Dancing, Blood & Onions

My choreography skills began in Montreal at Expo 67 witnessing the different ethnic dance styles at each pavilion. Oh the colours, the swirls, as the dancer’s faces and hair dripped with joy and sweat. Groups of bodies moving in harmony to music are what stole my heart. Just as adding and multiplying numbers made sense of the world for me, so did the geometrical formations and unison of the dancers.

I was labelled bossy by my mom and sister but they did not understand my artistic visions. The girls on the block seemed game to try out my visions. I would surf TV channels in search of dancing; Go Go dancing, Country & Western line dancing, Ballet or anything with bodies moving together in glory. A garage down the street was often our rehearsal studio where I would recreate the visions on TV from the night before.

One day my posse of girls on the block were performing or rehearsing, not sure we made the distinction, on the front lawn next door. A boy with jet-black hair demanded that we stop. Our dancing made him mad because it was “stupid and gross”. ‘Who made him king and how dare he interrupt our art?’ I refused his demand and a war broke out, boys against girls, or in my mind, idiots against artists.

Total mayhem ensued with tackles, pounces, pushing and pulling. The boy with jet-black hair tackled me so I bit him. I used all my jaw strength to try to get my teeth through his jacket. The key word here was “try”. He was the leader of the war so peace was restored as he ran home crying.

We brushed ourselves off and got back to the business of dance while I tried to figure out which parts were stupid and gross. The other girls heard it first, my mom’s voice calling me over to the front porch. “Did you bite a boy?” she asked. I confessed and explained it was just a jacket, but more importantly he led a war on our team of dancers. She insisted I go and apologize. “But it was his fault for starting the war and attacking me! He is mean!” I exclaimed.

My mom put a bag of onions in my hand and told me to deliver it to the house at the end of the street. My cheeks were flushed and head down as my feet dragged under the weight of my body along the sidewalk with a bag of onions past the dancers. ‘What did onions have to do with biting people?’ ‘Why onions?’ ‘Were they reparations for my bite or did they heal bites?’

I held up the onions for the beautiful lady who answered the door. She had the same jet-black hair as the boy and was rigidly smoothing out her apron. After putting the onions asid, she asked if I had anything to say. In my confusion, I thought the less I said, the better, so I shrugged my shoulders and replied, “No.”. Well, that infuriated her.

She launched into how confounded she was that a girl could bite through a jacket and draw blood. She emphasized that I should be ashamed and repeated the drawing of blood several times. Mostly the concern was that something was very wrong with me. “Girls are not strong enough to bite through a jacket,” she said. She wanted me to confirm that it was indeed me, a girl, and not a boy who bit her son. It seemed the concept of a girl hurting a boy was the devastating part. She emphasized the shame I should feel for embarrassing a boy. I got the impression that had the biter been a boy, all things would be fair.

And…girls should not be fighting in the first place. To both mothers, the fact that we were attacked was irrelevant. I learned from this beautiful lady the importance of boys maintaining their pride. Girls should never embarrass boys. Her anger overpowered her efforts to stay calm and polite. She lectured me about the evil girl I was and demanded an apology.

I prepared myself to be presented with the bloody arm when I apologized to the boy. Gotta say, I was curious to see how much damage I had inflicted. Instead, she said her son was too upset to come downstairs so I was to apologize to her. As I walked home with my heart scraping along the sidewalk I concurred two things. One, that the apology was not about making the boy feel better but rather to punish me and/or make the mother feel better. And two that I need to hide the part of me that wants to fight back in case it embarrasses a boy.

 I no longer created ensemble choreography in Montreal…for obvious reasons. And I walked away from fights where ever they occurred.