I like to dance. I have the most fun when I go out dancing.
I am saddened by how dance has been minimized. Our culture is almost too noisy with music penetration. Knoxville has a great music scene; people love concerts and apparently some of us cannot even go to class or do homework without being plugged into our iPods. It is in restaurants, on the Internet and just about everywhere else. It is daily the subject of too many conversations to count, and it is the focus of huge departments in universities.
And it should be. Music runs deep down into the roots of human experience. We do not list music as a need on par with food, water and shelter, but name me a society that did not develop it. Music must always be kept alive, for it is tied to our souls and our souls seem to cry out for it.
When I go to church, I understand the purpose of music: edification — unity in sentiment with others and an expression of what language alone cannot express.
As much as we love music, I rarely hear people sing. Being from a church with no instruments, I am happy to say that I can sing whenever I choose and often do. The shower, the street, the car, in church, with friends out to eat — nothing is off-limits. You can sing at funerals, weddings, birthdays and everywhere else — if you have the right song. Maybe not in a court-of-law, but you would not dance there for that matter.
What about dance? Is dance not as fundamental to human existence as walking? And dance, like acapella, requires no special equipment, yet like an orchestra dance can benefit from elaborate aids like choreography, costume or a slick wooden floor.
Recently, Native American warriors and dancers came to UT to demonstrate the Eagle Dance, the Bear Dance and other dances unique to this land we live in.
This Saturday is the Diwali Celebration, which will include Indian song and dance (see the Entertainment Calendar for details). Dance is a cultural thing — I myself have danced a Japanese folk dance wearing a yukata.
The International House offers dance lessons, one of its most-loved and most-attended programs.
We ought to take advantage of these things, even classes like Social Dance. Dance seems to be getting beat by just listening to music right now. But dance is a healthy exercise, and more importantly, it is music in the motion of the human body and the response of the body to music. It is a soulful thing and an artistic thing.
Dance gets a bad reputation from high school, where it is often marred by being used as a tool for nothing more than physical contact and something short of sex, driven by a sexual drive. But that is not dance in essence. I am not saying that lovers could not find passion in dance, but dance is an expression of the heart, not a means to a different end. You dance to dance, if you dance at all.
In the Bible, King David dances at the temple for joy before God. How did dance get mixed up with what we might call sin? I call it wrong to have so much joy in you that you want to dance but do not. Let the world see your energy, passion, excitement and joy. The world needs joy by the truckload.
When I go to Fiction in the Old City, I do not find myself in a seedy techno-electronica underworld. I find myself among kindred dancers who come to display their skills on the floor. We breakdance. Call it what you will, but breakdancing is an athletic challenge and discipline of the highest order and takes dance to a whole realm above ballroom. By the way, breakdancers have been called in to perform in front of the Pope at the Vatican.
At Fiction, we feed off each other’s energy, and there is an unspoken camaraderie in that and in mutual respect of what we each perform. I stand aside and watch, as a musician listens to his favorite bands for inspiration. Then, as that musician goes to write his own song, I step into the circle and put my body into the dance.
In many ways, for me, dance is more than a song. A song involves my lips and my lungs. But when I dance, it involves all of me from head to toe, even what I am wearing. It is not the perception of air going through time and space and resounding and reflecting; it is me moving through time and space, bouncing and spinning and joining the music or becoming visually the song in my heart.
Popping in ear phones and sitting back to listen to a song may take you out of your troubles, but getting geared up, going to a venue, stretching and breaking out into dance in a sea of dancers takes you far away from it all. The body becomes the instrument. Sweaty, yes. Tired and sore the next day, yes. But dance can leave you feeling pure inside.
Whatever your favorite: Ballet, Tango, Cha-Cha, Salsa, Swing, etc. Let it out. Let us not lose touch with the basic joys of life. We modern people should not be untrained in the glories of the past, but should embrace them and decorate ourselves with arts like rhetoric, song, writing, and of course, dance.
