Dancing

One of my earliest memories as a pre-school child is of my mother being present when I was in a dance class and of my being too shy to dance down the room alone banging a tambourine, as the European dance mistress had instructed me to do. I don't recall any further dance lessons, although I rather envied my sister Ruth who was vivacious and elegant in her Scottish Highland dancing kilt, practicing and performing the Highland Fling.

Having been told in Grade 5 that I should just mouth the words rather than sing when our choral class performed, I concluded that I was not musical. However, I found I greatly enjoyed the songs we sang around the campfire at Canadian Girls in Training summer camp. And, when I was working in New York and a friend and I went one Saturday evening to a “Country Dance,” I was captivated by American Contra dance, with its lively fiddle music, and its tradition of changing partners each dance as well as of interacting with the whole line of dancers. A man I dated very briefly introduced me to English Country Dancing which was more challenging but had the same community interaction of changing partners and of dancing with the entire line of dancers. Before long, I was attending dance weekends which were fanatical plunges into festive music and dance, and I was introducing, to English Country Dance, the man who became my husband. He and I dance our own idiosyncratic style of waltz and also do some Cajun dance as well as having survived one ballroom dance course without divorcing. Stumbling into some line dance music in California, I improvised movements in a corner of the hall and afterwards several people asked me about my "routine." Back in Bennington I did briefly attend line dance classes, stretching my brain to memorize the routines. And, after seeing a local improvisational dance group perform at the one year anniversary commemorating 9/11, I debated joining the class when new sessions began; almost reluctantly trying it out and surprised by how energized the dancing made me feel. Originally called "Movers and Shakers," the ShapeShifters Improvisional Dance troupe has performed around Bennington, including at the museum, at Bennington College and at the JuneArts! Celebration, and has offered, during worship at Second Congregational Church, liturgical dance together with poetry that I composed.