The Dance Primer

Emily Potter is the author of the wonderful story we’ve featured in three parts this week, The Other Cinderella. She currently lives and dances in the Salt Lake City, Utah area. When I met her in Portland, Oregon, I was enchanted by her magic, and how she captured it in her dance. I watched her dance alone for hours in someone’s basement just because she felt inspired to do it. Here’s what she sent me when I asked her about her dancing background:

I started getting serious about dancing when I was about 19. I started with swing and couldn’t get it out of my bones for years, then found salsa in my hips, and fell deeply in love.

Performing, I started with international folk dance performances in college, and realized that my favorite international dance was bellydance… so I learned how to perform it as a solo and in groups of women.

It was you, Amberlynn, who taught me about blues dance. I’ve found that hardly anyone does it or knows of it, and thus it seems to be that elusive dream on the dance horizon. That was seriously tasting heaven on earth for me.

Thank you, Emily, for sharing your magic with us this week. If you’d like to get to know her better, check out her blog, Soul of the Moon. (It’s a personal blog, not a dance blog.)