UMA fam heather wrote a very moving letter to uma <3

Learning about learning: A Love Letter to UMA and to Imperfection 
UMA Homie Heather (who made the dope "Seduce Yourself" poster featured below and is just generally a badass at making things, dancing, teaching Spanish and so much more) shared a reflection on learning, vulnerability and embracing imperfection that centers around her experience at UMA. Heather is a shining example of a community member that goes after their goals while also uplifting and supporting the rest of the community. We're so lucky to have people like Heather in our midst! ​

(Shout out to UMA fam Julia D. on the left in the pic with the puppets!)

Learning about learning: A Love Letter to UMA and to Imperfection   

My first experience at UMA involved me standing in the back corner of the studio watching my body move in the mirror. Spastic, erratic, and stiff.  It was a house class, and I was mortified. I had a small crisis, contained to the few speckled white floor tiles where I stood.  I was quick to make jokes about how terrible and how sweaty I was, to beat others to the chase. I muttered them to the people beside me any chance I got. This has been my M.O. over the years—self deprecating armor. In a way the armor works. It also prevents me from trying anything wholeheartedly. I suffered through to the end of class, relieved to be able to get out of there. 

It went on like that for a few classes. One mortifying experience after another.  One more hour of watching my body do something very different from what I was asking it to. At some point I stopped cracking jokes about how bad I was, mostly because no one seemed to care much. Honestly no one was really looking at me in class at all.  Sometimes I’d get to class early and eat a snack that I’d bought in the deli downstairs and I’d watch people practice. The people practicers ranged from being brand new to the teachers whose artistry was, and still is, otherworldly to me. Over time I let myself genuinely try in class. And I started to get the hang of some movements. That felt good. Then I got the hang of a few more. Each time I learned something I had more evidence that getting it was possible, because I had gotten things before.  It went on like that in a loop: movement, progress, confidence and so on.  

As my vocabulary grew, I started to be able to decode the movement of dancers that hung around that I admired. I started to see their movements in their smallest units, little steps strung together and made personal by the way their particular bodies tended to move.  Before this I just thought that dance was magic, and it is, but not the kind that I thought. Not the kind that you are born with —or not —but the kind that you go building.  Developing over the course of many hours of linking small learned things together, of messing around with friends, of practicing in the lobby before class while shy new dancers eat snacks nearby and try to play it cool like they aren’t watching you intently.  
   
About a year into going to UMA regularly, they hosted a series called “Working on It”. A cabaret of sorts in which people showed pieces they were working on that were at varying stages of development. Again, demystifying the creative process. Watching these shifted something in me, allowing me to see people’s unfinished works. And again, witnessing people that I had come to know in class letting themselves be seen as they were. 

Somewhere in the intersection of these experiences I learned something other than movement. Or rather, movement became the vehicle through which I could practice vulnerability in a concrete way: over and over in a room full of sweaty people.  People say things all the time like “believe in yourself” or “be more confident.”  And I always agree, but never knew how.  Understanding this process has opened up a whole creative world for me.  I’ve been able to teach myself things with a new fluency, and a new joy. 

It was on the train home from a Working on It that I decided to make my own puppet show. Because, why not me? And a year later I did — an imperfect, falling apart, beautiful, DIY, earnest, clumsy puppet show in my living room. The cast was populated by people that I know through UMA.  Friends from UMA filled the audience. Here, another stepping stone in that movement- progress- confidence cycle. This summer, I will be publishing a book of short stories. This, yet again, terrifies me, but the terror is now something I’m better acquainted with. When I was writing out my thank you’s at the end of the book I felt compelled to include everyone at UMA, for teaching me how to stick with myself through all of my imperfection. For screaming “YOU BETTER GET IT” at full volume every time I got up the nerve to close my eyes and jump into the middle of a cypher.