Dancing
Prose by Wayne Visser
~ Dancing is allowing ourselves to be moved by music ~
Why does dancing feel so good? Could it be that we were all born to dance? Dancing is as natural as breathing and no less vital. It is not something we have to be taught when we are young. Yet we learn to stop doing it as we get older. Dancing is music in motion. It is what happens when we hear the beat and feel the rhythm. What is your favourite dance music? What gets your finger tapping and your head bobbing, your hips shaking and your feet stamping? When can you no longer resist the urge to get up and dance? Dance works as a universal language because it is so diverse. One size never fits all. But dance comes in infinite shapes and sizes. There are cultural dances and national dances, traditional dances and modern dances. You can choose jazz or cabaret, Latin or ballroom. Do you love ballet, or are you a disco diva? Maybe you can break-dance or whirl like a dervish? Each tide of music makes its own waves of dance. Like the gravitational pull of the moon, we feel the tug of dance on the sea of our emotions. We move to the music not because we think we should, but because we feel we must. Dancing is not an instruction of the mind, but an expression of the heart. We dance because it allows us to let go of something inside, to give vent to our inner wildness. Dancing lets us be a child again, footloose and carefree. It gives us permission to connect with that part of ourselves which does not question, which acts rather than thinks, which moves because it feels right, not because there is a good reason to do so. Dance is the quintessence of harmony – harmony between time and space, music and movement, beat and step. Dance is an exhibition of beauty, the perfect choreography of resonance – motion is in tune with emotion, sway echoes sound, pattern weaves design. Dancers are the living expression of Tao, the way of flow – they swirl to the eddies of song, glide to trickle of composition and churn to the whitewater rapids of the beat. When music plays and we stand still, we are out of kilter. Sound demands motion. Music without dance is dissonance, an unnatural stemming of the tide, a dam wall cutting off the river from its source. Why then do we so often ignore the call to dance? Have we become deaf to the music? Perhaps we have forgotten what moves us? Or are we simply afraid of what others might think? We have been tricked into believing that there is a right and a wrong way to dance, a better and a worse way. How tragic. We should be celebrating our own unique style of dancing, making our footprint on the sands of time, like all those before us since time immemorial. Just as no one can tell us what kind of music moves us, so no one can judge the way we dance. Dance in a crowd, dance with a partner, or dance alone – whatever makes you feel good. And if others think we can not dance, it is only because they do not understand what moves us. Dancing, when it happens spontaneously, is a match made in heaven. It is a state of pure being, of oneness with the universe. When we dance, we hear the echo of the primordial drum beat, we dip our oar into the river of rhythm through the ages, and we throb to the very pulse of life itself. Do you know what music moves you? Play it now, even if just in your head, and watch yourself dance through the day.Wayne Visser © 2005
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