Beyonce dancer, Dnay B. talked with xoNecole about her journey to FREEDOM. The dancer, who was engaged to her high school sweetheart broke off the engagement right before the Formation Tour, simply because she wasn’t happy and chose to walk away with her joy.
“I guess I really started becoming aware of my independence,” she confessed. “I knew I was over the relationship in February (two months before the first tour date of the Formation World Tour). It just took some time to build up the confidence to actually tell him… it took me those months to really deal with it.”
She continued,
“During the practice for ‘Freedom,’ we had to dance in the pool for the tour. And I am not a water girl, at all – I don’t do water; I don’t go to the pool; I don’t go to the sprinklers. I don’t do any of that,” Dnay laughed. “And I don’t know why the choreographers chose me to be the test dummy for the pool. So, we’re in this pool and [Beyonce] is like, ‘Oh, this is going to be perfect!’ And [at that moment], I fell. And when I fell, I sort of fell fast. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m drowning, I’m drowning!’” Disoriented, Beyonce offered her a word of assistance. “She was like, ‘Dnay, you’re standing straight up – open your eyes.’ I just felt like I was 10 feet underwater.”
“Every night that I did that performance, it was just so freeing,” she expressed. “I never felt sad… I just felt such a huge release every night, every time I hear that song, it just takes me back to that moment when I fell and I’m just standing up and I’m free. I’m not drowning, I’m not dead. I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t. [It was] a strong release of so many different emotions. It’s like you’re being baptized every night and just washing away all the negativity, all the sins, everything that’s wrong in your life. You just get to be free and pure after it.”
Dnay B. says she found joy leaving the relationship,
“[I was like] OK, this is what I want to do. This – [dancing] – is my goal. This is my path that I’m setting for myself; the outcome wasn’t really what he expected. So, his faith kind of fell through in a sense. And in the end, it was like, I’m not happy,” she added. “He was stressing me out because he wanted me to be home, he wanted me to be cooking, he wanted me to do this, and I was like, I can’t. I can’t be stressed out at home and then I’m stressed out trying to learn these steps on this floor. I can’t do both. I have to ultimately do what’s going to make me happy.”
“I felt like I was leaving behind sadness, doubt, negativity, frustration – just from being loved the wrong way. I can’t say he didn’t love me, but it wasn’t the love that I necessarily needed,” Dnay admitted. “I left behind so many different things. I left behind a lot of tears. And I just get to walk away with my joy. I feel like I found joy leaving the relationship. Because happiness is temporary, but when you find joy, it’s something that’s unexplainable.”
