The Dancer

So, I have this friend who is a dancer. Cool girl, smart, funny, the whole deal. Met her at a camel and ostrich race in a back alley in Edmonton, but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, what I really want to stress, at least in terms of this story, is the fact that she’s a dancer.

There was a day a couple weeks ago where she found herself without a car, so being the good and kindly friend that I am (with absolutely nothing else to do with his life), I offered to pick her up after one of her classes. I figured, “Hey, I’ve got nothing else to do, there’ll be good music, and I’ll get to see attractive young women bend and stretch in some pretty cool ways!” All in all, I decided that it was a small price to pay for an act of altruism.

So I arrived at her studio a little early, and decided to go wait inside, see what the big deal was. I sat down at the edge of the floor with the other spectators—husbands, parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, siblings, the usual crowd—and watched. My friend and her dancer buddies were just about to close of the session, it looked like, with a quick run-through of a set they were going to perform in their next show. She started up the music, and then I watched as the dance began.

And that’s when the weird thing happened. You’d think that I’d be focusing on my friend and her movements or, if I was being particularly shallow, the girls in the tight outfits. But instead, a single, rudimentary question popped into my head, and I couldn’t get it out:

Why?

Why does my friend dance? Why does she move to a set rhythm, a beat, a tempo? Why push herself to a state of abstraction perfection whose only supposed justification is in the eyes of the beholder?

I thought that maybe it was because of the music, and her love for it. Not so much the words, but the feelings and emotions that the music creates in her. The artistry, the depth, the creation of a certain sense of life in the notes the instruments play. Her movements are all in time with these factors, her body working with the rhythm in order to reach the harmonic balance necessary for success.

But then I decided that this couldn’t be it; after all I’ve seen her move with that sort of grace and style even when there was no music. I’ve seen her dance without any sense of composure when she’s drunk and can barely hear the music. So I decided that this couldn’t be the reason, or at least not the entire reason.

As I watched, I began to focus on her movements, the way her body twisted and flowed in the routine. A lot of people think that dancing consists of simply moving your legs, your hips, and sometimes your arms, if you’re really being ambitious, but these people couldn’t be further from the truth. Dancing, I’ve come to believe, is a concentrated effort of motion in which every single muscle, every bodily motion and function, is involved, like (if you’ll pardon the cliché) a well-oiled machine. It starts in the toes, through the soles of your feet, and works its way up the calves, to the thighs, around the hips, up through the stomach and chest, branching out to the arms and fingers, until it peaks in the head, where it turns around and goes back to the bottom. A good dancer is in control of all of these aspects simultaneously, controlling each and every motion that his or her body will go through to reach that state of perfection that all artists strive for.

Could that be the reason, I wondered? In trying to achieve perfection, is she in fact trying to prove something? No, I decided, that couldn’t be the whole reason. She’s one of the lucky ones, with a family who loves her and is proud of everything she does, so she has nothing to prove to them. Her friends, while they may rib and tease her and sometimes get on her nerves, support her and appreciate that special something that makes her “her.” The audience? I’m sure that has something to do with it; no matter what anybody tells you, there is always some small part of anyone that creates any sort of art that is always looking for outside approval, a recognition of the effort and skill of the creator. But I quickly decided that this wasn’t the whole truth either. While we in the audience all appreciated the dance, I knew that she would push herself that same sort of perfection as if she were dancing in Madison Square Gardens.

Herself, then? That was closer to it; not so much that she was trying to prove something to herself, but the fact that the dancing provided some sort of release, some sort of ultimate justification for her actions and being. Nietzsche once said, “Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.” As a writer, I can relate to that as well; in my writing, I find that sense of catharsis, the affirming belief that my writing is an expression of my self and my spirit, and in doing so, I create my own little bit of immortality and transcendence. I think that my friend might feel the same way as she dances, that when she moves she is ensuring that she is unique in and of herself, that there is some purpose as to her existence.

But that still can’t be the only reason…there must me some defining cause that drives her to achieve this state. I wondered…

And that was it. The music had stopped, the dance was over. The girls were finishing up, congratulating each other on a job well done, saying their goodbyes for the evening, and heading over to us, the spectators. My friend came over to me, asked me what I thought of the show. I told her that it was great, but that something had been bugging me about it.

“Do you ever ask yourself why you dance? I mean, do you ever think about it while you’re up there?”

“Of course. Every time.”

“Do you ever find an answer?”

“Does it really matter?”

And that was all the answer I needed.