One of my most delightful experiences was a day I spent inside an enclosure at the Edinburgh Zoo. I was part of a performance where the dancers were on display like zoo animals. We connected via improvisational movement: clustering or one person initiating a gesture and others picking it up in a game of Monkey See Monkey Do. At midday, a keeper brought us food (Chinese takeout).

Jack and I were in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. We’d gone to the performance at the zoo (running for two weeks) and started talking to the choreographer, Janis Claxton. She was inviting several dance critics to join the dancers in the enclosure later that week and asked if I’d like to do it. Would I!!!

Being a zoo animal for a day was wacky and fun. It was also a thoughtful exploration of nonverbal communication, social dynamics, how we humans perceive other species … and how we perceive ourselves.

That’s what I love about dance, that it’s playful and visceral and complex. Writing about dance pushes me toward questions about what it means to be human. Dance moves me. Dance and dancers. All of us put ourselves out in the world in various ways, we take the risk of exposing ourselves and being vulnerable. There is something so touching to me about the way dancers do that, having the courage to convey ideas and emotions through nothing but their bodies. The dances that most affect me take me to a spiritual place. It’s no wonder that in many cultures, dance is a doorway to the sacred.

Best of all … When I started teaching, I thought I’d be able to do it for maybe five years. I figured that as I got into my sixties, my mobility and stamina were going to decline. Now, in my mid-seventies, I teach four classes a week. And I feel like I move—not just in class but walking down the street—with a fluidity I don’t see in other people my age.

But those are only the physical benefits. What I’ve found through Nia is so much richer. For me, it’s a juicy creative space. I love making up routines. I do them for holidays: Halloween, Hanukkah, St. Patrick’s Day. I play with themes: music by women, songs about the earth, awe at the cosmos—a routine that, in my Zoom classes, includes a slide show of images from the space telescope. I do playlists of artists I love: Tina Turner, Paul Simon, Rising Appalachia, Rhiannon Giddens, the African singer Wiyaala.

Nia is also a beautiful source of community. In 2012 I rented studio space at Dance Place, a building at a former Naval training center. One class a week grew to five, taught by me and other instructors I brought in. We celebrated birthdays and did after-class lunches. There’s a student who writes heart-lifting poetry, and we’d end every class with her reading a poem. When Covid hit, Jack (my most loyal student) quickly figured out the technology to offer classes via Zoom. And when Jack got ill, our Nia Zoomunity was a sanctuary.