedback to this fitness class, and I decided to offer it this spring as a two-part series. While I have struggled to keep consistent attendance at this kind of fitness/dance class at the YMCA, I think that teaching this class on campus allows me to more fully share all of the nuanced aspects of this fitness form.

Starting this Thursday I will be offering Mind/Body Fitness dance on campus, Thursdays from 5:15 to 6:15. I have created a pamphlet that explains a little more about this form of fitness and dance, but it is really something that has to be experienced and embodied.

People are often afraid to dance, afraid to move outside of culture’s strictly draw boundaries of body and space. This is especially true of women and girls. We are taught to take up as little space as possible and we fear judgment and doing things wrong. I know this because I used to feel this way too.

I found confidence in fitness classes that allowed me to follow directions--and to give those directions when I became an instructor. In both cases, movements were rigid, linear, contained. In group exercise classes we generally know what to expect and the rise of manufactured fitness classes (like Zumba, Les Mills, and MOSSA) make for consistent, predictable workouts. While not everyone enjoys classes, many find safety in proscribed movements.

Invitations to try Mind/Body Fitness Dance are met with: I can’t dance. I only dance when no one’s home. I have no rhythm. I can’t follow directions. I need to be told what to do. I am so out of shape. These are excuses I hear often.

I also hear the unspoken reasons. I am insecure about my body (too fat, too thin, too something wrong). I am uncomfortable trying new things. I’m scared. I have anxiety. (I have made all these excuses too.) But all of these discomforts are exactly what Mind/Body Fitness Dances offers to alleviate.

Movement helps us let go. Music gives us a landscape. Structure and freedom help us feel safe while we also have literal and figurative space to explore.

Mind/Body Fitness Dance has changed my approach to fitness and has helped me to find more confidence, wellness, balance, and joy in my life. Sharing this movement--my art--with those who are brave enough to try something different is scary and rewarding. I share Mind/Body Fitness Dance as a tool of self-care; it is my gift to my community.

Eastport 124, on a Thursday afternoon, is private and the environment is conducive to freedom of movement. Music fills, but does not overwhelm the space and the play of light and dark enhance the dance fitness experience.

I want to invite students, faculty, staff, and community members to try this form of mind/body fitness dance. When we step into the dance, we leave these roles and become movement. Lose yourself. Find Yourself. Move and Be Moved.

From the first few notes of Spearhead’s album Home, I was hooked on Hip-Hop. This isn’t the origin story that most Hip-Hop heads tell, and it certainly fits with my demographics. As I am reminded any time I am in Hip-Hop spaces: I do not look Hip-Hop. I do not speak Hip-Hop. I do not move Hip-Hop (well kind of, sometimes). But I am a part of Hip-Hop.

I feel Hip-Hop—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, politically, pedagogically. I am Hip-Hop because Hip-Hop is so many different things. I have published and presented at academic conferences on the subject of Hip-Hop. I teach a multivalent vision of Hip-Hop to my students in a variety of academic classes and I choreograph “freestyle” fitness routines.
My teaching in both these spaces brings Hip-Hop to populations that might not otherwise engage with this culture and art form.

I love Hip-Hop for its power, its depth, its edge, its truth, its flow.

But it is easy to get distracted from the things that I love. I have too much to do, and I am spread too thin. I am interested in too many things, and I have too many commitments. When I have time to listen to music, I am often memorizing Group Groove choreography and I listen to the same ten tracks over and over again. I repeat a song over and over until the music and choreography are a part of me.

But this is also how I listen to music that I enjoy. I get obsessed with a song (or an album) and it haunts me and follows me, and the songs that resonate most with me often becomes a part of one of my fitness classes. Hip-Hop is part of this obsession, but to keep up with the Hip-Hop that isn’t most readily available--on TV, on the radio--takes work.

I stumble upon new songs. I circle back to favorites. I rediscover. And my friends and students send me links.

Last semester, I noticed that something felt off. I was busy (as usual). Generally happy (as usual). I was stressing over the details of life and feeling frustrated. I felt disconnected and disconcerted. I was reminded of the power of Hip-Hop when the BreakBeat Poets visited campus; I witnessed (again) this power of Hip-Hop through my students and colleagues. I realized that what was missing was my connection to life through Hip-Hop.

On my next long drive, I listened to Lupe Fiasco’s album, L.A.S.E.R.S. I was transported, pulled into that swirl of love, and politics, and beat, and flow, and soul. I felt renewed and reminded about what is important in life and why I love what I do. In the past I had connected with "Letting Go," "Words I Never Said," and "I Don't Wanna Care Right Now" but this time new songs on the album stuck out to me. I was haunted by "Beautiful lasers (2 Ways)" and “Coming Up” became a regular on my rotation and a part of my fitness classes.

Lupe Fiasco explains in his album notes: "Lasers are shining beams of light that burn through the darkness of ignorance. Lasers shed light on injustice and inequality. .... Lasers act and shape their own destinies. Lasers find meaning and direction in the mysteries all around them. Lasers stand for love and compassion. Lasers stand for peace. Lasers stand for progression. Lasers are revolutionary. Lasers Are The Future."

Lupe Fiasco’s words resonate beyond his music. It’s easy to pass by the moments, to let our lives run out in our responsibilities, obligations, distractions. Hip-Hop brings me home in ways that no other form of art and culture can. Hip-Hop saves my life over and over. It reminds me who I am and who I want to be. It reminds me that I am still coming up.