Cathy Park Kelly tells her story of domestic abuse, and the dance class that healed her

I lost myself in a dance of violence – and found myself again on the dancefloor.

I’ve always loved to dance. At six, I leapt around the lounge, as devil-maycare as Gene Kelly with his umbrella in Singin’ in the Rain. At 15, I choreographed one-woman shows in my bedroom, dramatic hair flips included, and belted out ‘What a Feeling’ into my microphonehairbrush. And at 26, I jived around my singlewoman flat in the dark, beer in hand, singing along to Marilyn Monroe’s throaty rendition of ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ and wishing I was more voluptuous. I met someone who loved music as much as I did. We fell in love, and two years later, moved in together, intending to get the whole world dancing to our tune.

But synchronicity eluded us, and gradually I surrendered my will to the insistent direction of this charismatic, charming man. He possessed astute insight into people and their inner workings – or so I thought. His moods became the centre around which I twirled. When he was happy, I felt no one danced better than us. When he was unhappy or critical, my steps faltered.

One afternoon, weighed down by the darkness of his mood, I tried something different. For a moment my old self, the one that used to twirl naked in her flat in the moonlight, grew brave and tossed her hair impatiently. I walked up to him and gave him a light-hearted squeeze. ‘It’s okay, you know. Things aren’t that bad. Let’s go and do something fun together. Lighten up a bit!’

He surged out of his chair. ‘Don’t tell me to lighten up, bitch! You don’t feel things like I do!’

He grabbed me by the throat and pushed me up against the lounge wall. I tried to loosen his grasp, but he squeezed harder and leaned in close. ‘You’re not the one who’s struggling to breathe,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘because their partner is a f*cking self-centered only child!’

And suddenly, I was treading on the sticky tiles of self-doubt, ashamed of my childish prancing.

And so our partner dance began to take a violent turn. He’d drag me by the hair, away from the kitchen window (where the neighbours could see) and into the lounge, and punch my skull (where the bruises didn’t show). I became a connoisseur of late-night cafés to escape to. I spent hours journalling, searching for ways to change my ways. I pored over self-help books, trying to bring a softer, peaceful rhythm to our togetherness.

One night, we’d been locked in a tense tango for hours; each time I sidestepped, he intercepted me, his rage tripping me up. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop our enmeshed moves, couldn’t break the awful pattern we were stuck in.

A part of me was dimly aware that he was grappling with his own ghosts. But as the dark hours dragged by, that little spark of knowing flickered and was eventually extinguished. I no longer knew or cared who I was.

‘You’re disgusting,’ he spat. ‘Just get away from me.’ He turned his back and slumped down on the couch. I wiped the warm, sour-smelling globule of spit off my cheek and escaped to the bathroom.

Shakily, I stepped into the shower, lathered soap into my hands and began to wash the tears and stale sweat away. I scrubbed his saliva off my face. I could feel the birdlike beat of my heart at the base of my throat. I switched off the taps and towelled myself dry.

Before I could step into my panties, the bathroom door burst open – the lock broken from the last fight – and he strode in, face dark. I tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. He gripped my shoulders and shook me, screaming into my face. ‘Stop. Being. So. F*cking. Passive. Aggressive!’

He grabbed a fistful of my wet hair and dragged me to his desk, where he reached over for something with his free hand. I tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but his grip was too strong. He pushed me onto the bedroom floor and sat astride me, wielding a thick red marker pen. The short pile carpet was scratchy against my back but he pinned me down, uncapped the pen and began to scrawl across my breasts. Hot tears rolled into my ears as the nib scratched across my skin.

And then, with one last stroke, it was over. I heard him washing his hands in the bathroom – he always did that, afterwards. Then the front door slammed and he was gone. I struggled to my feet and stood semi-naked in front of the full-length mirror.

One-syllable words, simple in their thick red ugliness, stared back at me.

SLUT. C*NT. WHORE.

Would we be stuck in this dance forever?

Then one day there was a notice on the corkboard of our apartment block downstairs. It read: ‘Flat to Rent. Contact #4.’

Suddenly, there was a crack in the door of the dark room I’d been closed up in. Perhaps this was it. This would bring more space in our togetherness.

