Diamond-Cut Life

What’s your favorite low-carbon way to celebrate your birthday? (Today is my birthday). Mine has got to be dancing with a group of people. My friend and former housemate Micki invited me and three other dancing fools to Billy Bang’s here in Portland last night to dance to The Insomniacs, a blues/rock band.

What a blast! By the middle of the first set, the house was rocking, with people doing both partner-dancing and freestyle dancing. You look at adults dancing in these situations, and you see their faces and bodies expressing this wildish vitality that our white culture seems to keep under wraps almost all the rest of the time. It doesn’t have to be that way, I am convinced.

A tall fellow who asked me to dance turned out to know an amazing variety of swing turns, and I happily followed him, all the way to dipping at the end of songs. Micki, an amazing freestyle dancer who is somewhat leery of partner dancing, was slightly envious. “Alison knows how to yield,” she sighed back at our table.

“I wouldn’t quite use that word,” I laughed. “Oh I would,” Rob twinkled next to me. “Wouldn’t hurt my feelings,” Mark chimed in across the table. Micki ended up partner-dancing beautifully with both of them.  All five of us danced in a kaleidoscope, trading partners fluidly, including other people new to us who clearly had the dancing-fool gene in them, too. Barriers broke down and spontaneous joy floated all around.

I know that some people feel this kind of all-out dancing is too sexy, basically a warm-up act. I experience it quite differently. The group-ness contains the sexual energy quite effectively, rendering it safe. Moreover, I see dancing as a form of civility and community, and a continuation of our much more physical human past, when we had no fossil-fuel-based entertainment and dancing was very central to human culture, including religion.

And I can recommend the Insomniacs as a great band to dance to.

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