I was praised for my movement in the classroom. The voice, the catwalk, my posture.

I was not asked, however, how I have developed this skill.

It was quickly eschewed as a natural gift and therefore unteachable. Reasoning through mystification, my skill is revealed and buried at the same time.

But if you ask me, I will tell you that this skill is neither natural nor eternal – even if it existed as latency before its manifestation. But, again, what exists that did not have a prehistory as latency?

I will tell you that I owe the way I move, not exclusively, but primarily to my dance teachers, to their movement and their sayings. Inspiration and mutual commitment. Pain and injury. Dance as labour.

Next, the ability to make connections between different spheres of life. This is the ability of the poet. Dance as poetry.

My explanation for my movement is thus as clear as a river tracing its path through stone.

But the avoidance of the question does not come from you yourself, but from capital.

For once we realise that dance can make one a better teacher, we begin to bring things into relation in a way that is not only different, but wholly opposed to how capitalist work does it. A work that works for value extraction through the colonisation of time and the exploitation of its people would have to contract, and make space-time for dance.

But even if we start thinking in relative terms, our general dependency on profit posits that dance will be subordinated to work. And dance will take forms grotesque and appalling, dancer of the month and new forms of measurement. Ugliness made out of beauty, the Absolute restored under the guise of relativity.

Perhaps not asking me was for the best.