And so I moved out, even though I told myself I wasn’t moving out, just getting some breathing space.

Behind that new door, three doors down from our flat, in that space that contained only a hand-me-down couch where I slept, my head began to clear.

I slept when tired, ate when hungry, cried when I needed to… I stared out at the river that wound past the window… and stopped thinking.

Days and weeks passed. I began to draw protective circles around myself. I locked the security gate when he came raging. I switched off my phone.

Slowly, the room stopped spinning. My body slowed and eventually stilled. The frenetic tune we had been dancing to faded. In its place, the steady pulse of my own heartbeat filled the room.

One dark night, I wrote a promise to myself in shining letters on the page: ‘No More.’

After a year, I emerged from my cave, blinking in the light, looking for the steps to a new solo dance.

Iarrived at my first Biodanza class with sweaty armpits and hands that shook a little. Kate, the facilitator, radiated joy. She welcomed me with a warm hug. I blushed. I watched as other dancers arrived, sweeping each other up in big hugs and filling the hall with uninhibited laughter.

Kate then invited us all into the circle, and we reached for our neighbours’ hands: the sweaty grip of a burly man on my right, the soft, dry grasp of a grey-haired woman on my left. A warm rhythm spilled out from the speakers and we began to move slowly in a circle.

The women around me stood gloriously in their own bodies. As they swayed, they raised their chins and made bold eye contact, smiles as broad as their hips. The men, far fewer than the women, ranged from tall and lanky to squat and earthy.

The first dance was to the happy tune of ‘Walking on Sunshine’. Step by step, my shy shadow fell further behind me. The self I remembered from Singin’ in the Rain beckoned me forward.

On the wooden floors of this weekly class I discovered the joy of dancing with other women, moving our bodies to the rhythm without needing words. A shared smile, an echoed hip sway, a light touch – all these made me feel more like a woman than I’d ever felt before. In the dance, my hips felt wider, my belly rounder, my breasts full and ripe.

The African, Spanish and South American beats pulled me out of my head. The shyness trickled out of me as I inhabited my body with delight.

One woman twirled around the room, swept up in her own private joy. An older man stomped stiffly in a corner, like an old warlock. A young couple swayed together, lost in the touch of skin on skin.

And then, one Tuesday night, Kate invited us to pair up. I found myself standing next to a tall, muscular man. ‘This is a dance of boundaries,’ Kate explained. ‘It’s a chance for each of you to resist the other, to push back, to protect your threshold.’ I faced him, my feet set apart, bare soles on the wooden floor. The heels of our palms pushed against each other as our eyes locked. Kate turned up the volume. A pounding melody filled the room. My forearms tensed, thigh muscles hardened as I resisted my partner’s advance. Beneath the beat of the drum, my body trembled. My pulse fluttered in my throat and my gaze flinched away from his. I swallowed tears as my body teetered on the threshold of fear.

But a stem of strength unfurled from my hips and grew along my spine, hardening my resolve. Something inside me formed the word ‘NO’. I gazed unwaveringly into his eyes, planted my feet into the ground, no longer retreating or flinching, and I pushed back. Steady. Relentless. My dance partner’s eyes widened a little and he blinked, once, twice, as he stepped back in the face of my silent ‘NO’.

Flooded with a sense of my own power, I reclaimed my body with every dance. My body had been violated, my sense of self shattered, and it was into those cracks that the music crept and worked its magic.

It was on those wooden floors that I remembered what it could be like to dance with a man. Not in the awful push and pull of violence, but in the joyful give and take when partners create a dance together. I remembered my love for maleness, the feel of coarse wrist hairs, the rasp of stubble. I rediscovered how good it can feel to be held by a man.

Four years later, I met a kind, quirky man who played the guitar and made me laugh. Our dance is not always a seamless salsa. Sometimes we’re out of step: I tread on his toes; he misses a beat. But it has an easy synchronicity. We now also have an eight-year-old curly-haired boy weaving between our legs, tripping us up and making us laugh.

But most importantly, what Biodanza gave me was myself. This is not to say that I’m always a fiery flamenco dancer in perfect harmony. There are times when I falter and forget the steps. But on most days, my hip sways are bold and wide. My feet stomp loudly on the floorboards. And I dance to the beat of my own drum.

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