Dancing it out

Do you remember the moment in your life when you saw your favorite show for the first time? For me, the first time I saw ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ was like a theoretical awakening. I was 14, visiting my aunt at her house in Phoenix Arizona. It was scalding hot outside, and I had nothing to do. My aunt had to go to work, but she showed me her DVD box sets of seasons 1-3 of Grey’s Anatomy and told me I could watch them if I wanted to.

I binged the first season in a day. I devoured the nine iconic episodes, hungrily, like I had been starving for days, and the only thing that could satiate my appetite was the Shonda Rhime’s medical drama before me. When my visit was over, I mentioned to my aunt how much I enjoyed the show, and she lovingly burned me CDs of the soundtracks to each season. Those CDs were my gateway to music giants like Jem, Wilco, and Tegan & Sara. At home, alone in my room I would put them into my 6 CD changing stereo and play them on repeat.

In an early episode of the series, best friends and surgical interns Christina Yang and Meredith Grey are seen ‘dancing it out’. The scene bonds the two women, who aren’t necessarily the best at expressing their feelings with words, and shows us as the audience that the power behind their friendship is that the twisted sisters actually don’t need words in order to understand one another. They flail their bodies with no inhibitions as “Where Does the Good go” by Tegan & Sara plays in the background. Over the course of the series, more ‘dance it out’ moments are manifested whenever different characters need to let out some steam, or come to terms with truly difficult circumstances.

At the end of my 11th grade school year, I met my very own ‘twisted sister’; my best friend Mayra. We bonded over many things, but one in particular was our love for the long running medical drama, (we both wanted to be nurses at the time). A long running joke between the two of us is that she is the Christina Yang to my Meredith Grey, and the similarities in personality are actually uncanny. But I think we are most similar to these fictional characters in the sense of the power of our bond. We’ve never needed tons of words between the two of us, in fact with just one look we can tell what the other is thinking, even feeling. We’ve been friends for over 10 years now, and even though we now live on opposite sides of the country, our bond is still as tight as ever.

The last season I watched of Grey’s Anatomy was season 10, where in the finale, Christina Yang moves to Switzerland to embark on a new job. It’s the last time Meredith and Christina dance to their song ‘Where Does the Good go’. The scene is only 4 minutes long, but it is so powerful in understanding the dynamic of these two beloved characters and how they used dancing as a way to relieve the stress of their personal lives. Something I’ve learned from these two characters is that music can be a way to release the floodgates of emotions we build up in ourselves over days, weeks, or even months. On days when I really need to be outside of myself and not think about pressures or difficulties in my life, I only need to go to a playlist on my phone, stand in my underwear in the middle of my bedroom, and dance it out.