By Suchitra Sairam

It’s International Dance Day! (And not just for performers.)

Somewhere along the way, dance became synonymous with the stage. And everyone else drifts to the background. Even erased.

Think about what dance requires:

💫 Thinking

💫 Learning

💫 Teaching

💫 Organizing

💫 Performing

💫 Questioning

💫 Researching

💫 Choreographing

💫 Building community

💫 Innovating what comes next

💫 Preserving what came before

💫 Documenting so others can learn

💫 Leading with heart and without ego

💫 Following with full presence and commitment

It’s clear – performance is just the part we can see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a saying I’ve heard for decades, “Those who can’t do, teach.”

It has always landed like a small wound. Not because I doubted myself. But because it gets the story completely backwards.

I didn’t choose teaching because I couldn’t perform. I chose teaching because I love it. From my whole heart.

My ultimate joy lives in the studio. In class. In private practice. In being a student (which I still am, decades in, and will remain forever.)

Some of my teachers are living legends. Exemplary performing artists whose names carry weight in this tradition. But that’s not why I’ve learned from them for decades.

Some of my teachers are far stronger teachers than they are performing artists. That doesn’t diminish one iota the artistry they’ve imparted to me with such love and care.

What makes a teacher extraordinary has little to do with what they do on a stage, and everything to do with elevating a student’s relationship with the craft.

What fills me most isn’t the performance. It’s the moment a student grasps something that was just out of reach. Then internalizes it. Then embodies it.

I see the beautiful moment it becomes theirs, inseparable from how they move through the world.

That happens with a 7-year-old learning their first gesture. It happens with a 20-year-old I’ve nurtured from their first steps into emerging artists. It happens with a 40-year-old returning to dance after years away. It happens at every level, every age, every stage of the journey.

It stops me every single time.

Dance reveals your…

💫 focus under pressure

💫 capacity to begin again

💫 relationship with failure

💫 resilience when you forget movements and keep moving anyway

It shapes who you become – not just as a dancer, but as a human being.

The stage is one place that happens. The studio is another. So is the rehearsal room. The archive. The library. The late-night grant application. The quiet moment of private practice in the early morning or late night when no one is watching.

On this International Dance Day, I’m celebrating all of it.

YES to the star performers.

YES to those who dance for fun.

YES to the professionals, semi-professionals, aspiring, professionals, those who will never be professionals.

And YES to the teachers, preservers, documentarians, community builders, and choreographers who will never be famous but whose students and collaborators will carry something forward forever.

Dance isn’t just what it produces. It’s what it grows in us.

What has dance grown in you? I’d love to know.