Dance Without Sound

A few weeks ago, I attended and performed at the 3rd annual College Salsa Congress and I was lucky enough to have my dad & sister, Sare, in the audience for both of my teams performances. What made it even better, though, was when my sister told me that she could use the night for one of her classes. I asked if it was because there was a live band, and she said, “no – I spoke to a deaf girl in there.”

I’m sure you’re reacting the same way that I did: “Wait, what? How? But.. huh?”

Now I should take a step back here – my sister speaks sign language quite well. It’s one of those amazing skills of hers that never fails to impress and inspire me. Additionally, she has a keen eye for catching conversations happening around her in ASL (American Sign Language). She never fails to take an opportunity to practice and make new friends by striking up a conversation or joining one, which is more than I can say for myself and speaking/improving upon my Spanish…

So she continues to tell me about this girl and another one of her friends walks by (Christian, I would later find out) and she strikes up a conversation with him too. As it turns out, they were both completely deaf and could barely feel the music, but they were both able to dance with skill and if you were watching them, you really would never have known the difference.

Still perplexed, she explained that they could faintly feel the music and beat if they were standing in front of the speakers. Otherwise, the girl could simply follow (because that’s the girls job anyway). Christian, on the other hand, told her that he watches other people’s feet.

I was amazed and I’m still inspired. Even more amazing is that Christian is actually one of the top performers for CSU Northridge’s salsa teams (#2 team at the College Salsa Congress Championships).

The whole situation made me realize that we often observe predicaments where we have a hard time wrapping our head around the setbacks others face. We sit back and wonder how we would handle being in the same set of circumstances while someone else lives through them (and they do it well!!). These things are part of some peoples’ every day lives – they simply have to approach them differently than many of us do.

I also realized that as humans, we are unstoppable. As a whole, we can do just about anything we set our minds to. If we run into a roadblock, we find another way to get where we’re going. If we encounter a hurdle, we jump. However, it’s really easy to start doubting ourselves, too. The detour is too long, I can’t jump that high. But what’s the worst that happens? We take longer to get there than we had hoped, possibly get a little lost, but we get there. Maybe you hit the top of the hurdle, maybe you trip a little, get scuffed up, maybe even a little broken. But we heal. We heal and when you get down to it, you’ve gotten where you wanted to be! So what’s stopping you?

And while I have you and it’s fresh in your mind, I’ll leave you with a final question:
What has inspired you lately?

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