Free to Dance

What freed me to dance? To close my eyes and move through a space, arms wide as if catching celestial energy?

What freed me to overcome my sisters’ teasing, “Sit down. You know you’re a spaz like us. You dance like Elaine on Seinfeld.” Then they’d stand up, make goofy faces, and pose with their arms and legs twisted like pretzels.

What freed me to overcome childhood taunts about how I walked and danced due to hip disease, which caused one leg to be an inch shorter than the other? “Hey, Penguin. You waddling to school today?” the 13-year-old boys would shout as I walked into junior high school. No one ever asked me to a school dance.

What freed me to show up for ecstatic dance events, be the first – and usually the oldest -- on the dance floor at weddings, and create a dance party for our 40th college reunion party that got everyone on the dance floor, including the engineering majors?

Maybe the hip surgeries that “evened out” my legs at age 50 freed me.

Maybe the endorphin rush from dancing freed me.

Maybe the joy and sobs that erupted from dancing freed me, especially during a period of stress and despair.  

Maybe the decision to say no to structured, dance-step dancing freed me, allowing me to feel and take a vacation from thinking and following instructions.

Maybe watching people with Parkinson’s dance freed me. I watched people inch into a dance space with their canes and walkers. Their carers held their arms so they wouldn’t fall. The music of their youth started, and bam, they danced like they were 20 years old. I felt like I was watching a miracle. People arrived unable to move and then were freed. The music lit their neurological circuits and gave them back their bodies. They twisted and shouted, grooved to R&B, and marched around like Mick and sang, “I can’t get no satisfaction.”

Unlike other stimuli, music lights up almost all of the brain, including the hippocampus and amygdala, which activate emotional responses to music through memory; the limbic system, which governs pleasure, motivation, and reward; and the body’s motor system.

Writing, as pleasurable as it may be for many, only lights up the frontal lobe.

There’s a deep well of love, joy, and hope that lives in our subconsciousness. When we stop thinking and start dancing, we open a direct source to that love and joy.

Dancing frees us from pain.

Dancing frees us to access and express joy.

Dancing frees us to be like Elaine Benes or, better yet, just be our own kooky, uneven selves.