Physical Dance, Spiritual Dance
In response to Dancing Elephants prompt 15 of 52
I used to love dancing in college and in my 20s. I wasn’t any good at it, but I loved it. Dressed in my miniskirt, electric blue leggings, and bejeweled granny boots, I would happily stomp, shake, and sway for hours.
I’d pay for it the next day by barely being able to walk. One or even both knees would be swollen, hot, and painful. But it was worth it.
For that brief window of time, I would completely cease to exist. There would only be the music, moving through me, and my body, moving in time with the beat. When the music stopped, I’d become aware of being hot, tired, and thirsty. But while it played, I was transported to another realm.
Eventually, I stopped dancing for hours at a time. The brief glory of the dancing was not worth the day-after suffering. But I still enjoy losing myself in the music. I just either chair-dance (much easier on the knees), or dance for a shorter period.
My husband’s dance
My husband is not what you’d call a traditional dancer. He doesn’t rock, boogie, or get down. But music and spiritual ecstasy can inspire him to dance. He will sway slowly in place, eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face.
One never knows when this will happen. We might be having a conversation in a restaurant, and he’s suddenly moved to dance.
Back when we lived in Colorado, that was a problem. Restaurants did not like having patrons dancing in the aisles between tables. The already-harried servers had to go the long way around, and the patrons who were waiting for their food and drinks got upset that they weren’t served faster.
Here in the Caribbean, however, it’s no problem. People appreciate his dancing, and nobody minds taking the extra time to go around him. Sometimes, the other patrons have even applauded when he is done!
My spiritual dance
I don’t think I’ll ever spontaneously jump up in a restaurant and begin swaying to music only I can hear. That’s not the sort of relationship I have with spirit.
But I do have a sort of dance with spirit. It happens when I write. It’s entirely mental, but in many ways, it echoes the physical dance.
I start by feeling the rhythm. The beat. The pulse of thought that will carry the story from beginning to conclusion.
Then I start to hear the melody. Thoughts, phrases, entire sentences drop into my awareness. I want to say that. Those words go there.
Finally comes the fancy footwork. Sentence length. Structure. All the tips and tricks of English grammar to focus attention, to direct a meaningful pause, or to plunge headlong into a torrent of words with no idea where they will lead, unable to break away.
And just like physically dancing, I am swept away, to a place beyond myself. I cease to exist, and there are only the words, crystalline and pristine, forming around me.
Unlike the physical dance, however, I don’t have to pay for this dance. It doesn’t leave me in pain and unable to function. Instead, it leaves me tired and wrung-out, but deeply, gloriously fulfilled.
Conclusion
Dance can take you out of your mind and body.
It may be the rhythm and the music that catch your attention until you have no existence other than letting it flow through you. Or, it may be the power of the spirit that calls to you, overwhelming you until it overflows in dance. It may even be a purely mental dance, of the rhythm and melody of words, causing your fingers to dance across the keyboard.
Whatever the kind of dance, it has one great similarity. In the moment when you give in to the dance, you cease to exist. All you are is the dance, and the dance is you. And it is glorious.
Would you like to dance?
You can also buy me a Ko-fi. ☕️
This is a response to the prompt by Dr. Preeti Singh:
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading these stories.
Who would have thought that a tea ceremony was a dance? Akemi Sagawa takes us through the steps — with a footwork chart! — in her story:
Bingz Huang shares the evolution of her dancing style, and how all her different experiences weave together with her dance, in her story:
Finally, it wasn’t a response to the prompt, but this poem by Muhammad Nasrullah Khan could be about dancing with a woman or sharing a more intimate kind of dance. I thought it was beautifully written, and very thought-provoking.
Read all of my responses (so far) to the Dancing Elephants Press 52 weekly writing prompts:
