My first exposure to hip-hop happened about... oh, 16 hours ago. And. And and. YES.

I clearly do not have the core and shoulder strength needed, to do most of the moves properly. But that can be built. I can hear and get inside the music -- these are big, throbbing, bassy beats -- and most awesomely, the movement style feels like it fits me. It's got the down-and-loose vibe and smoothness I like about dancing blues, but it also takes in rage and anger, fighting, explosiveness...

I want more.

Teena Marie Custer is at Purdue this week, and I'm inhaling as much of her teaching as I can before I fly to Seattle tomorrow. I went to her choreography session last night (she's setting a piece on us and we're dancing to Frank Ocean's Thinking About You), came home, slept, woke up and ran to Holly's Modern 1 class this morning where we did Butoh (mindblowing; I'd never heard of it before) and then begged to be allowed to stay for her Jazz II class which Teena was teaching. She said yes, and so I did, and we learned top rocking and go-downs and floorwork and a really basic freeze (chair freeze) and the one-step and the back sweep and the three-step and I'm hooked and my deltoids will hate me in the morning.

But only in the morning, because I've got an hour to shower and dash to the R programming workgroup, then meetings meetings and then dancing with Kyler, then PCDC's workshop with Teena, and then Teena's choreography session again -- that's 5 doses of dancing in one day. I love that my body can do this. I can move, I can move, I can move!

That's all. Just that explosion of joy, of learning to let myself come out more and more and more.