2007-07-30

dancing in the light @ 6:50 p.m.

This brought tears to my eyes. I immediately wanted to be a part of it.

I've always been athletic. My first classes were gymnastics and swimming when I was about 6 or 7. But after one semester or so of the former, my parents were told that I was already too big. Swimming petered out after we moved and found out mysteriously that you had to "join" the community pool; living in the subdivision was not enough. I lived for PE in grade school and middle junior high. I lettered in volleyball in HS. Once I was legal, I was shaking my tail feathers in a most invigorating fashion many nights a week in the bars.

I remember that for years, dance was a huge release for me, especially in private. It began during the summers I'd be left to my own devices. The house would be empty and I'd throw my vinyl on my dad's Technics turntable, crank up the Advent speakers and work it out in the den. Until the phone rang and I couldn't hear it. Would have to go scampering to it and answer it, all breathless and panting. It would inevitably one of the parental units going "WHAT in the NAME of GOD have you been DOING?" I finally 'fessed up after awhile and said "dancing". but that kind of therapy stuck with me through the years. I remember vividly when I lived alone in my first house in SC after grad school. I'd move the giant square coffee table out of the way, roll up the carpet, turn off the lights, crank up MY Advents, and just move. I was still working out who I was then (when are we not though, really?), and would just let it flow. Around me. Out of me. Through me. There was a particular CD at that time that just made me feel...really feel. The soundtrack to "The Power of One", which has amazingly haunting soloists as well as rich, thick, pounding choral work. I would writhe, twirl, sweat. Pound the hardwood floor with my feet, my hands. Sent the cats bounding off the sofa and scurrying into the next room. I imagined myself Judith Jamison in Alvin Ailey's "Cry" or "Revelations". Leaping, jumping, twisting in the air. Landing light as a cat or tumbling into the carpeted dining room. I could do it all.

Except I weighed too much to do it anywhere else. In the light. Outside of the house.

Someone has gone outside. In Cuba, no less. I applaud them from my dark cave.