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Folk Dance Federation of California, South, Inc.
DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET |
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Inspiration comes from different experiences. Smell, touch, or hearing can trigger many thoughts. Here I am sitting in beautiful Balboa Park and thinking about all the dancing we have done over the years. A thought comes to mind that I have written a lot about how we dance, but never about where we dance.
Where did we dance over the years.
I remember the gym, where the last of the basketball players leave, as we take their place, not sure if the lingering sweat is theirs or ours. To us the only thing that matters is that there is enough room to dance and that the gym floor is made of plant wood. Our knees, after all the miles of dancing over the years, do not take kindly to cement or tile floors. We abandoned many just because of the floor.
On our last trip to Zagreb in July, we danced in a teacup-sized room with a broken linoleum floor, without air conditioning. The dancers did not seem to mind. Their enthusiasm was catching and soon inspired us to join the line. It made me think how nice we have it here in the USA.
It seems that priorities are different at the various Greek, Armenian, and Serbian picnics as they dance on any available surface such as cement, asphalt, or any flat surface. Sometimes slanting parking lots, converted to dance floors, usher the dancer ever so slightly into one side of the dance floor. Fighting your way back during a Syrto, to the center can feel like climbing a tall mountain.
At times, a wooden platform covers the hard cement. That works fine, until the crowd on the dance floor begins to push you over the wood to the cement precipice and you end up dancing up and down between the raised platform and the cement. I am no Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly who can dance with grace and charm up and down the staircase.
One of my favorite places is Camarillo Springs, a small park, isolated and shaded by beautiful oak trees.
I still see Gene Lovejoy as he hangs the speakers overhead on a rope stretched between two trees, so all of us can hear the music. Nann, his wife, sprinkles water on the dirt and small woodchip ground to keep the dust down. We dance, enjoy the music, food, and our friends.
Now that Gene and Nann are not with us, I can see Gene as he strings the speakers between two clouds while Nann sprinkles water, so as not to raise the dust, as the two of them get ready for another evening of dancing . . .
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, "DANCING WITH TWO LEFT FEET (21), May 2007.