My Two Worlds Collide

Last night, after working all day I came home to seven fabulous young people that were collectively cooking a meal for us all to share.   These young people happen to be dance majors at The University of Hartford and they are staying with me while they attend The American College Dance Festival at the University of Massachusetts.  Which makes this the week in which my worlds collide!

Two days a week I am at The University of Hartford’s Hartt School working in the dance department, teaching Movement Fundamentals, Issues in Pedagogy, and Pilates.  I have an office, and I see students there and then move to the studios when its time to teach class.   My office is on the musical theater side of the building and the background to my work is every musical theater major singing an amalgam of musical theater repertoire (sometimes at the top of their lungs) as they walk down the hallway.  I even stood outside my office and watched a student running down the hall as fast as he could in tap shoes.  Not a site that everyone sees on the job.  I’ve been there long enough that I have become friends with colleagues and seen kids grow from doe eyed freshman to near professional seniors that I can’t wait to call colleagues.  I’ve comforted and scolded, collaborated and lectured, been amazed and dumbfounded…That is one world.

The rest of the week I am at The Pilates Studio. I am teaching people how to move, hearing about new feats accomplished, making life long friends in clients that tell me their stories.  At The Pilates Studio I am learning more and more about this thing we call life through the eyes of bright and amazing people that share their world with me.  I am hearing of a grandchild’s birth and then 12 years later, I get to hear about his bar mitzvah.  I get to watch friendships develop because people see each other at the same time every week.  Where else in the world would a Vegan Chef, an Art professor, a retired ESL educator, and a therapist realize that they were all turning 60 within a month of each other and decide to have a birthday party to which they invite their pilates instructor? And who knew it would become a yearly tradition 7 years strong? I’m going to have to say nowhere! At The Pilates Studio, I am also constantly bantering and collaborating with my dearest friend and business partner, watching her brilliance shine in everything she does…That is my other world.

So what happens when they collide, when The Hartt students come to see my other world, when they meet Jim whose 82 years old and one of the strongest people I know.  We had fun, my students got to put a face to the name of Laurie Johnson, I got to eat a fabulous meal and discuss dance as an artform while eating cheese of course!  So not too much unless you consider the most profound thing that I’ve realized, when two worlds collide, tribes are expanded, connections are made, minds are opened, and the entire world becomes a much better place!  What are your worlds?  And how might you be able to get them to collide?

Katrina Hawley, C.M.A, PMA-CPT

Director of Instruction at The Pilates Studio