I love dancing and I have since I was a little kid — dancing to musical comedy albums in my family’s basement.
I heard a lot about dancing back then because my first cousin Liane made it to Broadway, dancing in the original production of West Side Story.
While I knew I never would be a professional dancer, dancing was always an expression of joy that I loved to watch and to participate in as best I could.
When I went through many heart-related operations starting at age 10, one of my coping strategies was watching amazing and athletic dancing in movie musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, The Bandwagon, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and musical compilation films like That’s Entertainment.
When I was in my 20s, I got very good at disco dancing, even though I had a fixed-rate cardiac pacemaker and had to rest frequently between dances.
I’ve taken lessons in tap dancing, swing dancing, and — most recently — tango dancing with my husband Michael.
As I’m writing about the obstacles I’ve overcome to participate in dancing, I’m feeling more confidence about the obstacles I need to overcome to put on my first show of original songs next month.
In order to do that, I’ll need to be dancing past several fears. What I’ve discovered about dancing is that partner dancing can be more fun than dancing alone, so I will rely on my partners in this enterprise (including my friend Jeanette who is helping me with ticketing and my videographer Riccardo Pearlman who is also teaching me how to play the drums). Since I did a lot of dancing alone when I was a small child, I need to remember that these people are eager to be dancing with me in this process.
Do you see any dancing in my images for today?
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On National Honesty Day, I can honestly say that I don’t understand why so many people keep dancing around the truth in politics.
Now I’m dancing with anticipation about what I’ll find when I search for “dancing” on YouTube.
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What are your thoughts and feelings about dancing?
Thanks for dancing with me, here and now!
Would you please remind me which day you will be presenting your original songs? It’s in May, isn’t it? Will you be dancing on stage as well?
The show is June 1 and the dress rehearsal is May 26. I’ll be singing, playing the ukulele, piano, and drums, and maybe dancing too!
Thank you, Ann
I love to dance, but I really can’t anymore. Game leg and all. All fall down really isn’t a very good dance. Unfortunately, when I was a kid, I also loved to dance and would put on my mothers’ records – some old classical, I think, the name Rachmaninoff comes to mind. I say “unfortunately,” because whenever my mother caught me, she would take the records away and tell me that you weren’t supposed to dance like that to this music. I was doing a wild kind of ballet, I think. So it wasn’t until the Grateful Dead came along and the rubric to “dance like nobody’s watching” that I finally felt free to move the way the music felt. You might even say I’m very “grateful” for that.
Thanks for dancing with us here, Barbara.
As my favorite band sang, “Don’t forget to dance.” And also “Come dancing, that’s how they did it when I was just a kid…”
Dancing to the Kinks!!!
I see flowers dancing here
I love the way you make words dance, beth.