Recently I read a fantastic article by Melissa Kirsch in the New York Times entitled, “Why Don’t We Dance More?” She waxes poetic about her high school dancing days and laments, “We don’t dance as much as we could, or as much as we want to, because we’re afraid to look foolish. That greeting card exhortation to ‘dance like no one’s watching’ caught on for a reason.”
I beg to differ, Melissa. Looking foolish is the least of my concerns. I can answer your question with one word — injuries. I don’t want to suffer a severe dancing injury again.
My first dancing injury was in the ’80s — I was 20-something and psyched to get tickets to the Buzzcocks at the Roxy in Atlanta. Living in London in 1983, I was into the punk scene, so I knew how to slam dance and navigate mosh pits. Stay away from the dudes with spiky dog collars around their necks and skinheads and I’d remain unscathed. (Although my postman had a mohawk and a spiky dog collar and he was very nice.) I was not prepared for the Georgia redneck punk rockers, though. They took it to a whole ’nother level. I bellied up to the stage, staring straight into the not-so-straight eyes of Pete Shelley, the lead singer, when BAM — my ribs were crushed into the stage by an errant slam dancer. Lucky for me, my ribs were only bruised, not broken. It hurt to breathe for a few months. After that, I was skittish around mosh pits. I lost my mosh pit mojo.
Fast forward a few decades for dancing injury number two. I was doing my beloved pogo to the Modern Elderados at Bands on the Bay, when POP — it felt like someone shot me in the calf with a BB gun. A grade-2 calf tear kept me off my feet for weeks. Yes, Melissa, I did feel quite foolish limping off the dance floor in front of the large crowd.
Number three was my own dang stupid fault. Five weeks out from a complete hysterectomy, I was not cleared for sports or core exercises. For some insane reason, when my sister played my favorite dance song, “Come On Eileen,” I thought I could do the can-can. I quickly learned I can’t-can’t. It was so fun to dance again until I felt a lightning-strike pain in my abdominal muscles. After staying in bed for a few days in the fetal position, I could sit up and walk again.
I chose the Monkees’ “I’m A Believer” for the mother/son dance at my son’s wedding. He wanted a classic waltz and I wanted to pogo/swim/pony so we compromised and it was a little bit of both. Nobody was injured. It will go down as one of the best memories of my life.
But back to Melissa’s brilliant article: “This perception of dancing as unserious, as something frivolous people do, like eating a bowl of whipped cream or sleeping until noon, seems inaccurate, especially once you start deliberately dancing more, as I’ve tried to lately. I’m not talking about complicated choreography that requires learning moves or executing steps; I mean simply moving spontaneously to music,” she says. “If you start looking for opportunities to dance, you find them. While cooking dinner or cleaning house. Perhaps a spontaneous living-room disco with your kids. It’s sort of miraculous: Each little break offers a little dose of endorphins. A little moment of expression. Of returning to yourself in the midst of an otherwise chaotic life.”
I love that, Melissa. I truly hope my dancing days are not over. I’m a believer. But maybe I should just dance in the kitchen for a while — blast David Bowie’s “Heroes” and channel my favorite movie ending of all time, the epic dance scene at the end of “Jojo Rabbit.” I dare anyone to watch the last three minutes of that movie and not dance in delight.
