A dance starts with a question. Or rather, a dance starts with an invitation:
May I have this dance please?
With pleasure!
This dialogue signals the beginning of something new, something special that brings two individuals together and invites them to think, move, and act as one.
I’m talking about ballroom dancing.
When my friend Erica and I started Williams Ballroom last semester, I had a good feeling that it would take off. I’m happy and proud to say that it has. After all, ballroom dancing fills a certain void in the lives of young adults today. That is, the desire for physical connection with other human beings. As my great dance teacher, mentor, and dancing legend, Pierre Dulaine, has said, “When you touch someone with respect, something happens.” In a world where we have become experts in isolating ourselves, how few vehicles do we college students find for physically relating to our fellow man and woman in an intimate, non-sexual way?
It takes a certain maturity to overcome our shyness and selfishness to ask someone to dance. And yes, it takes courage. I was not surprised to find such maturity and such courage among my peers at Williams College. A decade ago, when the boys in my fourth grade class in New York City public school were first asked to invite a girl to dance, this was not our idea of fun or cool. But now, as dozens of college students grace the “ballroom” of Greylock Hall twice a week, I sense that we as a generation want desperately to break down the boundaries that prevent us from encountering one another in real and meaningful ways.
It’s hard to overestimate the power of touch in ballroom dancing. When two people, even if they don’t know each other (perhaps especially if they don’t) stand facing each other, look each other in the eye, hold each other in the dance frame, and move around the dance floor together, they connect on a deep level. Two people don’t need words to communicate when their bodies can move in unison.
I have seen this connection develop as I watch people learn ballroom dancing for the first time. And I’ve seen the practice of ballroom dancing impart certain values. It teaches respect, compassion, trust, grace, honor, and confidence. It forces me to be fully present in mind and body to my partner. The joy of dancing with another person, of four feet moving as two, brings out some of the best in our humanity.
As Mr. Dulaine said, “Something changes when you dance with someone.” Ballroom dancing has changed my life and the lives of so many others, including my parents, who first met taking ballroom dance lessons in a Manhattan studio. At the end of the day, I’m convinced that ballroom dancing is less about learning the steps, and much more about learning the values that it teaches: the skills that carry a respectful and dignified individual through life.
So I say, let’s face the music and dance!
