When did I Stop Dancing?

Closing my eyes, I can see myself as a little girl running through the fields, swirling in circles, laughing out loud. I danced to music nobody else could hear.

“Sitze still, Kind (Sit still, child)” my Grandmother often said and I did as told.

I loved to dance, I loved music. Why walk if you can hop and jump, swirl and skip?

In boarding school, I heard the same. The German nuns did not joke around. Sit still in church, sit still in the dining hall, sit still in school, sit still, sit still, sit still – be quiet.

I wanted to dance and swirl, they didn’t let me.

An all-girl boarding school in the ’70s, we listened to the Deutsche Hitparade (German Hitlist) every other week on Friday, when we didn’t drive home but had to spend a weekend in boarding school. Friday night we were allowed to dance in the gym. For a couple of hours we danced like John Travolta and Fred Astaire. I dance a mean two-stop and foxtrot, can dance both sides -as man or woman- the other girls wanted to dance with me. I was busy and enjoyed it.

When I was a young adult I went with others to a disco. I could afford a small gin-tonic and there I waited with the other girls to be asked to dance. Like chicken lined up in the henhouse, we waited and waited. Why couldn’t I go and asked the boy I often wondered and now, so many years later I know I was born a feminist -it’s a birth effect.

I fell in love, with a man who has two left feet when it comes to dancing. He is stiff like an iron board, has less rhythm than the worst dancer on this planet, and only dances if you threaten him with divorce, the withdrawal of intimacies or world wars.

Dancing became a special treat when I cleaned the house. Music loud dancing to Tom Jones, Berry White or Prince. Something loud and entertaining to get me going.

I have an attitude when I dance, perhaps that’s why I love the little girl in the clip so much. Shake it Baby and be proud of it, soon it will be not shakable anymore.

We tell children to sit still, we tell them to stop moving and 30 years later when they are obese we recommend dancing to get rid of the extra pounds. This world and how we behave often makes no sense.

I remember Africa so well. The strange music became so familiar, so quickly. The people in colorful clothes, dancing in the streets. This seems to be a phenomenon all over the world, the poor, the underprivileged still dance and show their joy when they hear music.

Ever since Corona hit me in December I have felt stiff and my joints hurt a bit more than usual. “Move girl, get these stiff joints going,” I tell myself and make funny faces when I stretch. I still can’t smell a thing, everything tastes the same. I hope it all will go away soon.

Today in the morning I stepped on my treadmill. I already didn’t like it before I turned it on, not a good start. I turned the TV on in the bedroom and started my 8-minutes morning routine, but this time I didn’t listen to the news. I switched to music and before I know it I was straightening up, making beds, dusting, shaking what’s still shakable.

I danced! Nobody around to tell me otherwise.

Why did I ever stop dancing! Why did I listen to the fools telling me to sit still?

When you get older you know that certain rules are just made to be broken. ‘Sit still’ is one of them.

“Sleep my little baby-oh
Sleep until you waken
When you wake you’ll see the world
If I’m not mistaken…

Kiss a lover
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure…

Face your life
Its pain,
Its pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.”

***
― Neil Gaiman