Dance encompasses everything and everyone. Dance crosses all people, all races, genders and nationalities. Dance is a celebration of life. Everybody can dance, this is hard and true. Many of us think that dance has to be a specific thing, that it has to look a certain way to be called “dance." These are lies we tell ourselves.
I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate dance in this way by participating in 'World Cultural Dance Week.' Put on by Point Park's Dance Club, World Cultural Dance Week allows us students to learn dance forms from a multitude of other cultures. It could not have come at a better time. When our nation is feeling the division between races and genders, what a perfect time it was to be reminded that we are all people, regardless of our race or ethnicity, unified by the ability to dance. I was only able to attended a few of the wide range of classes offered, but the ones I witnessed and participated in opened my eyes to the importance of dance in other cultures. It gave me a sense that dance has this greater deeper meaning.
Waking up Wednesday, the mood was sober, it was like a fog that blanketed our campus. We were reminded of the issues facing our country and were feeling the weight and the magnitude of it all pressing on our shoulders. Dance was the outlet in which I believe many of us were able to move through this fog.
The first class Wednesday morning was Capoeira. There could not have been a more fitting class to take. Capoeira is a Brazilian dance that actually rose out of African Slave resistance. The slaves needed a form of self-defense, that wouldn’t be seen as direct fighting by their captors. Capoeira is a martial art that incorporates dance, music and acrobatics in a way that is both fluid and yet very powerful. It looks like a fight but it is actually a game - a challenge between two people. It is always performed with a smile to symbolize that the “capoeiristas” are not afraid of the danger ahead.
Cultural Dance Week took me from drumming in Ghana to skipping off to Ireland. I went from a place of resistance in Brazil to the social Salsa dances of Spain. In Ghana, drumming is crucial to the culture and the instructor spoke of the many callused hands he shook while studying there. We learned how music is seen in a circular pattern in West African countries, and how different rhythms interlock and fit into one, in what I would say like a puzzle. There was an emphasis on the importance of silence and how the silence and pauses are the spaces for other rhythms to play within. We were encouraged to close our eyes and rely on our hearing. As dance students who rely on our sight everyday this was a challenge. This also carried over into Salsa.
Salsa as a social dance, is all about listening to the calls being made by the lead couple. In Irish we were exposed to the high energy bouncing steps but also we were able to pick up on the fact that it is so deeply rooted in tradition, from the way the hands are held to the way they conduct Irish step competitions.
The most important thing I learned this week is not the specific dance forms themselves. I may never do another “bird” in Irish step, but I will rely on dance as a way to express what is going on in our culture. I learned that dance is indicative of what is happening in time. It is a part of our culture and the way we express ourselves and our sentiments.
This week I was reminded how lucky am I to dance. How lucky am I to go to school in an environment where I can dance everyday. How lucky am I to have the ability to use dance as an outlet. Especially in times like this, when words fail to encompass everything, I have dance. We all have dance.
