Dancing Eternal

Two weekends full of music and dance in LA. Yes, dancing.

Is it my diversification of my experiences in Los Angeles, shedding
my tried, dried, confining skin like a snake, leaving behind the old
and moving into the new? Or is it the diversification of Los Angeles
that is bringing dancing into the city? Is dancing the bridge to
community?

"I actually looked up from my music during the anthem," said a fellow
choir member, "and they could not have looked less interested, so I
was shocked when they applauded heartily when we were done."

I laughed, as I had the same experience that day. It reminded me of
Zora Neale Hurston's (the namesake of my snowboard, for those of you
who have wandered into my pictures to see her) essay, "How it Feels
to be Colored Me," in which she writes about going to a jazz club
with a white friend, being swept up into the kinetic energy of the
music, swaying, bopping, throbbing with the beat, only to turn and
see her white friend merely tapping a finger.

Even Hungarians do not have a party without someone breaking out into
dance (and if not, it is only because they are too drunk).

This passage also came to mind at the beginning of the music/dance
weekend. After a long lapse of venturing out to the Hollywood hipster
scene, the mystical east-meets-west trance renderings of DJ Cheb I
Sabbah at, appropriately, the Temple Bar, tastefully attired with red
walls, red lanterns, Buddha statues and black for balance, draw this
turtle out of her shell. Like the bar and the music, the crowd was
eclectic (and not the usual, cliché KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic
crowd, though they were sponsoring the event). Even before the first
act (starting a fashionable hour and a half late), the crowd was
dancing -- from the arrhythmic swaying of what looked like migrants
from the Joshua Tree Festival last weekend, to the flowing moves from
the Middle East, to the jagged moves of hip-hop. Music and dance as
a medium for melding cultures was further emphasized by the
performers with DJ Cheb I Sabbah: first a belly dancer and then a
woman in traditional Indian costume morphing from traditional Indian
dances as seen in a Bollywood movie to classic hip hop moves from an
MTV music video, all performed with a radiant smile that was
completely contagious.

Sunday transformed my usual salsa dancing experience. Salsa, in my
experience, involved leading or following, a certain level of
thinking, of coordinating. Salsa clubs are filled with performers
and purists of salsa. While I love it, I often feel I am not quite
up to par yet. Tonight the Rumba Room teemed with celebrators of "no
work on Monday." Pure salsa was not on the agenda. In fact,
though I had some fabulous salsa partners, I also left several sleazy
men, those who confuse dancing with groping, on the dance floor. No
worries, because with this crowd, you didn't need a partner to
dance. "Come on," instructed my Mexican friend, "this is the song
EVERYONE dances to at family parties." I nostalgically remember days
of Hungarian parties young and old dancing together, and am thankful
to rediscover places and people who celebrate dancing. Thus, I led
myself, exhilarated in just enjoying the festive cadences of the
sexy, Latin rhythms (replacing the Hungarian csardas of my
childhood), which coaxed me into staying until they closed despite my
early morning plans.

Ten a.m. on Memorial Day, in a wooden room that resembles a capsized
boat, I sit on my yoga mat surrounded by about a hundred others on
yoga mats under sunlight streaming in large skylights. Ethereal yet
rhythmic Sanskrit chants fill the air as we move into our Platinum
Meditation. I did not expect to sweat in this two hour meditation to
manifest victory, but we did. We danced in a yogic way: repetitive
motions, arms overhead then down to the floor, and, later, feet
waving in the air like bugs trying to create enough moment to return
upright. We breathe in time to the gong, bodies still, a dance
within the mind and spirit.

From here we head out to Hermosa Beach for the Memorial Day
festival. Cover bands sing of letting the mind go, welcoming joy on
a magic carpet ride (yeah, I know there are other interpretations)
"It's just like the meditation -- rock n' roll meditation," says my
partner in Memorial Day adventures. The crowd joins in, "Let the
sunshine in." A Pear cider helps here as the music is really rather
mediocre. Still, it is LA, and folks are dancing in the sun, exposed
and free.