Traveling The Dance
Traveling the dance (evelinarustem.wordpress.com/category/sport/page/3/)
Today I just woke up to agree with the words of Agnes de Mille who once ended up saying that “The truest expression of a people is in its dance and its music. Bodies never lie.” Once I managed to wake up and mediate on this saying I found out that I couldn’t agree more and that I should be doing nothing else but what W.H. Auden advised us all to do, namely to “dance till the stars come down from the rafters / Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.”
And since all ends with us lying on some floor because of simply being exhausted of so much dancing, I just thought that we may as well end up traveling in dance steps and while doing this simply witness the way in which various cultures from all around the globe get to express themselves by means of music and the all ruling, governing dance. By simply watching two bodies or a single one twisting and turning around, approaching and separating from each other to just get together in less than a millisecond at times, watching the posture of the bodies being involved in movement, the position of the legs, the way dancers keep their heads, allows one to have an insight view into a certain place and a people. When it comes to dance race, language, skin color boundaries sort of vanish in the movement. A dance can clearly tell passion, elegance, joy of living or on the contrary it may express by means of movement sadness and recovery.
Capoeira dancer (flickr.com/photos/michelepincanelli/2875614181/)
The steps may take you to Brazil where you are just about to come across a dance known under the name of capoeira. Much like Mestre Suassuna once said defining this dance “Capoeira is a game, it is dance, it is fight, it is of war and it is of peace, it is of culture, of music, it is a portion of things.” You may feel the pulse of capoeira once in Brazil and once you’ve got the rhythm you can say that you got to witness and be part of an impressive spectacle, one which involves acrobatics and not to forget handstands. And when you think it all started from African slaves you may as well envisage you as some nomadic warrior striving to improve its dancing technique this time… Yet the warrior may this time end up being some sexy Brazilian girl or a scary looking one trying to just establish some connection with you by means of dance…
Once you’ve got the chance to move like a warrior, you may as well reach the lands of Russia and get to be introduced to a dance mixing traditional and old-fashioned to many ballet with the more modern break-dance steps. I’m talking about a quite popular dance in Russia, namely Cossack. This is a dance that gets to be ultimately about such things as passion and vigor. There is the dance that involves the men, “crouching down and kicking their heels out”. And while visiting St Petersburg you may as well envisage the possibility of assisting a show that will make you part of this dance, if only by sitting down and watching the dancers performing their brilliant dance.
Cancan (etsy.com/view_listing.php%3Flisting_id%3D7374262)
And since you’ve moved around parts of the globe being in turn a warrior dancer and a vigorous “kicker”, thus very much alive and kicking, you may as well cancan a bit. And where else can you do it better if not in France, the very heart of cancan? Again, you’ll get the chance to witness some life there in all that “lively high kicking dance, a dance that came into vogue about 1830 and after 1844 began being used as an exhibition dance.” At least this is what http://dictionary.reference.com tells us in terms of cancan. Thus, exhibition, show, legs, enchanting kicks, live movement…all these in just one dance and a traveling destination that will make you say by the end of it “Voulez-vous dancer avec moi?”, in translation “Would you dance with me?”The male in you will surely feel like joining those ladies out there on the scene of Moulin Rouge, at least if not to kick the air as they do, perhaps being hesitant in showing their hairy legs only, then certainly to feel the muscles of those ladies who find themselves in just an excellent shape, this time one assigned to them by means of cancan. It could be said that instead of traveling on to our next dance destination we may as well cancan our way.
Hula Dance (flickr.com/photos/djmidway/2486609777/)
Thus, cancan or not, the next step taken takes us to Hawaii. Does Hula tell you anything? Most surely it does since hula gets to be more than a dance, being actually part of the Hawaiian culture, a way in which at a certain moment in time people used to just groove on some ancient gods. The movements involved in this dance represent nothing else but amazing legends portrayed via dance. It is pure art, making use of various undulations of hips and expressive hand movements to just render or better said crayon things found in nature and even entire wars or mere conflicts as the case may be. And being in Hawaii you may either choose to be taught how to master hula dance by a kumu hula, meaning a hula teacher or you may simply choose to be just a spectator, watching some magnificent hula performers playing their dance. The best way to do this would be by attending the so called Merrie Monarch festival taking place in Hilo on Hawaii’s Big Island.
From art to art, there comes flamenco. This makes us reach the lands of Spain. Certainly flamenco dance spells nothing but passion and assuredly color. All that stamping and clapping of feet certainly transmits passion, if not even entire flames. It gets to be and not without reason considered a veritable heritage of Spain, one that was also added to UNESCO’s world heritage list.
Much like Darshi Chohan let us know in an article entitled “Spanish Music on a Luxury Holiday”, Spanish music gets to be defined by such ingredients as passion and certainly much verve. Thus, while in Spain, one may simply choose to “dance” his or respectively her “nights away”.
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