The Joy of Dance

The Joy of Dance ©

By

Michael Casey

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day 2019, just in case anybody is collating my stuff, and as usual I didn’t have an idea what to talk about. I’ve just had my lotto ticket validated, the Luck of the Irish, I get a free go. So let’s hope I win more on Wednesday. I went into my local store too, I told the girl behind the counter that I could Irish Dance. Obviously she was dubious, so I removed my hood and pointed to the security camera. Then I did my Irish Dancing, though only a shortened version, with my heart and arthritis I can no longer do the full Lord of the Dance routine. The girl in the shop was bemused, though she did not reach for the panic button.

I explained that my sisters had done Irish Dancing, I cannot believe it was 50 years ago now, where have the years gone? Though I am still dashingly handsome and only look 30, no muttering, I may be this side of the screen but I do have ears, and feelings. When my sisters did Irish Dancing the Lord of the Dance show had not even been thought of. One sister got 4 medals and the other, one. And I learnt to mimic the dancing, so a lifetime of memories. When they stopped dancing, Anne King the teacher who used to live over the road, asked for the uniforms, as they were no longer needed. My mother decided to get her sewing machine out and transform the shawls into curtains for our bathroom instead.

Another memory was doing an Irish Dancing show for our neighbours at the bottom of our garden by dancing in the dark on one of the beds in the back bedroom. A few days later they asked what was all the bouncing about, we denied all knowledge of it. That neighbour had a blonde haired daughter called Christine who also knew how to dance. Though in her case it was the Striptease as she always used to undress in the window down to her bra and panties. Then she’d disappear. She be 80 now. This was my childhood.

The thing about dancing is that it is so liberating, you cannot dance when you are sad, not unless you are in North Korea, and fear is the motivation there. Trump’s conceit has been a merry dance of failed lack of Diplomacy, though otherwise he is the Pied Piper of all the worst in people, but I digress.

When you dance you are truly free, just as “to sing is to doubly praise” as saint Cecelia said or was it sung? Dancing is breaking step with your normal pace, dancing is deeper it is much more emotional. In Moulin Rouge Roxanne is my favourite dance and song routine. There is so much power and passion and story when you watch the film. Go watch it and come back to me later.

What are you doing, go watch Moulin Rouge, I’m going for a Saint Patrick’s Day sandwich, and look at the Great Wall of China turned green for Paddy’s Day.

Well I had my sandwich, my small daughter is in her nook in the kitchen revising for her mock GCSE’s so I had to be quiet. On two days she has 3 exams, so what do you all think of that? I wouldn’t be dancing with happiness. Which has just reminded me of nearly 50years ago when I passed the 11 plus to get into Grammar school, my mother picked me up and swung me around, she was dancing with joy so to speak. Nowadays 5000 people apply for 500 places, so it’s very tough to get a place. Luckily the local girls’ school is a grammar school in all but name, great discipline and NO PHONES.

Speaking of exams, when we have exams we start to Pray, please God let me pass this, let me pass that. God no doubt loves the attention but knows we will forgot him once the “danger” is past. Though there really is more rejoicing for one repentant sinner than a Just man. But what is it with Dance. It is movement, it is life, it is fun. And yes some cultures seem to love it more than others. They say that the Irish love music and song, and other cultures just cannot stop moving. You can pick your own neighbours, I don’t need to explain. I’d be accused of using a stereotype, like saying Indians and Pakistanis love Cricket.

A dance is a pulse, is a heartbeat, and when we die that pulse that heartbeat is gone. In The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker I have a funeral, but it’s a Jazz Funeral in Old Forge and Singing Anvil, the unloved corpse gets a crowd, gets Music to take it to Heaven, and in return the unloved Joan Derby will ask Mozart himself to start the Music so that Mr Stone becomes the M.P. She is leading the Merry Dance from Heaven, Percy the Poet Undertaker has started a Ballet.

Now if you have never been to a Ballet you might have a stereotypical view of it. I was incidentally Positively Vetted by a ballerina from The Birmingham Royal Ballet. In the Queens Tavern a straight bar in the Gay Quarter up the side of the Hippodrome Theatre, yes really. But getting back to Ballet, it’s all about flow and grace, not Flo and Grace who may be your cleaners, but movement. On a separate point, any good workman has flow and grace, because they know their job so well that they move like Ballet Dancers, even with beer bellies. So you have flow and grace with outstanding music and sets and design and lighting. Just try it once, take your girlfriend with you, but beware or one of you could be so happy afterwards they dance to your bed.

Nine months later you are dancing and crying with happiness and saying that Michael Casey the fat silver haired writer in shades from Birmingham was right. Ballet Brings Babies. On another point if you find Birmingham is Ballet on my site all is explained in comic vein. I think I’ll leave it there for today, we had showers and even snow, a bit  like that Wordsworth poem, into every life some darkness must fall. But once the rain stops we can Look Look to the Rainbow and fetch that shovel for the crock of gold as we celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day.