#dancerelationships

You deserve a girl who gives you goosebumps when she says goodnight, who finds the minute and mundane phenomenal, who reveres balance as the desirable eye of a storm. If you can only give her half of your heart, you’re better off alone. If you want to race through a world more stunning than you’ve ever dared to see it, date a girl who dances.

She’ll be abysmal with budgeting, you ought to know, but she’ll be pretty resourceful when it comes to diplomacy and improvisation. And she’ll be terrible at scheduling and double-booking because the stage skews her sense of time. She’ll embody the ebb and flow of that tide between glamorous and shy and tough and femme between layered sweats and stage make-up. And yes, darling, she’ll want everything — but she wants you.

She will hold ridiculous ideals and outrageous expectations, and she is hardest on herself. She finds solace in rehearsal, because scratching the sublime is only a matter of time. You deserve a girl who knows that a good show requires thick skin and endless practice, a girl who isn’t daunted by any of it. You want a girl who stretches. That is the girl who is unafraid of instability, who understands it and commands it everyday. She’s the one who drills straight through valleys and mountains, persevering through highs and lows because she knows the deeper the plié, the higher the leap. You deserve a girl who doesn’t break easy, a girl who’s prepared for a bit of pain for the sake of of beauty.

Date a girl who dances because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who adores everything you do, every little thing about you. It won’t just be your face or your words or what you two have in common, and it certainly won’t be because you’re convenient. This is a woman who rehearses for weeks on end for maybe one minute onstage — do you think she does anything because it is easy? You want a girl who bites off more than she can chew because she is the most flexible, most sensitive, most ambitious, most big-hearted of the bunch.

She will assume your motions and mannerisms are as deliberate and meaningful as her own. She will soundlessly observe and absorb you, assigning sensational motivation to your every stir. Your imperfections are artistic, and rewarded. She will recognize you by your cantor, your carriage, and most of all your asymmetry. She fancies the idea of completing each other because your smile pulls to the right, and her smile pulls to the left.

She is bizarre, comfortable, and just maybe the next step in evolution. You may not know what to do with her, even years after the fact. All you know for certain is that her purring is the midsummer night, her happiness, hypnotic. Sharing her company suggests that you are either mental, or extraordinarily lucky.

Give her the gift of touch, the closeness in your eyelashes on her face and the silent applause in an embrace. Give her Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Yann Tiersen, original scores to your kisses. Make her feel the way she feels backstage, in the wings. Let her know that you, too, have noticed all the different configurations your bodies make to lock into one another. Understand that she’s not asking you to be a dancer when she asks you to dance.

It’s easy to date a girl who dances. Give her ibuprofen in bulk for her birthday, sweatshirts and leg warmers for Christmas.