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The priest has said my soul's salvation Is in the balance of the angels And underneath the wheels of passion I keep the faith in my fashion When we dance, angels will run and hide their wings. -- Sting I need to dance. It is a physical, aching thing. Usually it is a need to write that drives me; words, giggling, tripping, playing tag in my brain; entire novellas written and discarded during the course of a walk, a bath, a trip to the market. Of late, the word-elves have been quiet; in their place is music that threatens, Jumanji-style, to consume me. Steps are nattering at my feet. I cannot concentrate. The Glasgow Reel is running through my head, slick, beautiful ribbons of sound. Adrenalin pumps through my veins. Rally-bang, rally-bang, rally-bang, step-step STAMP, step-and-treble-back, rally-back, rally-back…. A sassy sprite with a seductive fiddle is licking the inside of my ear. I can’t make it stop. It’s all I can do to breathe properly. On the kitchen floor, my battered hard shoes appear to grin at me. I could swear I saw them move. I twitch if deprived. I am twitching. I have danced for ten years, but I have not danced competitively since October of 2004. This is no penury; I simply realized one day that I didn’t much care for competition. It’s one thing to get up in a little black dress and show off your pretty reel; as a matter of fact, it’s breathtaking to be 46 years old and have someone hand you a two-foot-tall trophy and congratulate you on a win. However, it’s quite another thing entirely to find yourself on stage dancing next to some puffy, wheezing, overweight 40-year-old with red spots on her cheeks, squeezed into a garishly embroidered dress and reliving her childhood in a seven-pound wig and tiara. (Suddenly, I am transported; God, do I look like that??? Have I fallen into a circus for old people? Are all those people in the audience laughing soundlessly, thinking, Look At The Heifers…..) It's enough to make a kitty lose her groove. Then there was the time when I was matched against Seamus Gallagher in the hornpipe. Standing still, in his trousers, he’s a nice-enough-looking young man, probably 35 years old -- but hit that eight-count and by God, he launches like the Space Shuttle. Completely out of control, a jangle of missed rhythm; legs flying like a mad demon, he looked for all the world like a rabid setter. I experienced a moment of actual fear; I envisioned tracks on my face from his hard shoes. (And worse, what if his slobber was infectious, and I started to dance like that???) All in all, Kitty decided that competition was not what it was cracked up to be. When I began teaching dance, the need to compete slowly receded. Satisfaction became afternoons spent flying across church hall basements with a flock of six-year-olds. Up-two-three-four-five, point-point-point….floating with the children, I became a mother duck sailing the river, ducklings mimicking my every move. Competition lost its luster: who needed to risk colliding with a mad dog when instead, I could help make dancers; at every class have a hand in the creation of perfectly crossed feet, ear-kissing trebles, leaps that hang in the air forever? Last week, I brought nine dancers out to dance at an Irish wedding. Nine dancers, the spiritual significance of three times three; it's a secret I keep as my own private blessing to the bride and groom (the Catholics would no doubt object to such a Pagan reference). The youngest, my tiny Róisín, is twice a champion, just eight years old. Her face is past angelic; as she takes the stage in pink and gold, you can hear the crowd take a collective, audible breath. She sets her head; the power of her attitude is almost a physical sensation. As the fiddle begins to drawl, her shoulders snap back, and as she starts, one feels a silent slap of thunder crackling the air. Kathleen follows her, draped in ice blue; eighteen and coltish; breathtakingly slender, five foot eight and legs all the way up to her neck. The leap into her hornpipe starts with her foot over her head and elicits a soft cry from the crowd; her rhythm is so perfect that no one’s eyes can tear themselves from her feet. Next is my own child, rosy-faced Liz, dancing hand-in-hand with young fire-headed Cian, teasing the groom and his sisters to the floor to dance the reel. The pavilion is a blur of costumes; the bride’s virginal white; the red of the wedding party; the dancers a violent hurricane of pattern; satins and sequins in circus colors. My teeth are chattering in my head; I need to dance. It’s not just me twitching now, it’s the entire crowd, all 170 of them. Philipino, Irish, Mexican, African, black, white, yellow, red….the fiddle caught us all, and the dancers closed the snare. We are one world tonight. No words are needed; sound and movement unify us in one electric moment. Tonight, at this wedding, we achieved seisun. Now, for those Irish scholars in the audience, I don't think I'm using the word right; it's a noun. However, I've seen it used every which-way. "Seisun tonight." "Porrick O'Maleideigh was seen at the Mucky Duck last night, sitting seisun with the locals." What is seisun? Well, it’s mostly about the music. Seisun is to a musician like water is to fish. Like breathing is to people. I have only heard it explained well once, and, oddly enough, by an American, Don Williams, in his famous tune Louisiana Saturday Night: “Well, you get down the fiddle and you get down the bow / Kick off your shoes and you throw ‘em on the floor / Dance in the kitchen 'til the morning light / Louisiana Saturday night” When the music plays and the dancers dance, words suddenly become garish. They get in the way. They are bit players, garbled attempts to explain the unexplainable. Seisun is about feeling the earth move; about breathing, about living the life of the moment. Maybe that's why it defies definition: it is about that all-consuming moment when you are alive all the way through. Later that night, at home, the kids went for ice cream. I rustled through my quiet kitchen, still dressed in my finery. The house was blessedly silent except for the tapping of my heels on the hardwoods. Passing the hall mirror, I caught a quick reflection of a dancer. Long legs; the quick flash of a summer dress. Mine. It was me. My reflection. It was a dancer. Not a heifer. No spots on these cheeks. The hair’s gone gray, but it doesn’t matter. It’s that same girl. The one that’s always been there. I kicked my heels off. (“Well, you get down the fiddle and you get down the bow / Kick off your shoes and you throw ‘em on the floor / Dance in the kitchen 'til the morning light / Louisiana Saturday night” ) It was my turn. I finally danced. I’m going back to the competition. Going back to the sweat and fear of stepping on that stage, knowing that the bitch from the Smythe school is going to try to run my ass off the stage; and if it’s not her, it might be Seamus Gallagher and his rabid band of setters. Let them try. Bring it on. Kitty's back. And she brought her groove. |
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7/12/2007 5:26 pm |
this is so well written, very beautiful. easily pictured in my mind jealousy here, two left feet and all... but you Kitty, go get 'em.
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7/12/2007 7:56 pm |
this is so well written, very beautiful. easily pictured in my mind jealousy here, two left feet and all... but you Kitty, go get 'em. LadyK
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7/22/2007 10:36 pm |
To echo Mark, what a well written account. I would love to see you dance. Don't suppose there's a video floating around the net somewhere? Enjoy the ride. All you take with you when you leave is the experience.
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7/23/2007 4:04 pm |
To echo Mark, what a well written account. I would love to see you dance. Don't suppose there's a video floating around the net somewhere? Thanks for the visit, James. LadyK
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7/24/2007 4:06 am |
Looks like Kitty only thought she'd lost her groove. Lovely.
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