May I Have This Dance?

The other day, temperatures here in East Tennessee were mellow. Here in Knoxville, my van's outdoor temperature gauge read 64 degrees. The wind was playful, but in kind of a nice way. After I parked the van and began walking along the sidewalk and driveway, I heard that delightful sound and saw that delightful sight that I enjoy every November: the happy, gleeful celebration of fallen dried leaves as they excitedly dance! The wind whistled while enjoying the event, gusting repeatedly, sort of like it was taking many encores in succession, as the leaves swirled and twirled, resembling mini cyclones ... rising and descending again and again, in an amazing dance.

To me, this dance is a tap-dance. I know because I did tap-dancing when I was a kid and young adult. In the northeast part of the U.S. (where I am originally from), tap-dancing was glamorous, exciting, fun. Here in the south, clogging is very much akin to tap-dancing. But it is also quite different. Both styles use shoes that have heavy metal "taps" attached to the toes, ball of the foot, and heel. While tap-dancing is all-encompassing in terms of movement (and floor area used), clogging seems more conforming with the line (of other dancers). Oh, I forgot to mention that tap-dancing is/was usually done by one solo dancer. The tap-dancer travels around the floor, sometimes in a sweeping circular pattern, all the while executing the most intricate of steps! Cloggers stand mostly in one place, mostly in a line; sometimes the line moves left, right, forward or back or rotates as if on an axis. Both tap-dancing and clogging are heavenly to watch and hear. I've tapped but never clogged ... I'd love to do either or both now, have never lost my fascination for the rhythmic precision of dancing feet in tap shoes!

I was a child music performer and, during some of those years (I'd say when I was around eight or nine years of age), there was an older girl named Mary Lou who lived down the hill from my house. She lived in a rather old house that had a huge front porch on which her very rotund mother would sit, evening after evening, sewing and sequining Mary Lou's dance costumes. Oh, I loved those costumes and envied Mary Lou, who I saw as a glamorous teen.

Well ... life itself is a dance. We dance, we get jostled around. Sometimes we take, and can savor, center-stage.