Dancing


The socially adept dance through life. Only seldom do they make a false step (faux pas), and instinctively they sense the nuances of appropriate behavior. These fortunate people know when to assert themselves, to "make their move", and how to do so with practiced grace. Theirs are the skills of the dancer.

By implication, an antidote to the maladroitness, the maladaption, the clumsiness of the shy is simply learning to dance. Dance is poetry, it is economy of motion, it is the greatest return for the least effort. It is a doorway to escaping the confinement of your ego prison, of becoming part of a transcendent unity, a group organism unfolding in motion. It is flight for the earthbound, a kaleidoscope for the blind, a shattering release for the unfeeling.

The dance floor is a metaphor for the social arena, a microcosm of the greater Game of Life.

Dance presence represents a mind set, an attitude, a bearing that communicates confidence and sense of direction on the dance floor. It means intuiting where the other dancers in your radius of action are, your position and motion relative to them, and anticipating how your movements will interact with them. Underlying everything is an exquisite sense of timing. Presence, life presence is all this, but generalized to Real Life.

Dancing Couple

Couples dance unfolds the mysteries of touch, of subtlety, rhythm, and balance. Holding a dance partner glides you past the "sweaty palm" nervousness of actually touching a woman, and swinging your partner imparts the feeling of give and take, of the profound balance and flow that bind a man and a woman together, if only for the duration of the music.

The simple line dances are easily learned, and mastery of couple dances, folk and square, even ballroom, follows with practice. The sense of accomplishment at getting through an easy couple dance for the first time, a "Danish Masquerade" or "Road To The Isles", makes it all worthwhile, and the sheer fun of it is an extra bonus.

Ballroom dancing has made a remarkable comeback lately, and with good reason. It gives shy people the chance to experience physical closeness to the opposite sex in a safe setting. It teaches the skills of touching and harmonizing movements, of relating to that warm female you are embracing in a stylized dance flourish. It brings people together in a romantic, yet socially sanctioned manner.

...ballroom dancing is conversation set to music.
Arthur Murray


Most areas of the country have folk, contra, ballroom, and square dance groups. Listings of times and places appear in local newspapers, and you can enquire in the rec.folk-dancing Usenet newsgroup on the Net. The dansegypsy, Door County Folk Festival, and Henry's Dance Hotlist pages give many links to folk dance groups across the country.

How can we know the dancer from the dance?
W.B. Yeats, Among School Children




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