Trancedance 15: The final chapter

Well… Saturday the final class of the Trance-dance session was given.

Together with the kids, I went to the store to get some basic things and the final things for the trance-dance. Since we had to arrange for some food for the final lesson, I decided to buy several kinds of cheese. Afterwards I played with Son and Daughter watched some TV (she can’t watch her favorite Cartoons when staying with Lenore).

At 4pm I brought the kids to Grandma where they would spend the night while I went to the dancelessons. Before going to the class I had to buy a single piece of baguette. Simple right? Wrong! At the register the clerck made some mistake with a coupon and it took her 10 minutes to clear the system (I actually had to tell her why things didn’t work but she wouldn’t believe me in the beginning :-s ) And I was detoured due to some roadworks as well…  So I arrived 30 minutes late at the class, but fortunately they hadn’t started yet.

We all had to dess up as our own nickname. For me it was a candle. Since my nickname was “pilot light” or “guarding flame” depending on how you translate it… So I dressed totally white and dyed my hairs, or what remains of them, orange.
We gathered at a table and some snacks were provided by Nestor Lady to give us the “necessary energy” for this dance marathon. The stoneswe received in lesson 4 (here) were placed on the table so we could admire everyones work. Lenore decided not to come to the lesson because she feels to much hurt by the Teacher. And Sage was stuck in traffic, so there were two stones short, giving away clues on who’s an angel to who. When I looked at all the costumes and the stones, everything I concluded earlier about identities and the Angel-me proved to be correct. So the list ofparticipants/names are:
Me -> guarding flame
Lenore -> Celtic Soul
Teacher -> Stone age
Sage -> Phoenix
Young boy -> Sensation
Young girl -> Sunny Winter
Nestor Lady -> Eternal Seeker
Piercing Eyes -> Angelhead

The lesson itself was divided into three parts. A first, long dance marathon, a second part reserved for the food and admiration of the paintings of lesson 14 (here) and collages of lesson 11 (here). The third part was an part.

The dance marathon was a trip through all the previous lessons. Step by step we repeated all the things we learned before. Especially at the end it became quite hard because I got some cramps in my right leg. And then the dynamic Kundalini (here) still had to come… I noticed that while during the previous classes always an undertone of fun ot Tomfoolery was present, the last few lessons everyone seemed to take it more seriously. The only thing that was made fun of was Sage’s costume. He had to dress up as a Phoenix (fire bird) and he came dressed in a chicken suit Jokes about a fried chicken were fired at him (pun intended).

We stopped to have some food everyone brought. There was Paprika soup, a wok dish, cheese, muffins, cake and fruit salade. During the dinner the collages and paintings were placed for admiration and everyone was asked to guess which one was made by who. Most of them were guessed pretty easy but mine was apparently not that obvious.

The third part was mostly about the Guardian Angel game and our own personal songs. We sat down in a circle of candles and one by one we read our goodbye letter to our protege and gave our last gift. I received a small keychain with 30 digital pictures of the trancedance class. I gave my protege a small booklet about being special. I think she is an extraordinary woman but has a low self-esteem. When everyone had read their letter we reversed the order. Now we had to read our thank you letters to our Guardian Angels. Most praticipants had a small letter. I had several pages. Well, not exactly. I had complied a last CD for my Guardian Angel. And I included the lyrics of the songs with a short explanation why I chose that particular song. From my protege (Nestor Lady) I received a set of Mother Earth cards, a sort of Tarot cards but made by Native Americans.
We had to write our personal shortcoming on a plate of wood. Then, the Teacher read to us an explanation of a personal song. The explanation was written by the participants themselves. At the end of the explanation, the person had to go and dance to his/her personal song inside a circle of candles. As said before my own song was “Scared of yourself” by Zornik (here). I chose that song because of man reasons. The singer in the clip is also dressed up in womens clothing showing that he’s male only at the very end of the clip. The word “scared” is written on his chest. The second reason is because I believe society, and thus people themselves, are imposing norms and rules on people. These unwritten rules are tought when we are children. And breaking those rules makes people scared of the “rule-breakers” and they will therefor cast them out of the group (in the worst case). That made people scared of themselves, nobody wanted to deviate from the “norm”. Think of gay people a few years ago. The mere thought of being gay was enough to become scared and fearing to become a pariah.
So am I. Because I’m a crossdresser I am scared of peoples reaction towards me when they find out. Whether they know or not, I’m still the same person. But their image of me changes. So their reaction towards me changes. And because I am scared of their changed behaviour I adapt my behaviour (not telling) as well.
Thirdly, I am scared of myself as well. I am scared of my vulnerable, my soft character part. I am more sensitive then most men I believe. But because I am scared of that side of me, I try to compensate my “manliness” by being strong in the sense of “capable of bearing everything”.
That is also why I wrote as weakness “low self-esteem”. (see the irony? See my comment on my protege) I tend to see all of my shortcomings but do not see what I have accomplished or what my strong points are. Somehow I tend to overlook those. That is also the reason why I am bad at receiving good criticism. I tend to minimize my own strengths. I think that that was my greatest shortcoming. Some people probably won’t agree with me but everyone has right to have an opinion, right. After each dance-act the danser had to cast his wooden plate (and the weakness) into the campfire.

When this was done, we danced a few songs near the campfire. To finish the evening some more presents were given and everyone went home. I went to bed at 5 am. And had to get up at 9am already… but that’s for another post.

Tags: angel, dance, emotion, emotions, feelings, gift, guardian, trance, trance dance, trancedance