I do not dance. It is something that I never learned to do. I do not recall my father ever dancing, but I know that my mother did – at least as a young lady. I know this because she had a pair of beautiful castanets whose use she demonstrated to me on several occasions during my childhood.
She would twirl gracefully with the castanets in the hands of her gracefully raised arms making rhythmic gestures with her body in sync with the clacking of her castanets. Dancing is about percussion and rhythmic movements, I’ve always thought.
Susan and I have never danced despite having attended a number of family weddings in which the celebrations involved dancing. I do not regret it; I would much rather not do a thing than do it badly.
I think that our son and his wife dance – or at least they danced after their wedding reception when they went out on the town with their friends. I was not there, and I cannot say for certain.
Just as laughter is the human happy noise, dancing is the human happy movement, I think. People dance for joy. They dance for celebration. They dance in anticipation of a challenge as well as in celebration of a victory. I have known all of these situations and their intense emotions, but I do not know how to dance. Now that I think of it, I do not ever recall dancing in a dream.
Susan and I watched a good movie last night. Its title was Woman King. The movie is a story about the warrior women of the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the 17th to 19 centuries. The Agojie, a force of fierce female warriors, defended the kingdom against other African alliances with Europeans. I think that the Agojie are the historical basis for the female warriors of the mythical country of Wakanda.
The Woman King story is a fiction based on the resistance of the Dahomey Agojie to the African slave trade (of which they had previously been a part). The story ends with the Agojie victorious against the enslavers and the Agojie soldiers dancing. Their General, now the Woman King, ponders the scene with sadness and gravitas. Her daughter, an Agojie soldier, approaches and asks her, “Mother, will you dance?”
I think that if I die a gradual rather than sudden death, I should take at least a little time, at the end, to learn to dance.
My mother loved to dance and she was good, specially Salsa. She taught me and my sister. I’ve been a “dancing fool” since I was a young teen, in high school I was called the King of Twist. My dad, not so much.
I imagine our long distant ancestors drumming and dancing in a cave far away, maybe to stay warm.😊
I like that image; it harkens to a scene from the Matrix trilogy in which the people of Zion are dancing in a cave.