Dancer in the dark

An outsider finds her place with professionals

Caitlin Corbett Dance Company member Kaela Lee (center) performs with non-professional dancers in ''Tom's Wealth: A Dance for the Masses.'' (photos by Akos Szilvasi)

CAMBRIDGE - When I looked in the mirror, my elbows were not where they should be.

"Elbows up," instructed Caitlin Corbett, choreographer, dancer, and director of her eponymous dance company. I looked around the room at the 34 other people in the studio. Their arms were more or less at right angles to their bodies. I lifted my drooping elbows, and Caitlin nodded. She was definitely singling out my impaired kinesthesia.

My role in Corbett's newest work, "Tom's Wealth: A Dance for the Masses," inspired by a passage from "Tom Sawyer," was turning out to be trickier than I had imagined. Her call for what she terms "non-dancers" to perform the piece - which arrived in my in-box last winter - made it sound much simpler: All I had to do was sit, stand, run, and count. After reading her e-mail I felt a surge of confidence: I could do that! After a year spent at home caring for my baby I was ready to reclaim my body for myself a little, even if it were just for a few hours every Sunday.

To my advantage, I am a veteran Corbett performer. In 2004 I skipped in "Joycie's Pie," and in 2006 I danced to Marvin Gaye in "Flutter" without any major mortification. Before that I hadn't practiced dance since junior high school, when I quit taking ballet from a former dancer who taught in the mirrored basement of her Melrose home. The lectures I received there, about how I was squandering the gift of my freakishly arched feet, turned me off, and I hadn't even seen many dance performances since. When a friend suggested that my husband and I come with her to watch a performance by Corbett and her company more than 10 years ago, my explorations into contemporary dance had been limited to Mummenschanz (baffling and, well, frightening) and Mark Morris (a cool, intellectual pleasure).

Watching Corbett's company perform from my folding chair on a riser at Cambridge's Green Street Studios, I had nothing less than a conversion experience. There were no non-dancers performing that night, only traditionally trained permanent members of Corbett's company. The movement was as disciplined as ballet, but more open and sensuous. I saw the classical line of ballet (imagine a string lifting you from the top of your head, as my ballet teacher would say) break as dancers dipped their shoulders and their torsos swooped toward the floor. They seemed to move in an alternate universe governed by different physical laws. Yet pedestrian gestures rooted the dance in the everyday: They covered their mouths with their palms, they stretched their shirts away from their bodies. Sometimes, after finishing intricate combinations, they simply walked across the stage. After that night I was hooked.

I wrote my first fan letter, and Corbett wrote back. She was restaging a piece she had choreographed for non-dancers that involved a lot of skipping - would I be interested?

I figured this was my chance: Lack of natural ability might impede my dancing career, but as a non-dancer there was nothing I couldn't (not) do. Before rehearsals started I worried that I wouldn't remember how to dance at all, but it turns out my experience was holding me back. The first day of rehearsal I pointed a toe, and Corbett noticed: "Somebody took ba-llet," she said, smiling. I never pointed my toes again.

And though the critics ignored my part in "Joycie's Pie" it was an unqualified personal success. As I learned to skip in formation I got to know Caitlin's cozy community of performers - former students, friends of friends, parents of her children's friends, one of her sisters. Rehearsals were natural mood-elevators: Just try to skip and think morose thoughts. During the performances I felt the same anxious buzz that I remember from when I sashayed across the stage of a dusty junior high school auditorium.

In "Tom's Wealth," I move beyond my early work as a skipper. The hourlong piece has 16 sections, 10 of which feature non-professionals - men, women, and children. Some of them are less green than others; there are teenagers who have danced since they were children and those, like me, who have not danced since they were children. There are athletes and ex-dancers moving among people who have never set foot on a stage. Five members of Corbett's company are sprinkled among the rest of us.

We non-dancers run, fall, roll, and lean in groups of three, five, nine. In a clump upstage, we gesture. From my place in the cluster I can see the nape of a neck, a shoulder, a ponytail, and these pieces of bodies have become familiar, nearly familial to me. We lean into one another. Much later we peel away from one another, lie on the floor, and roll very slowly.

This is harder than it sounds. Counting out the music - contemporary rearrangements of American folk songs, composed for the performance by Chris Eastburn - keeps tripping me up. One composition sounded familiar, but it took me more than an hour to recognize the melody as "Rock-a-bye Baby," played very, very slowly. But my biggest struggle has been sticking to Corbett's motto: Don't make it meaningful. What she hopes is that the amateurs will keep the movement looking natural. Unfortunately, overthinking is my forte, and I show all that tension in my face and hands; who knew that one of the side effects of anxiety is compulsive jazz hands?

I envy Corbett's dancers and their nimble brains, loaded with muscle memory. Watching them learn their parts, marking the steps so they remember with their bodies, I realize it is not only the dancing, but also the thinking that separates the dancers from the amateurs. While my brain and body fight, they listen to the music and trust their bodies to move.

After six months of rehearsals I have learned the steps, but I am anxious about the performance. Sometimes I let myself stop counting and just dance; I am trying to string together these moments in time for the show. But if I chew my lip, smile nervously or - God forbid - point my toes, I will be satisfied with what my body has learned. When the performances are over I want to remember the joy of the dance as I move through my life. If I forget the idea of everyday grace - as I climb stairs, lift a box, push a swing, or reach for my son - I trust that my body will remember.