We find the dance studio up a dimly lit set of stairs. A man with deep wrinkles and a scraggly gray beard greets us, backlit by string lights hung along the mirrors. We pen our names on liability waivers as he lays out the evening for us.

“We’ll start with a welcome circle, then a warmup. After that we dance until nine.”

V and I are among the first to arrive. V, a new friend I met a couple weeks ago, plops down in the middle of the floor to stretch. Their legs bounce in butterfly position, excitement palpable. I flash them a smile to hide the fact that my brain is begging me to flee while I can. 

From the ages of five to eighteen I was a dancer. Class six days a week plus hours of rehearsal plus the whole weekend blocked off for every competition, show, and choreographer visit. But a few times a year we would deviate from our tight schedule and explore contact improv—a dance style in which you and a partner meld your bodies against each other in an improvised duet of infinite potential. I remember those days as pure joy, movement and connection without the oppressive burden of right or wrong. Despite this joy, and despite knowing about this weekly LA contact improv jam for years, I only had the courage to come with the help of an eager soul like V. 

V and I lunge and straddle as the regulars trickle into the room. Most are lithe dancer types, their bodies shrouded in loose linen pants and even looser t-shirts. There are some muscular men—one so muscular I think he must have been a linebacker in a past life—and some gray-haired dancers who are at least in their sixties. 

V is not tracking the incoming dancers as closely as I am. That’s because V is tall and skinny with modelesque proportions, and I am waiting to see if I will be the only fat person in the room. 

I was weight obsessed throughout my childhood. I’m not skinny like the other dancers, but at least I’m not fat. I’m okay as long as I’m not a size large. As long as I fit in the costume. As long as I'm under 150. And then, in the pandemic, after going from 20 hours of dance a week to being locked inside, my body reached a new equilibrium on the other side of fat. I was surprised to find relief in this development. Once I was actually fat I couldn’t worry about becoming fat. But despite my aspirations towards body neutrality, my weight is one of the reasons I have not taken a dance class in almost four years. Being in the studio again throws me back into childhood, worrying desperately about being bigger than the other dancers. 

And then, finally, a fat woman walks in. She is about my size. Thick in the stomach with powerful limbs. The woman folds herself into a group of regulars who welcome her with hugs. Just like that, my biggest fear for the night is nullified.

A chime rings out. The few dozen dancers in the room amble into a wide circle for introductions, then lay down on the floor to begin the warmup. 

“Release your body. Give your weight to the floor and feel it holding you up,” says the man leading the warmup, who I cannot see now that I am fully horizontal. One by one, I release the muscles in my body. My fingers, forearms, thighs, shoulders, neck, and finally my stomach fall loose and heavy. The floor takes my unsupported weight with the same solidity as ever. 

We slowly work our way back into musculature, first rolling loosely then pushing ourselves off the ground. Though I’ve done this type of warmup many times, everything feels foreign in this new body that doesn’t fold or move or stretch the way it used to. Dancing now is like trying to speak with someone else’s mouth. 

“Feel how you rise as you push your weight down into the floor,” says the warmup leader. I welcome the chance to devolve to baby level thinking. I rebuild movement from the beginning, really really considering how my new body transports itself from one shape to the other. As we congeal off upwards then melt down again, flowing through levels of movement, I begin to find my footing. 

Before long we are standing and walking around the space. 

“Say hello to someone around you,” says the leader, but no one speaks. Instead, people draw close to one another, squeeze away the negative space between them, and rub shoulders gently. My shoulder says hello to a man, another woman, and the fat woman I have been tracking again since we rose to our feet. 

“Find a partner. Go back-to-back.” 

I find myself against the cliff-like back of a muscular man. In front of me I see V with their back against a woman a head shorter than them and at least thirty years older.

“Now push,” the leader says. 

Immediately the man behind me presses into my back. Scared, I lean only a little. His feet stumble. I realize that, having given his weight to me fearlessly, he cannot stay up without my weight in return. I press into him fully. We are off-balance from ourselves but perfectly balanced together. This is what it means to make a gift of your mass. V, skinny and wearing socks, glides around the room with the older woman’s legs running behind them like wings. 

For the next two hours there is no music, no structure, and no directive but to connect with each other. I playfully hop from foot to foot with a dancer in front of me, trying to match our imprecise rhythms. I follow one dancer’s hand up, down, and across the room with a whole group of worshipers. I roll over someone’s body on the floor like they’re a log, then we switch places and repeat. 

More experienced dancers melt effortlessly into the spontaneous, athletic lifts that are the hallmark of contact improv. No matter the size difference between them, they always find a way to lift each other. I quickly catch on to the role of a base. I flip the muscular man who was my first partner onto my back triumphantly. His weight, perfectly balanced on top of me, feels like nothing. We corkscrew around each other and, because he is so muscular, I allow him to wrap his arm across my middle and spin my feet off the ground. With my momentum and his strength, I skate across air in a moment of weightlessness that is equal parts thrilling and terrifying. 

Later, I dance with a woman whose wrinkled skin hangs loose off her arms. She appears frail, but has surprising strength as she presses into me. Still, when she bends into downward dog to allow me to drape myself across her back, I linger with my stomach held and my feet on the floor. 

“You can give me your weight,” she whispers from the upside-down fortress she has made of her body. 

“I’m working on it,” I say. In my old body perhaps I would’ve been small enough to confidently rely on her strength. But no—back then I was obsessed with being less. Only in my new body have I gained the freedom to be unafraid of my weight, to see my body mass as a blessing. I relax onto the woman. She holds me on her back like a mountainside. 

When the chime rings out signaling the end of the jam, I am heaped in a pile with other exhausted dancers. V’s feet crisscross mine. My head is resting on the soft pillow of the other fat woman’s stomach. Her hand is playing through my hair and she is humming quietly. People here identify her by the love she radiates, not by her size. I’m so grateful to her for existing in this space and showing me that I can too. I never thought dance, the thing that first made me think my body would be worth more if I was smaller, would give me a new appreciation for my fatness. But here I am three hours of contact improv later, considering that the more weight you have to give the more weight you can support. That we only rise by pushing our weight into the floor. I realize now that dance can be something that makes me love my body as a vessel for motion and connection at any size, and it is only my new, fat body that’s allowed me to access that freedom.