Katie Rivard
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
So a few years ago, I decided to move on my own from Boston to Tucson, Arizona in July. And the trip was ominous. My car broke down twice. I got there. It was 120 degrees. It was brown. Everything looks like Mars to me because I'm from Michigan. And so I spent the first two weeks on my own just watching Amy Schumer's train wreck over and over in the theaters and crying to myself.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
But I moved out there for a teaching job, and I felt pretty confident in my teaching abilities. I'd been teaching for a while, and so I thought, I've got this. But then the school year started, and I realized that the school I had signed up to teach at was similarly a train wreck. And I switch into type A teacher mode. I'm doing anything I can to get control back into my life.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
cutting up tennis balls and putting them on the bottom of chairs so there's no extra noise with the already excessive noise that's going on in my classroom. But I'm struggling. And there's one student in particular, I'm gonna call her Maria for the sake of anonymity, and we're just not seeing eye to eye.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
She's taking those tennis balls I'm carefully cutting up and like throwing them at people and at me. And so I do what anyone does when you're struggling in your job. I decide to fulfill my childhood dream to become a dancer. And there's a local dance studio and they have auditions for an adult dance company. So I think this is great. This is what I'm gonna do with my time here.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so I go to the audition and I'm wearing this like large gray AmeriCorps t-shirt and soccer shorts from the last time I worked out when I was in high school. And I'm like remembering how do I stretch, you know? And there are people doing stretches I've never seen before. Because University of Arizona is down the road and it's actually like a really good dance school.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so the students go there to cross train. And so this song comes up for the audition, and it's called Bury Me, and the beat drops, and it's going really quickly, and I'm like, okay, Katie, you've got this, like, stand in the back, blend in, you're wearing gray, it's going to be fine. And then I realized that they're calling up people in small groups, like groups of four.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so they call me up, and I bumble through, and at the end, I'm like, I just want to book it out of here. When Todd, the studio owner, comes up to me, And he's larger in stature and used to be a prominent dancer in LA. And he was like, Katie, that was amazing. We'll see you Wednesday. I was like, OK, this is how I'm going to spend my time.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so the worse things got with school, the more I turned to dance. My co-teacher, who was teaching eighth grade, she had previously taught preschool. She quit after two weeks. And I took ballet one. And then the principal who hired me and brought me to the school was also fired.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
Then I took jazz one and jazz one was with Todd and I still remember the first class there's like a turn sequence I don't know how to do and so I'm just like holding my arms up and spinning and feeling really free and he's like beautiful Katie you got this and so I become like a Todd disciple I'm like anything you do I'm there.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so after a particularly bad day at school, it was Dia de los Muertos, which is celebrated pretty widely in Tucson. And we had an altar at our school where kids could write up names of loved ones that they had lost. And so this girl, Maria, who I was struggling with, chose to write my name in Sharpie all over.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so after crying in the teacher's lounge like you do when that happens, I went to dance. And Todd had a class. And so this particular class, we were dancing to a song from The Waitress.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And so we hadn't heard the music yet, and he positions us around the studio, and he says, stand in the mirror, look only at yourself, and I want you to start, as the music comes on, just pretending you're getting ready for work and doing your ordinary, like, life things. So I'm, like, pretending to put on my cardigan and put my hair into a bun because lice is an occupational hazard as a teacher.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And the music comes on. And the lyrics are saying, most days I don't recognize me because the shoes and this apron, the place and its patrons have taken more than I gave them. And I'm hearing this like looking at myself and I'm realizing that in becoming this teacher that I had been for many years at that point, I had lost track of Katie. I had become like fully Ms.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
Rivard and I didn't know who Katie was anymore and I wanted her back. And so I started to cry and I'm like crying as I'm going through this entire piece. And so Todd always like sits us down in front of the mirror afterwards and talks to us. And then he is like going down the line and he stops me and he's like, Katie, that was fucking amazing. I'm just like, yes, yes.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
And I decided I wanted to make a change. So I went back to school and I changed my discipline system. I decided to be way less buttoned up and just kind of laugh, enjoy it more, be more myself. And things got a lot better. They got a lot messier, but they got a lot better. And one day Maria came up to me and I rolled in typical eighth grade fashion and she's like, why don't you hate me?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
Like, I'm terrible to you and I don't like you. I kind of was like, you keep it interesting. And she laughed, and I laughed, and things got a lot better. A lot came to light that was going on in her home life, and I was able to kind of build a trust with her that Ms. Rivard, teacher self, wouldn't have been able to do.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
But as Katie, we were able to kind of form a connection, and we're still in touch to this day. So while Ms. Rivard was a total train wreck, Katie had a pretty good year.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
I continued taking dance classes for a while and dabbled with a lot of different styles. But I recently moved and there aren't a ton of dance classes available for adults where I am right now. But I do really hope to find a studio in the future. It was just such a fun community to be a part of. That said, I still frequently dance in my living room and I keep working on my turns.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
Someday I will land a clean triple. Someday. Taking up dance classes as an adult really taught me a lot, primarily how to be at home in my body, which has helped me just overall to feel more at home with myself. When I first started taking the dance classes, I was worried that my lack of skill or the fact that I had 10 plus years on the people I was dancing with could lead to humiliation.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Putting on our Dancing Shoes
But it was actually quite freeing. It gave me the confidence to try new things despite my fears, which actually led to me putting my name in the hat at the Moth Story Slam.