For the teens on this Rhine Family Cruise, the old folks dancing in the Panorama Lounge each night after dinner seem a bit comic. Through their young eyes, these grey-haired, slightly stooped, wispily fragile folks surely look too old to be fox-trotting and jitterbugging!
What the teens cannot see is the depth of love expressed through this dancing. Couples who have danced together through the decades of their marriages exude a special magic. Their ease of step and confident rhythms bear witness to the fact that “No matter how many ups and downs, we are here. And we’re still dancing!”
After all, so many of the things these couples once did effortlessly, like hiking in the Bavarian woods or bicycling through French villages, are no long physically possible. But they can still dance. And they dance with joy.
We don’t train people to dance any more. I’m heartened when I hear of isolated school programs where ballroom dancing is taught. But there aren’t many of them. It’s another one of those “dispensable arts” cut from the budgets.
In some of the places I work, traditional dances are systematically taught throughout childhood. The graduation festivities for Polish high schoolers, for example, entail obligatory occasions for ceremonial performances of Polish national treasures such as the Polonaise. Not many years later, these same teens will be brushing up their skills to make an elegant “entry-Polonaise” at their own wedding receptions.
Yes, it’s the same polonaise that Chopin immortalized in his popular piano works. And it’s danced in the same way it was in Chopin’s youth: a stately procession with a halting step, the dancers bedecked in formal gowns and suits or elegant folk costumes. Through years of exposure and practice, Polish young people understand the traditions that this dancing, however tentative, conveys and preserves.
Generally, we here at Professor Carol extol “music, music, music” or “art, art, art.” But there is no art form that combines the arts in the same way as dance. Classic ballets like Giselle and Swan Lake, of course, do this through staging, sets, costumes, music, and story. But folk dancing combines the arts as well. Rather than tell a “once upon a time” story, folk dances tell the story of a culture. In times of celebration, but also times of oppression, people turn to their folk dances as irrepressible symbols of national pride, able to help carry them through even the darkest days.
Social dancing, of course, is something else. The tango, waltz, and twist may not strike everyone as great cultural treasures. But they are. They reflect a time, a place, and the energy of youth entering the first flushes of mature life. Some popular dances endure and change the tenor of the culture around them by spreading their rhythmic power throughout all the music, such as the waltz and rock ’n roll.
But more importantly, the music we dance to while young forms an artistic identity inside of us, no matter how sophisticated or simple the steps. And so, when two people form a life together and express their joys and sorrows through dancing, they never lose the power of that identity. An unspoken conversation passes through them with every circle and step. They glow when they dance. And in that glow, they are transported back to the wide-eyed days of youth, when the power of steps danced in love wove the strong skeins of a life-long commitment.
And that is what the teens cannot see. One day they will.
