dance dance revolution

Here in my hermitage I am a fan of HBO, as any repeat reader of this blog would know. I am really enjoying this season of Big Love, and I thought this simple scene from last week's episode was especially fantastic. I am sorry to say that I can apparently no longer post youtube videos straight onto the blog, so you'll have to do a little work in clicking over there.

A little background: this character's mother recently passed away, this is apparently how she's dealing with it. I love how sweaty she is, her dance moves, and her face. I think dancing is so beautiful. The general perception of dancing is that people dance to have a good time. If you just happened to pass by this character's door and didn't pause or look closer, you would think she is just dancing for fun. But here it is an expression of so many different, painful, complex emotions. She's having a difficult time processing, and trying to exorcise them in this physical manifestation. I think that translation from feeling something to the impulse of dance is gorgeous.

This weekend I went dancing twice (which was unusually but delightfully frequent). Saturday I went to a club for Valentine's/my birthday in Hell's Kitchen. Sunday I went to a Dominican club in Brooklyn to see a friend's gig, he plays merengue tipico. Different kinds of dancing. Some people go dancing for the opportunity to get close with a member of whatever gender they're attracted to. Some people, like me, love the exorcism. To lose (and find) myself in dancing. My roommate dances to feel a part of the music (only if it's good), or for it to feel a part of her. My friend Sara dances because it's in her, this vibrant, powerful force, and it has to come out.

When I was at that club in Brooklyn last night, watching people my age get out on the dance floor and dance merengue or salsa, or whatever latin derivative, with each other I thought, how sad that modern white American culture doesn't grow up with dance in their life like this culture does. Like so many other cultures in the world do. Yeah, we have ballet and hip-hop, but I mean dance that everyone grows up doing on a regular basis with each other as a cultural, social activity and expression. It just seems so healthy. It's something that I feel we have missed out on. It brings people together and gets them moving. I keep coming back to this idea of dance as exorcism because as much fun as it is, as much as dance can be an expression of just pure joy and happiness, I think it not only gets your body moving but your emotions as well. As much as science would like to separate the two, or explain one with the other, I think the synergy between the two is inexplicable, unpredictable, and, for lack of a better word, magical.

Dance used to be much more prominent in "white" culture. Country dances and balls in the 1800's all the way through swing in the '30s and '40s and even in my parents' generation. Even though they're not as earthy as other cultural dance, it still got people together and moving. I guess it's a recent loss, one that's occurred as other forms of entertainment emerged. I feel like my generation has really missed out on this.