I went out dancing last night. YES. Dancing at a club.
A local friend asked me to go with her and a few girlfriends and I said yes, not knowing that it was Ladies Night at a Singles Dance. Oyyy!
Well, I love to dance and I don’t do it often enough. In fact, I almost never do it except at cast parties or onstage (and I don’t play big dance roles anymore — it amazes me to think that I’ve played parts like Reno Sweeney that required tons of dance and tapping!).
This club thing was a welcome eye-opener for several ministerial reasons:
First, it was a glimpse into the average working person’s night out. Men and women were “dressed to impress,” with the usual assortment of wacky characters making the scene. The club was very large and clean and nice, obviously carefully preserved from its heydey in 1980-something.
It was a glimpse into how much everyone wants attention, affirmation, love, and someone to love. There was lots of flirting and attempted pick-ups, all revealing the intense vulnerability of the human condition — and the boy/girl heterosexual norm dynamics that frankly, I don’t get to see very much any more. My world outside of my congregation is so literally gay, I found myself at a loss to even make eye contact with any dudes. I danced alone or with one of the women I came with.
The friend who brought me kept asking me to teach her how to dance. “How do you DO THAT?” she exclaimed, laughing. “Oh my God, how do you know how to do that?”
That’s a good question. How does anyone know how to let their body be free? I saw a lot of it on the dance floor, and that made me happy. A lot of that freedom was alcohol-fueled, but it was still freedom, however you or I may disapprove of the excessive use of alcohol to lower inhibitions.
What I “know how to” do at this point in my life is to love being fully alive and to express that by dancing. I am very careful to edit my dancing when at church functions, and in fact try very hard not to dance at all. I boogied down at a wedding I did for the daughter of parishioners about ten years ago and I have always regretted that. No harm done (and I moved out of state the next week), but I knew as I let the music transport me that I was consciously letting go of control, and that’s not a good idea to do when we’re in a ministerial setting.
I feel wonderful today, and I know that dancing is good for me and important to do. I used to channel this love into Zumba classes and other dance-related work-outs but let’s get real: there is a huge difference between following someone else’s moves to a count of 8 and dancing out of your own heart and rhythm.*
So I will go back to the dance club with the same girlfriends soon — it’s nowhere near my town — and pray with my whole self to the music of Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and Donna Summer.
*Friends of mine have a kind of wii-game through X-Box that follows your body while dancing and scores you on how well you follow the avatar on the TV screen! It’s really fun, and it does teach some great moves. I don’t know what it’s called.