Let it be known—I’m not a dancer.  At least not a professional one.  But I never let that stop me from dancing around Los Angeles!  So when this year’s Star Wars Day approached, I knew I had to take another shot at dancing in honor of The Wars.  I danced in Union Station for last year’s Star Wars Day and it was a little crazy but a lot of fun.  A couple months ago, I came across an amazing remix of John Williams’ “Binary Sunset” by a group called Coyote Kisses.  Their “Binary Suns” is an incredible song and after listening to it nonstop, I knew that this was the track I had to dance to.

For this year’s Star Wars Day dance video, I danced to the entire song backwards.  Then in the editing process I reversed the footage to give it a more stylized (and kinda creepy) effect.  The challenge was trying to choreograph an entire routine backwards to a backward version of the song.  It was practically impossible to hear the beat!  (Not to mention, I can barely choreograph a routine forward!)  Ideally I wanted my dancing to be rhythmically in sync when the music played forward in the final version.  I spent 5 hours trying to put together some sort of routine but…Laurieann Gibson I am not.

On May 2^nd, my cameraman BF and I headed to Venice Beach around 5pm to start filming.  Despite all my planning, I ended up forgetting most of my dance routine and just went with how the music made me feel.  I figured that what I lacked in skill, I’d make up for it with heart!  Because that’s all this video is about—my passion for Star Wars.  It’s strange but there’s something cathartic about going to a public place and unabashedly showing who you are and what you’re passionate about.  And it’s always especially interesting to see how passersby will react to my spastic dancing.  Venice Beach is known for it’s wacky crowd so my dancing seemed to fit right in!

Now I gotta be honest.  These Star Wars dance experiments both thrill and scare me.  Sure, it’s cathartic while I’m dancing but I’m often terrified before I start.  Truth be told, I’m somewhat of a shy person.  For many of my Padawan years, I used my shyness as a way to be invisible so I wouldn’t get picked on or bullied.  I was a scrawny Mexican-American kid who liked Star Wars, Carol Burnett, and Frank Sinatra.  You can imagine how popular I was.  But as I grew older, I learned to embrace my weird ticks and quirks because they’re here to stay and quite frankly, I like them.  In the words of Sammy Davis Jr., “I Gotta Be Me“.

So why do I dance for Star Wars?  I dance for the girl who dreamed of living in a galaxy far, far away because the underdogs always won.  I dance for the girl who has found her tribe with countless other fans who understand and share her passion.  I dance because I love Star Wars.

[Check out the finished video by clicking on the photo above!]