MICHIGAN DANCE CHALLENGE: MY OBSERVATIONS

Great dancer are performers. This is an ugly truth.  I wish it were not so.  Dancing is a performance art. This is what I observed this year at the Michigan Dance Challenge.  But I learned much more than this.  Great dancers are people.  Great dancers are people that love to dance.  The dance come first.  The performance is a necessary by-product of something much greater… much more soulful.

One couple really captured my attention.  Oh, there were others… many others… that were great dancers.  There were couples that were entertaining.  There were many couples worthy of sharing the dance floor with other equally matched dancers.  Others were inspiring in a dancual sort of way.  One couple brought pure elegance to the dance floor.  I know of no other way to describe it.  Another couple brought beauty.  I mean this is the most sincere way.  Some of the ladies’ gowns were simply gorgeous.  There were lots of beautiful people, but one couple stood out to me as embodying the beauty of the dance. 

There was one couple that again and again, all night long captured me.  Their smiles, their clothing… Their posture.  Their lines.  Perfect.  But there was something more.  They were “The Dance”.  Simply… beautiful.  Their dancing captured me.  I will never accept the notion that what I watched was contrived or scripted.  No.  What I saw was pure… the smiles… the dancing… what I witnessed could never be choreographed.   What I saw was the soul of Ballroom Dancing.

Make no mistake.  I am under the spell of no illusion.  I recognize the hours… hundreds… even years of sacrificial days and nights spent in a dance studio in some non-descript neighborhood in some city… somewhere where those passing by would have no clue what was happening so close by… oblivious to the heart and soul of dancing that was happening in that studio that they didn’t even know existed.  I don’t want to even think about the dollars that it cost to bring a person to this moment of the dance.  But I know that Thursday night I was near such people.  I was near the soul not of performance, but of the dance.

One couple, dance after dance, opened their heart… and I could see the heart of the dance.  It would anger me if they would ever say to me, “We fooled you.  It was nothing but scripted choreography.”  Better said, it would break my heart.  I would have to ask, “Why would you pretend?  Do you not understand the power of what you are doing?”  I want to believe that there are some dancers that really comprehend the value… the value of the gift of dance which we have been given.  I want to believe that Thursday night I watched someone who understood this truth.

Thank you dancers; all of you.  What a wonderful evening you gave my wife and me.  And to that one couple… you have inspired me.  Thank you.