I know I am going to regret posting this the second I hit publish, but it’s about damn time I post a video of me dancing on this here dance-centric blog.

I remember being so excited when one of my favorite dance bloggers, Meg, first stepped in front of the camera in this post. I was reading about her wonderful dancing all of the time but until then never actually saw it in person. A few weeks later, she’s all like, “OK, I’m going to dance for y’all three times a week!” and started doing all of these cool experimental dance videos.

I came home from the office today with an intense desire to dance. I’m in the middle of this crazy work project that has me validating a database of nearly 600 of our archived articles, and so all day, every day for the past week I’ve been hunched over my computer like a 21st-century Bob Cratchit. The only thing keeping me going is my iPod and music–lots of sweet, sweet music. The only problem with listening to music all day is that my body wants to play along. I occasionally do a head roll here and a finger flick there, but otherwise I’ve had to resort to foot tapping and some torso bopping, when inside all of my muscles and bones and heart and soul just want to DANCE!

So upon coming home today, I went a little crazy in my living room. Unleashed the pent-up junk and–thanks to Florence + The Machine–just shook it all out. (God, I love that song!)

But then I got a little serious.

Because I’m a bit shy about just letting the world see me dance in my living room, I wanted my first video to be a little…mysterious. And by mysterious, I actually mean “I’m Not Going to Face the Camera and I’m Going to Dance in An Intentionally Dark Room in Silhouette.”

I also wanted to explore the concept of upper-body dancing. A lot of people say they can’t dance because they have “two left feet.” OK then, so try dancing with your arms!

Dancing is so much more than steps or counts or choreography. To me, dancing is the kinesthetic equivalent of writing poetry or singing a ballad. Sometimes you thrash. Other times the movement is ever so subtle. Particularly in the practice of 5Rhythms, the final rhythm of Stillness is sometimes no more than a slow gesture or even mindful inhalations and exhalations.

This is actually the second of two videos I shot dancing to this music (Hans Zimmer’s “Time” from Inception, FYI). I didn’t like the first because it felt so forced. The second I knew the camera was rolling, my movement suddenly became all rigid and inauthentic. (Also, my stellar videography skills had me cutting off my hands whenever I reached them upward, which was not ideal for an “upper-body” video.)

So I tried again, this time with a partner. (OK, so my partner was a set of curtains, so what?)

This is an experiment in the dance of Stillness (with a little bit of other stuff thrown in).

Truth be told, I still don’t like the video 100%. I feel the camera transforms me into “performer” mode, and that isn’t me anymore. I need someone to sneak a camera into one of my 5Rhythms classes. Also, please disregard the crap music quality, the Boeing 737 model on the table, and the cell phone chirping somewhere near the end. (I know, I know, I’m such a freakin’ pro over here.)

I’m going to shut up already and post the video.