THE FIRST DANCE

I wonder about the first dance.  Think about it for a moment.  In an “Adam danced when he saw Eve for the first time” sort of way.  Someplace, somewhere, there was a first dance. 

It might have very well been a solo dance. Perhaps a hunter dancing after he kills a buffalo; because he knows his family won’t starve.  But then he gets home with his bounty and his wife steps out to greet her returning hunter and she spontaneously dances a twirl in celebration.  And then… it happens… two lone dancers realize that their celebration would be better with a partner.  And the husband reaches out with his hand with invitation and the first couple’s dance happens.

All dances since then are related to that first dance.  At some point in history, a man naturally, intuitively, in response to some inner song… in response to joy and passion… he raised his hand and a woman without hesitation moved into the opening and did the first underarm turn… the first… ever.  From that moment on there was no turning back.  Dance had begun.

A few days later, a neighbor happened to be walking by and saw the man and his wife dancing.  They briefly noted that their neighbor was watching, but they didn’t care.  They didn’t let it interrupt their dance.

Intrigued the neighbor later inquired, “What was that I saw you and your wife doing the other day?”

“Oh, that… we call it dancing.  Why?”

“Well… it looked like fun.”

“It is.”  And then he suggested to his neighbor that he should learn how.  The neighbor said that he didn’t know how.  The dancer said, “No problem.  I’ll teach you.  You and your partner can come to my place tomorrow afternoon at 5 o’clock.”  

And… here we are today.

THE SURGE

The surge of learning is a phenomenon.  I wish it was a learning curve, but for me, it doesn’t seem to work that way.  It is not a curve that travels in only one direction.  It is a surge… that comes and goes.  It seems to advance and then recedes.  The hope is that it ultimately advances more than it recedes, but it is not one directional.  “Two steps forward, one step backwards”, comes to mind.

However, it is not that simple.  It is unseen tidal surges.  One moment unfelt and undetectable.  The next moment frightening, crashing, breaking waves. It is dangerous rip currents.  It is even the doldrums, when the prevailing winds have disappeared, trapping a student for days, even weeks, seemingly stranded… going nowhere.  It is all of these, and more.  It is a phenomenon.

Tonight learning was a pleasure.  It was work that wasn’t work.  It was fun.  It was frustrating.  It was building, growing larger.  It was a magical mystery.  The ability to learn is linked to a willingness to admit that one needs to learn… more than that; it is that one wants to learn.  Still greater, all of this is eclipsed by the knowing that one is supposed to learn.  We are created to learn.  When I stop learning, I stop living; and living is a phenomenon.

Many adventures in life are momentary.  We must capture the moments.  If we want not to miss living, we must live in the moment.  This is not to say that we do not look where we are going.  But we feel the moment.   It is the moments that we truly experience.   There is a truth that I have learned in many of my life pursuits; it is vitally important that we look where we are going.  However, we must sense the moment.  When I am slalom skiing, my legs feel the water beneath me, but my eyes are always looking beyond the wake.  I am coming to understand that this is true of all learning.  We need to see the distant goal, but we must feel the moment.  And… when we get this right… is it awesome.  It is remarkable living.

Dancing, for me, really brings this into perspective.  I don’t have enough lifetime remaining to learn all the dances I want to learn.  Let me restate that: I don’t have enough lifetime remaining to learn all the dances I want to dance well.  But I can experience the moment of a specific dance.  And then when the wave of learning carries me along, I comprehend the connection.  New steps no longer seem so strange and foreign.  Dances are not a collection of separate pieces.   Steps become sequences, which in turn relate to other sequences, which relate to other dances.  Learning becomes more intuitive… more spontaneous.  The “I get it” moments come more frequently.

AT THE BRIDGE

Have you ever had the experience of someone saying something which you hear, but you don’t hear?  Sure you have.  Someone says something to you, and you listen, and you understand.   And then… days later… it hits you again.  Only this time in a different or more significant way.  You hear it again, differently, in the recesses of your mind, and a greater good…a  greater truth begins to develop…  Yes? 

Well that is what happened to me recently.  I was listening to Glenn explain the timing for a certain sequence of steps.  I don’t remember what the dance was… it might have been the West Coast Swing… it doesn’t matter.  It was something about a particular dance having a 6-count basic, and then something about if a particular song had “x” number of counts, then he said something about choreographing…   I was listening, and though at this moment I don’t remember all the details, I understood then the lesson point he was making.  However the significance wouldn’t hit me until days later.

 

I should point out that Joni and I have only been dancing (taking lessons) for about 1 1/2 years.   We are very much novices.  The best way I can describe our present level of dancing is that we can fool those who know very little about dancing.  I am in absolutely no position to be offering “choreography” advise.  But it was this “idea”… the “choreography” idea… that awakened the “dance” part of my brain several days later.

 

It is very easy when taking lessons to think of dance as steps.  We have all seen those charts that show numbered sole-of-a-shoe outlines which depict the sequence and placement of the feet which should produce a particular dance step.  Slow, slow, quick, quick.  Or… slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, quick, quick, slow.   Truth be told, for dancers like me, there is so much that has to take place to make this very simple 3 / 6 counts-turned-into-placements-of-the-feet happen without falling over, or dropping your partner, or any number of other embarassments, that little thought… let me correct that… absolutely no thought is given to the bigger picture of what will become a dance.  Something that happens to music… and not just to random notes, but to a song… with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

 

All of this came to me as I was listening to Michael Buble sing “A Foggy Day”, which has to be one of the greatest Foxtrot songs ever, as I was trying to drive down I-75 in Detroit.  In a vehicle which was not equipped with cruise-control, I was taking my right foot off the accelerator just enough to try to join my left foot as I danced one of my favorite dances, all the while trying to keep my speed up with the flow of traffic.  It was at the bridge, and I don’t mean on the highway, I mean in the song, that I thought, “this would be a perfect place for a grapevine”.  So…  I was attempting to do that on the floor mat beneath my feet.  Thank God I was alone…

 

My point here is not whether or not I was right about the placement of this particular sequence of steps, I’m sure that other way more qualified individuals would make very different recommendations as to what might be more appropriate at this particular moment in this particular song.  My point is simply that for a very brief moment I envisioned the dance as a whole.  Not even as a collection of several separate parts.  No… I was imagining the greater dance.  The union of a dance and a song.   Unique… 

 

It’s at moments like this that I just don’t understand why everyone doesn’t love to dance….