Dancing after the COVID pandemic helped me embrace my full queer self

The dance floor always felt comfortable to me, at a wedding or a club, acting as an invitation to lose myself to the beat and move my body however it was meant to. Little did I know that reigniting this passion after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic would be integral in better understanding my identity and building my now-plentiful LGBTQ+ community in the City of Angels.

My COVID-19 experience also came with a move 1,000 miles from Denver to Los Angeles in September 2020, where I essentially hit the reset button on my community with my first full year as an Angelino spent mostly in my own company during the shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders.

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In January 2021, I came out as nonbinary.  At the same time, I was in the process of redefining what the “queer” label I had latched onto for years meant for me — namely that my sexuality was more in line with being bi/pansexual.

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Exploring these personal elements and how they informed my reality and life as a whole was challenging due to the solitary nature of my life. At this point I was still primarily alone in my apartment and, while I had community support online, it didn’t feel sufficient to fully traverse this new world of exploration. 

In late 2021 and early 2022, I jumped on the opportunity to share space with other LGBTQ+ folks as vaccines were introduced and a few parties opened their doors again, mostly recurring queer events at clubs around LA that centered alternative electronic musicians. I’d made a couple local friends online through Instagram and TikTok acting as a bit of a lifeboat to explore these queer-run parties and lineups. 

These spaces were electrifying. They brought crowds that felt fully uninhibited in the realm of expression. Every part of the community was represented, and no one seemed unafraid to be fully themselves.

While I was initially only brave enough to traverse them among friends, dancing with other LGBTQ+ folks felt like a necessity in my life after breaking the seal. In 2023, I resolved to go out alone more often to meet that need rather than depending on friends to help make me feel more brave. Gradually, I remembered my likable, extroverted nature among strangers, perhaps hit with a pandemic regression leaving me more reluctant to socialize than I had been before.

During my debut solo dance event the first week of January, I made it a goal to simply start a conversation with others there. As I first began traversing dance spaces on my own, pushing past the discomfort to socialize was my main priority — I trusted my gut instincts and approached people whose style or demeanor felt comforting. I latched onto “Who are you here to see?” or a compliment on an outfit. Sure enough, it was enough to get folks talking, even to make friends for the night and connect on Instagram to link up again. 

It became clear that so many around me were similarly eager for connection and reluctant to make the leap. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to build community or fully explore my newly realized identity with my fellow queers if I didn’t put in the effort to practice being a human out in the world again. Almost every time I talked to someone brand new, they were immediately friendly and receptive. Whether we hung out the whole night after chatting or just left it at the conversation, I was regularly met with a warmth that quelled my previous insecurities.

I can’t begin to explain how much my community has blossomed since the start of 2023 with this goal in mind. Being confident enough to push past the initial discomfort and traverse new spaces alone instilled a renewed sense of self-assurance alongside a steadily expanding group of friends.

I gradually found and regularly attended parties fostering a wide array of folks from the community — myriad identities and backgrounds while still sharing that warmth of being a fellow LGBTQ+ person. This felt like the expansive community I always craved when I envisioned life in LA, all-encompassing rather than one subset: gay and sapphic folks alike, all races, ages, and a wide array of gender expression that felt truly safe as a newly out nonbinary person. 

These were some of the first spaces where I was introducing myself as a nonbinary person, and these more expansive LGBTQ+ crowds have always provided a greater sense of safety and affirmation than some other queer (and obviously non-queer) spaces I’ve traversed since. 

Getting that immediate assurance among my community, especially in those early days, surely gave me more confidence to embrace my identity and expression unapologetically, alongside the simple act of dance itself.

The dance floor has allowed me so much self-exploration during this transformative period, to move in friendly or more intimate manners with folks of all genders, to experiment with my fashion and gender expression, and to fully own previously latent elements of myself as the music moves me on the dance floor. 

Though I was out and proud through my teens and 20s, I leaned into my proximity to masculinity—perhaps as a lifeboat, with a perception of safety or palatability overshadowing my true self. Since I was a kid, I haven’t fully identified with either binary gender, though I always felt more aligned with femininity even though I rarely expressed it.

Dancing truly allowed me to relish in softness, sensuality, femininity as I shake my hips, expressively move my hands and arms, working my own stationary runway to the beat. Simultaneously, dance has offered me avenues to forge space, to feel dominant and assertive, to own those elements of myself that might be coded as more masculine, right alongside everything else I am. 

It’s hard to explain how losing yourself to a good DJ set or live electronic performance can be therapeutic or cathartic. I’ve left many of these spaces feeling more compassion for and better understanding my authentic self. Trusting my body and its expression as I move has offered me a broader capacity for self love, ushering in gentleness to continue exploring and actualizing my identity and place in the world.

The understanding that I can take up space on the dance floor, embrace the collective energy of those around me — and needn’t worry about how I might look or how I’m being perceived — allowed me more freedom to adopt the same mentality as I moved through the rest of my life ushered in an immense amount of freedom in living and exploring my full self.

During a Pride-themed, queer-run techno rave this past June, alongside a good dozen-plus of these new friends under one warehouse roof, one candidly praised my genuine energy on the dance floor, disregarding the perceptions of others while also giving those around me permission to do the same. A few weeks later, a stranger told me I had a “giving” energy on the dance floor as we proceeded to follow either on Instagram out on the smoking patio. These instances always act as a reminder that I’m doing something right despite lingering insecurity.

In trusting that I can build community by simply being myself and seeing, in action, that I will find my people — without putting on a mask or attempting to make myself smaller to be what I perceive others want from me — it’s allowed me to better bring those same principles into my everyday life. 

This ultimately led to a wide range of expression in my everyday life: embracing more skirts, crops, softer color palettes, certain hairstyles as my hair grew out — though it also left room for the more “masculine” coded pieces of my expression that I might have been more quick to shove aside when I first came out for fear of being misunderstood. Over time, I simply became less afraid of being understood or that everyone “saw” me as nonbinary, given the truth I knew for myself and the affirmation I found in those who truly mattered.

Dance has made me feel so much more grounded in my gender, my queer identity, and my sense of self. It’s an essential human experience that has historically brought LGBTQ+ folks together and grants permission, if only for a few hours, to focus solely on the warmth around me and the beat in my ears, in turn quieting the often overbearing noise life may berate us with. 

It’s changed the way I carry myself and offered a bit more trust in navigating my sense of self, the way I explore change and growth, as my old and new experiences continue to shape my life and personhood.

I’m in the midst of a tumultuous career shift and, like many Americans, find myself at odds with the current state of the economy, inflation, and the myriad powers working against the LGBTQ+ community. Knowing I have a family to return to in these spaces and that I can always make time to let those worries fade offers a certain solace and renewal.

I have an unending gratitude for the music that carried me through my confused teen and young adult years and the freedom of moving my body to it as the catalyst that shaped my new life and community, now bustling with chosen family and warmth both on and off the dance floor. I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.

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