D78: Ou est la danse de ma tante?

“Ou est la plume de ma tante” is French for “Where is my aunt’s pen?”. It’s a classic sentence from old language-learning books.

It’s great to learn a new language. There are many challenges—the right accent, the inflections, everything you need to sound like a native speaker.

But if you only memorize sentences from the lesson book, even if you speak them beautifully, your communication will be limited. The purpose of language is communication—saying something. Having a conversation.

Dance is also a language—we have a vocabulary of movement. Sadly, our dance instruction is often limited to combinations and choreography—repeating the sentences in the lesson book. And worse, much of those choreos and combos have a nice cadence, but no meaning. They are attractive, but empty. Where is the communication? Where are the conversations?

This is our task. Build meaning into our dances. Have conversations with the music, with the musicians, with the audience. We do this through listening to the music, feeling what it tells us, and replying, moment by moment, with our bodies.

The world needs love. Through dance, we can say to the world every day, I love you.

Today’s music: Grateful Dead encore (and a fantastic resource of free music)  http://archive.org/details/gd1977-04-23.mtx.seamons.97596.sbeok.flac16

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This one is Day 78 from the 90 Day Dance Challenge of 2012. This year’s 90 Days starts March 11th. In honor of this, I’m sending you a Love Note every day from now to the 11th, each one from a previous 90 Days.

Still time to join us. Will you please take a look? I’d love for you to join us. aliathabit.com/90days

Holding you close in my heart,
Alia

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